Why the new SAT scores are meaningless
The 2013 SAT scores are out and states around the country are either crowing or crying over the results. They shouldn’t expend the energy.Virginia, for example, is thrilled that students there got the highest scores ever on the exam, and officials are crediting the improvement on school reform. Maryland is unhappy about seeing a drop in scores for the third straight year but you won’t hear officials blaming their reform efforts.
The real question isn’t about why the scores went up or down, but whether or not the results tell us anything valuable about a student’s achievement and abilities. They don’t.
Even David Coleman, president of the College Board, the organization that owns the SAT, has for some time now been bashing his own test and promising that it is going to be substantially rewritten.
The vocabulary portion is silly, he says, because the words are too esoteric for everyday use; the essay is problematic because it doesn’t value accuracy; the math section isn’t
