Tim Worstall

Introducing SAT Tests

Well, yes, I can see the attraction:

Sixth-formers should sit US-style entrance tests to get into university because A-levels fail to distinguish between bright and weak candidates, according to a Government report.

Introducing
the SAT – a standard reasoning test widely used in American colleges –
would make it easier for elite universities to identify the best
students from record numbers achieving straight As at A-level, the study said.

In a bureaucratic system it’s usually easier to bring in something entirely new rather than change what already exists. The introduction of SATs would not upset as many of the current stakeholders as revising the A level system would.

But even given that, if A levels are not doing what they should, sorting the sheep from the goats, might it not be the simpler solution to reform that system so that it does? Make them, for example, more difficult? Mark them on a curve might be another idea. A s go only to the top 5% of the exam takers in that year? Add Chris Dillow’s idea (taken from Texas) of normalizing scores across schools?

Might be worth noting that SATs in themselves don’t solve the problem either. There’s plenty of people who get near perfect scores (800 and 800 isn’t it?) who then fail to get into Harvard or wherever…

In

5 responses

  1. dsquared Avatar
    dsquared

    [Add Chris Dillow’s idea (taken from Texas) of normalizing scores across schools? ]
    oh god not you too Tim. They don’t do this in Texas. This is Chris’s own original idea. He keeps linking it, I don’t know why, to a completely different plan which they do have in Texas, of guaranteeing a place at a state university for the top 10% by SAT score at every school. But that’s completely different from monkeying around with the SAT scores themselves, a measure which would quite obviously completely destroy the ability of the scores to “separate the sheep from the goats”.
    Tim adds: That’s what I though I was recommending. As you describe. It’s a crude method of normalizing to be sure, a crude method of measuring value added perhaps, but it does have the merit of being a very simple rule.

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  2. Philip Thomas Avatar
    Philip Thomas

    I agree with dsquared that if we have tests, whether A-levels or SATs, the scores should be relative to that year’s national cohort, not the school’s. There should then be a separate measure of how these students performed internally within the school, i.e. relative to their immediate peers. How different institutions weight these two measures would be up to their discretion. It strikes me that top 5% in the country, top 20% of his class would give more info on a student’s ability and background than an “A” based on some opaque standard.

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  3. dsquared Avatar
    dsquared

    [a crude method of measuring value added perhaps]
    ?? It’s not a method of measuring value added at all. It actually makes it impossible to measure value-added from grades. If the scores are given out on a per-school curve, then they are invariant to anything the school does.

    Reply
  4. Bruce G Charlton Avatar
    Bruce G Charlton

    I agree with Philip Thomas that a combo of SATs and class-rankings should do the job of selection.
    (The SATs need to be objective eg. MCQs – recent attempts to introduce essays are a silly idea.)
    Last time I looked at the US News rankings, it was obvious that interquartile range SATs correlate very well with a university’s reputation (Harvard had the highest).
    Of course there are other factors involved in selection of US college students, such as race preferences and legacies, but on average these seem to be swamped by SATs.

    Reply
  5. katie Avatar
    katie

    I should point out that the Texas scheme is a) not unique, similar ones existed when I lived in the states in New Mexico, Florida, Michigan and I think, Iowa. I am sure many more have since sprung up and b) designed to keep the brightest kids in the state and not going to Harvard et al.
    It also has the positive externality that it no longer matters how crap your school is, if you’re in your school’s top ten per cent, or maintain a B average or whatever, you’re going to college debt-free.

    Reply

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