New SAT won't include lesser used vocab

[Dylan]

[exploited]

So do the better colleges rely upon a heavier weighted test score or grades? Because to me, your grades over all subjects is a better illustration of educability than a single standardized test. And grades also reflect effort over time... A standardized test score reflects nothing more than intense studying followed by the purge of all that knowledge once the test is complete. At least in my experience.

[Dylan]

[Saz]

[Saz]

[Dylan]

Grinders are useful idiots, yes.

[exploited]

Well, to me, half of educability is effort. You can't learn something if you aren't capable of trying. And being able to delay satisfaction in order to achieve goals is absolutely crucial to long-term success - doing well in an area that you don't like is a really big indicator of future success, IMO. So if a kid gets 80% in math, but really has a hard time doing it, I view him as more intelligent than a kid who gets a 90% but finds it the easiest thing ever. Point is, being naturally intelligent doesn't mean anything if you can't learn and won't apply yourself.

But I can see the point about it being too much of a reflection of that - what concerns me about standardized tests is the power they hold over other areas of academics. I know it's a TV show, but anyone remember the episode of The Wire when Prez is just starting to get the kids to learn when all of a sudden he has to drop what he is doing to focus on teaching the standardized test they have to take? The school does that so they can score high enough to continue to receive federal funding. Is that really how it works?

I'm personally kind of surprised that the better schools haven't implemented their own testing, rather than relying upon the SAT or whatever. Surely they can come up with something that more accurately measures potential than the SAT?

[Saz]

[Philly]

Yeah would agree with Saz. I knew kids I high school whose parents would revise all their writing assignments and make them rewrite it multiple times. They got straight A's on all their papers and essays but some were dumb as a brick and couldn't write for shit. What do their grades and "work ethic" indicate about their skills in the real world? Nothing.

These were also the same kids who complained about how unfair standardized testing was cause mom and dad couldn't rewrite their answers for them.

[exploited]

I think this is a really interesting debate, because it brings into question alot of different concepts, and what educators should be striving to do.

Should colleges base admissions upon innate intelligence, or educability? An educable person is willing to put in the effort. They try hard all the time, but even more so when they don't really understand a particular topic. Whereas an intelligent person can simply go in and wing it, deduce meanings from context, and rely upon simply hashing out what the questions are looking for, rather than having a really wide base of knowledge to draw upon.

Further, what is intelligence? Is it simply innate capabilities? Or should intelligence be viewed as an applied concept? For instance, based on test scores and grades, I have typically been within the top 5%. But I am a truly terrible student. If I don't care about the subject, I simply memorize what I need to know, and forget it as soon as it's no longer required. My grades and test scores indicate a high intelligence, but I don't really think I am all that smart. Numerous friends of mine do terrible at school, but I view them as far, far more intelligent, and it shows based upon how much success they've had. They have accomplished way more in their respective fields than I have in mine, and this will probably always be the case.

To use an analogy, let's say that intelligence is your hardware, and educability is your software. Your total performance is measured by the combination of these attributes. Is it better to have a supercomputer than runs Windows 3.1, or an i7 that runs Windows 7? Probably the best tests would measure both and come out with an aggregate score - perhaps a good way of doing that is to design tests that first teach new concepts, and then require the student to apply them, rather than testing knowledge that has largely already been taught?