Harvard drops standardized test requirement through 2026
Students will be able to apply to Harvard University without submitting SAT or ACT scores for at least the next four years
abcnews.go.com
To me, this is insanity.
Schools are in business to teach stuff. Information, logic, problem solving, communication and understanding, etc.
Like it or not, the only way to ascertain whether any given student has learned what the school(s) attempted to teach, is through some sort of test. It might be a written test, or an oral examination, or something else that accomplishes the same thing, but one cannot assume that the material has been learned, and in order for the school(s) to have some indication of whether the school is doing its job and the students are getting what is being paid for is to administer some sort of a test.
One can debate whether a given test actually measures what it purports to measure. With the SAT being the most prominent example, the people who create the SAT every year constantly work to refine the test, to make sure that it is doing what it purports to do: that is, indicate the extent to which the test-taker is PREPARED to do college level work. As we all know, that is not the end of the matter. Some students who don't do well on the SAT do very well in college (depending on major), and some who are rated highly on the SAT do poorly in college. But that is because we are all human. Few of us work up to our potential, and many people do better than would be expected, largely because they put more effort into the process. (One might suggest that girls try harder and boys try less hard in college, but that would be sexist, even though true).
But to suggest that standardized testing - mainly the SAT and ACT - is irrelevant (as is the current Leftist position) is folly.
To rely exclusively on HS grades and written recommendations is akin to relying on fairy tales. Every school is different, and you might get superior grades in a crappy school or mediocre grades in a very good school, thus making such evaluations pointless.
Colleges that have earned and maintain reputations for outstanding grads have historically done so by being very selective about whom they admit. These schemes to infiltrate top colleges with sub-par students who happen to have the desired pigments or ethnicities is a form of gradual suicide. Because if you want to keep these people and have them graduate, then you have to offer watered-down courses, phony majors, and compromise your grading system. A generation of such shenanigans will greatly diminish the value of those degrees - as it should.
I would be interested to read what teachers think about the current disregard for standardized tests, especially in California, where an entire system of respected institutions have completely jettisoned the SAT/ACT requirement. Are there are other ways to allow the cream to rise to the top? What are they?
