CURMUDGUCATION: 21st Century PSAT

CURMUDGUCATION: 21st Century PSAT:

21st Century PSAT

Yesterday was National Support David Coleman's Cash Flow Day, otherwise known as the day that high school juniors across the nation give up a treasure trove of personal information in exchange for the opportunity to take a standardized test that is, if not actually meaningful or useful, at least a venerable tradition.

The P, as I repeatedly remind my highly stressed 11th grade students, stands for "practice." It is, for most of us, the ultimate no stakes test. If a student is perched at the very tippy top of Score Mountain, she will have a shot at a National Merit Scholarship, a scholarship program that functions much like the scholarships attached to beauty pageants-- as a sort of protective fig leaf of uplifting nobility for an otherwise mercenary enterprise. And if you have the misfortune to teach at a school that thinks there's something useful to learn from PSAT-ing every single student, then, well, it sucks to be you.

But for the rest of us, the PSAT means bupkus. Less than bupkus. Just bup.

The College Board (now helmed by Common Core auteur Davic Coleman) has been trying hard to reverse this trend by, among other things, creating more baby PSAT's-- PPPSATs-- to push the marketall the way down to eighth grade. Coleman has also worked to position the SAT as an engine for fixing inequality in America, a narrative that has, if nothing else, convinced the USED to shovel a bunch of money in the College Board's direction. Oh-- and because corporate synergy should always be leveraged to foster dynamic growth, the new PSAT is also a marketing tool for AP coursework.

Note too that the PSAT begins with a 45-minute session of having students volunteer their personal CURMUDGUCATION: 21st Century PSAT: