Do You Remember the SATs?

I had my first clue that something big was happening when Mensa announced that they would use SAT scores from before, I think, 1994 as a proxy for IQ, but not later.  The tests after that year were no longer a good proxy.

The SAT was never intended to be an intelligence test.  To the extent they were a measure of aptitude for studying at the university level, it was no surprise that they turned out to measure something similar.

This article about recent changes to the SAT is troubling for what it says about thr College Board's perception of what higher education is:

"The College Board notes on page 13 of its Digital SAT Suite of Assessments technical framework that two of the primary goals in changing the exam were to make it shorter and to give students more time per question. To make this happen in the new “Reading and Writing” section of the test, they shortened reading passages from 500-750 words all the way down to 25-150 words, or the length of a social-media post, with one question per passage. Their explanation is that this model “operates more efficiently when choices about what test content to deliver are made in small rather than larger units.”

"This resulted in the elimination of significant portions of SAT’s previously used reading material, including “passages in the U.S. founding documents/Great Global Conversation subject area,” because of their “extended length.” Nevertheless, the College Board takes the view that the rigor of the Reading and Writing segment is unchanged. They claim in the assessment framework that the eliminated reading passages are “not an essential prerequisite for college” and that the new, shorter content helps “students who might have struggled to connect with the subject matter.”"

If you cannot connect with arbitrarily picked reading passages for something that determines if you are going to college, how are you going to connect to reading materials that are not directly interesting to you?  Say you need to read and understand a chapter about mitochondrial DNA, or how ATP transfers wnergy instead of silly cat videos?