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His first point is valid. His second doesn't make sense to me. The wealthy are already very good at gaming the SAT/ACT system via tutoring. Teaching to a test
by api 6y ago
His first point is valid. His second doesn't make sense to me.
The wealthy are already very good at gaming the SAT/ACT system via tutoring. Teaching to a test always improves test scores. Any metric will be gamed if an incentive to game it exists. No exceptions.
Meanwhile he ignores the real elephant in the room, namely that the elite university system as a whole is a major source of inequality in our society. Even if Harvard, MIT, and Stanford do everything in their power to make admissions as fair as possible or even to bias them toward underdogs, it doesn't matter much. All the top ten universities combined can't educate more than a tiny percentage of Americans. That means this tiny percentage of Americans get an outsized advantage that the vast majority of Americans will never experience.
- Avicebron 6y agoI see this as a bigger issue than the loss of the SAT/ACT system. There is a massive deference given to applicants to lucrative careers from these schools, which are often dominated by students from relatively wealthy backgrounds. Good but not top tier students are overlooked or discriminated against in interviews cementing a de facto caste system. Not disparaging those schools, they are clearly very good and can produce talent. But I think the argument about how people should be allowed to advance in their career should be more nuanced.
- ribs 6y agoIs teaching to the SAT really so distorting, and so expensive to obtain? It’s a pretty general-knowledge test, and there are tons of people out there who will tutor for reasonable prices, I’d expect.
- MattGaiser 6y agoIf you are motivated, no. If you are purchasing motivation, yes. I have done a bit of SAT tutoring. Most of it is just making the kid do the work.
- vkou 6y ago> and there are tons of people out there who will tutor for reasonable prices, Any significant amount of 1:1 instruction is not a 'reasonable' price for a poor family. The middle class can afford it, the lower class can't. One of the problems with the SAT is that if all the rich applicants can pay their way to acing it, being a smart poor kid doesn't actually set you apart. You aced it, they aced it. You can't afford to be captain of the hockey team, they can. In that case, the test isn't actually a sorting function for talent, it's just another cash-expensive hurdle to overcome. At least, this is the theory.
- riwsky 6y agoRe your first point: his point isn’t absolute ungameability, but relative ungameability