How smart are you, kid?
More and more children are getting opportunities to be judged by standardized tests! Throughout our nation, whether you are the child of a wealthy landowner or the soot-faced youth of a chimney sweep, you too can be judged unfairly by standardized testing.
Don't look now, SATs!
The average score for the Class of 2015 was 1490 out of a maximum 2400, the College Board reported Thursday. That was down 7 points from the previous class’s mark and was the lowest composite score of the past decade. There were declines of at least 2 points on all three sections of the test — critical reading, math and writing.
The steady decline in SAT scores and generally stagnant results from high schools on federal tests and other measures reflect a troubling shortcoming of education-reform efforts. The test results show that gains in reading and math in elementary grades haven’t led to broad improvement in high schools, experts say. That means several hundred thousand teenagers, especially those who grew up poor, are leaving school every year unready for college.
There are any number of reasons why this is happening. I'll take a stab at it and say the growing economic inequality in our society, coupled with terrible educational reforms starting decades ago. Cutting education spending on the state levels—starting at the end of the 60s and through the 70s, and instead of building schools, building prisons in a big way beginning in the
1980s. You don't need a shitty test to see how well that's worked out for the United States. The majority of Donald Trump supporters still think that President Barack Obama was not born in the
U.S. and is Muslim. That is a true sign of a lack of critical thinking going on in the populace.
So who cares if the SATs are low ... change the parameters of the test ... colleges will take anybody if they have the money. This is all you need to know about testing:
Cyndie Schmeiser — chief of assessment for the College Board, which owns the SAT — said she is concerned because the share of students prepared for college has stagnated for five years. Close to 42 percent of students who took the SAT reached a score of at least 1550, a benchmark for college and career readiness. The share was far lower for Hispanic students (23 percent) and African Americans (16 percent).
“Simply doing the same things we have been doing is not going to improve these numbers,” Schmeiser said in a statement. “This is a call to action to do something different to propel more students to readiness.”
Schmeiser cautioned against “overinterpreting small fluctuations” in average scores from year to year.
[Bold my emphasis.]
Tests are important and we need to continue taking them because they give us important information about education, unless you're totally freaking out and might stop giving us money to take tests and then, hey chill out, it's just one year.