SAT Preparation

Re “Working to Compete,” Oct. 1: The statement made by a student, “You don’t have to cancel the SAT, but schools should prepare us more,” seems to make a great deal of sense.

One cannot simply dismiss a nationwide test standard. However, preparation for it should not be left with the private institutes that charge lump sums that only the affluent can afford. Since preparing students for higher education is one of the school’s teaching goals, should high schools, therefore, not take up the matter of preparing their students? What about a summer program, for instance, with open enrollment?

C.H. TSANG

Arcadia

Say it ain’t so: If preparation for the SAT exams includes explaining to students why 0.37 is a bigger number than 0.307 (as Princeton Review instructor Emily Williams did for her prospective test-takers), then I do hope the University of California stops using SAT scores in its admission decisions. Instead, we should be using those scores for entrance into junior high school.

KERRY ODELL

Upland

Re “Should UC Do Away with the SAT?” Oct. 1: UC Berkeley School of Education Dean Eugene E. Garcia notes, “It’s the math where the Asians essentially do better than anybody else . . . I can’t explain why that is the case. But it is.” I suspect he can’t explain why the Asians essentially do better than anybody else in math-based disciplines, either.

He can’t explain it but the rest of us can. It’s called hard work. Components of that are regular attendance, quality and prompt completion of homework, and most of all, a sense of personal responsibility for mastery and retention of the material presented. That is the message that education deans should be giving to prospective teachers, not that valid measures of competence are invalid because of undesirable performance numbers.

WAYNE BISHOP

Dept. of Math and Computer

Science, Cal State L.A.