By PHK
I suppose it’s heartening to read that Charles Murray, the author of the 1994 controversial book “The Bell Curve” in which he – and coauthor Richard Herrnstein – argued that “those who get ahead in America (mostly whites) are genetically endowed with more intelligence than those who do not (disproportionately African-Americans)," is having second thoughts about the SAT as a reliable measure of college aptitude, e.g. from their perspective more or less "genetically endowed intelligence."
Frankly, I thought it was almost conventional wisdom the SATs are one of the least reliable measurements of a student’s future success in college and that high school grades, activities and recommendations are the best. Murray and others including the wonderful people who have amassed fortunes inflicting the SATs (and other multiple-guess “IQ” exams) on college bound American teenagers, however, have still not entirely given up on these kinds of supposedly “objective” tests as predictors of an individual’s future success.
They now say, according to The New York Times on September 19, that the SAT’s Subject Tests are the single most important indicator.
Oh, come on. Who’s kidding whom?
Or if these still mostly multiple choice question based tests are, in fact, accurate predictors, then something’s wrong with U.S. undergraduate education today because even these kinds of subject matter tests mostly demonstrate that some people are better able to play the College Board’s test-taking-timed-guessing game than others. This, after all, is also what the lucrative SAT cram course industry and books teach.
The problem at the university level – particularly for first and second year students in large classes – is that the same form of guesswork exams are used in too many classes by too many professors and graduate teaching assistants because correcting even short essays takes thought, time and the ability to explain to the student why he, or she, didn’t get the inflated grade he, or she thought he or she deserved. Besides that, the textbook publishers make this even easier by providing text banks from which test questions can be drawn. Multiple choice questions are the fastest and least controversial to correct.
So in a perverted sense, the American testing industry is right: if a student has learned how to ace multiple choice exams without really trying in high school or even earlier – thanks to “no child left behind”- then SAT type exams should be excellent predictors of a student’s ability to succeed through the first couple of years of large college classes as well as to go on to ace the LSATS, the MCATs and the GREs – all also brought to us as screening devices by our wonderful private sector testing industry.
Where things break down, however, is when students are required to write in-class, closed book, essays. Or to give in-class oral presentations based on out of class research. Both skills are required for success in the professional world. This includes entry into and advancement in the U.S. Foreign Service. Written and oral skills are also required for successful PhD candidacy. Multiple guess exams don’t test or train for either.
I think American academia is, therefore, doing the students and this country a major disservice by not requiring written essays and oral presentations – and at all levels. But that means smaller classes, comprehensive exams at the end of each class and better trained, treated and paid instructors.
To do this, as the recently released 2007 OECD comparative study of education in 40 member and partner countries suggests, means substantially more money going into American classrooms and substantially less into administrative overhead. It does not mean more money overall for U.S. education. That same study shows that the US spends more per student than almost every other country that participated in the OECD survey. Most countries surveyed were in Europe or Asia but they also include Canada, Mexico, Australia, China, India and Russia. The 2007 survey demonstrates that the US educational system is slipping in comparison with others – not the other way around.
This should be a wake up call.
It should mean, therefore, taking an especially hard look at and realigning how US taxpayers’ money on education is spent.
To do so, it might help to examine how other countries achieve far better results with less money and adopt or adapt some of their more successful practices. Lavish football stadiums, multiple layers of administrative oversight, teachers that lack even basic subject matter competency and 4,000 student high schools requiring pistol toting guards to keep order do not result in quality education for anyone.
I realize one size does not fit all and that there are some excellent schools and teachers in this country. I’m also not suggesting everything that works for Finnish students for example – and the Finns rank among the highest on the OECD survey once again – will work in the US. But I think that the private testing industry in the US needs major overhaul before it becomes part of the solution, not the problem. And yes, there are a number of excellent examples that could be adapted or adopted from elsewhere.