Where SAT Testing Flunks

Do expensive SAT Prep Test courses give people who can afford them an unfair advantage? You betcha! Many SAT prep courses show that their students can boost in test scores up to several hundred points with the courses. The courses often involve one on one tutoring where the test questions are explained, gone over many times, and practice tests are administered regularly.

Does this mean that a hard-working, very bright student without the money to afford this tutoring can do just as well? Probably. But those students are rare.

People with resources have an advantage in life — and that includes getting into colleges.

But what is important is to remember what these tests are about:

Where Testing Flunks

1. What is actually being tested is rarely divulged. Tests that measure intelligence usually just measure how well the test taker takes the test, first and foremost. Whether or not a test measures intelligence depends on the definition of intelligence.

2. A test measuring intelligence assumes the test makers are more intelligent than the test takers. Not always true. Therefore, the tests don’t always measure intelligence. Following this theory, they’re flawed.

3. Schools receive funding based on test scores which motivates the schools to teach testing at the expense of educating. Occasionally the two overlap.

4. Testing creates a testing industry. There is now, and as long as testing flourishes, there will grow a testing industry with competitive testers, tests and ways for test takers to do well on tests. Testing will become an industry in and of itself.

5. Competitive test taking and a competitive industry will foster fraudulent test takers or ringers who take tests for others for a price — and that’s just the start. There will be lots of cheating combined with advanced technology making cheating an industry as well.