What’s wrong with the SAT? Quite a bit, according to Walt Gardner in this Education Week Commentary.
Gardner argues that, in order to meet expected levels of scoring differentiation, the SAT has to discount material emphasized by teachers. Instead, it relies heavily on questions based on knowledge students acquire outside the classroom—which is often correlated to students’ socioeconomic backgrounds. That factor can leave both students and teachers feeling frustrated and helpless, he says, and is ultimately unfair.
What do you think? Is the SAT a good predictor of future performance in college? Or is it an unfair test that needs to be scrapped? What are the alternatives?
