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The first interpretation is mistaken. The SAT very explicitly does not test knowledge of high school curriculum. Importantly, the United States does not have an

The first interpretation is mistaken. The SAT very explicitly does not test knowledge of high school curriculum. Importantly, the United States does not have any standardized national curriculum, so there is no way to write a national test of material all students are expected to know. Originally, SAT was short for "Scholastic Aptitude Test" and it was designed to measure "aptitude", not mastery of specific material. Many lawsuits later and SAT is now a meaningless initialism that stands for nothing. > your intellectually gifted slacker can walk into a SAT exam, and easily outdo their less gifted, but hardworking peers. Is accurate and true of many of my lazy-but-smart secondary school classmates.

thaumasiotes 6y ago
> The first interpretation is mistaken. The SAT very explicitly does not test knowledge of high school curriculum. This is correct, but it's not really relevant. The SAT subject tests (SAT IIs) explicitly do test knowledge of the high school curriculum, but they are psychometrically equivalent to the SAT I. That is to say, someone's SAT II scores do contain the same information that their SAT I scores do, and don't contain additional information (such as studiousness). The reason that SAT II scores don't get confounded by studiousness is that taking SAT IIs is opt-in -- if someone takes the test at all, then they've been educated in the subject, and the residual is an IQ test just like the SAT. (Counterfactually, if everyone had to take the SAT II Latin, then stupid people with Latin training would often outscore smart people with no Latin training. But that's not the system we have; smart people with no Latin training, in reality, don't take the SAT II Latin.)