SAT: What Does It Measure?

* Re “College Presidents Defend Use of SATs for Admissions,” Feb. 19: The SAT does not measure one’s determination, motivation, emotional readiness, writing skills and critical thinking skills beyond the lab-driven world of standardized tests. It does not measure creativity, resourcefulness, cultural knowledge and knowledge of foreign languages in an increasingly diverse world. Yet college presidents consider it “possibly flawed” and say it is the “best measure we have.”

It does not really measure the student’s “potential for success.” In terms of its predictive validity after one year of college, it falls on its face. One wonders how many students have done better after the stressful adjustment of the first year of college. Furthermore, the SAT does not predict future job or career success. Why create a society of alphas who excel only in book knowledge and pen-and-paper tests? The SAT accomplishes very little except advancing bureaucratic efficiency and the status quo while simultaneously punishing dilapidated schools, overworked teachers and the underprivileged, poor minorities. People have multiple intelligences and are not the sum total of their SAT score. Why treat them as such?

AARON ALBELO

San Gabriel

*

Once again, University of California administrators are looking for ways around the ban on affirmative action, this time by eliminating the SAT requirement. In either case, the intention is clear: to reduce the proportion of Asian students at the UC, who as a group do well on the SAT. Both political wings remain silent on this issue: Conservatives are indifferent; liberals consider Asians “overrepresented.” Asians themselves are relatively apolitical. This makes Asians the ideal target for this veiled discrimination.

ALBERT PASAOA

Riverside

*

I applaud UC President Richard Atkinson for his move to eliminate the SAT as a requirement for UC entrance. I am a senior at a private high school, and I am currently waiting to hear from UC Berkeley, UCLA, UC San Diego and UC Irvine. After going through the college admissions process, I have come to believe that the SAT is not a measure of my scholastic achievement. Rather, the SAT is simply an exam that one must heavily prepare for to secure a higher score. Moreover, it is here that the bias of the SAT is most evident, for there are few inner-city students who can afford to pay hundreds of dollars to prep for a test that does not even measure achievement.

A single test cannot so heavily determine entrance into what I view as the best state school system in the country. The goal of the UCs should be to take in students from all backgrounds who are united by their commitment to true scholastic achievement, not securing a high score on one test.

SHEILA KRISHNA

Anaheim

*

This is another sad example of the dumbing down of American education. I would like to offer a holistic response to Atkinson’s dramatic lament, “It’s a mystery what the SAT measures” (Feb. 17). The SAT, Dr. Atkinson, measures the student’s ability to read and do math.

TOM ROSKO

Chino