Broadway Street
Alabama
Street
Enclosed is my report on the relevance of the SATs in the education system of the country. I have discovered that the SATs are not as effective in the education system as I had thought previously. The SAT is used as a test to gauge the readiness of a student who is about to join college. The test does not effectively test all the fields that are required to assess the readiness of a student to join the university.
The SAT as a test does not assess the knowledge that students acquire during their high school education. The fields that the SAT tests are writing, reading, and mathematics. While in their high school, pupils are taught a number of different disciplines, which in my opinion should also be tested to ensure that the competence of the students is effectively gauged. Most of them may be proficient in the other fields and if only gauged based on the three fields, they may eventually fail.
I think that the problem of inadequate testing can be tackled by amending the sections that are found in the test. New sections should be introduced in the test because the students with poor marks in the fields already in test can boost their mark using the sections that they are well conversant with. Some students are more conversant with some fields while other students are not in these fields, which is why some people succeed certain fields while lag behind in others. The introduction of the new sections will ensure that the students are tested on level ground.
If they are tested on level ground, more students will access the college education they desire. The SAT test blocks may prevent them from joining college when they fail, but the implementation of the new sections will ensure that there are more of them joining the universities because they can tackle some fields perfectly.
The Relevance of the SATs.
Street
7/3/2016
Abstract
The SATs have long been used as the gauge to test whether students are ready to tackle their college education. Before they are enrolled to join a college, they must take the SAT to ascertain if they have the required skills and competence to join college. However, the SAT has been criticized because it is not a standard measure of the readiness of the students to join college. They need to be gauged on a uniform ground to ensure that no one has an unfair advantage.
This paper will look at the reasons why the test is considered ineffective as a gauge to join college. Some of the reason that will be covered are it is expensive for some students to afford; it does not test the full range of skill that a student has, and it does not act as a guide to what the students should pursue after sitting for the test. The paper will also look at some of the ways that the paper can be made to be more competent. One of the ways that will be covered in the study is the inclusion of more sections of the paper to cover more fields. Another way that is covered in the paper is the subsidization of the cost of the test to ensure that all the students can sit on the paper.
The SAT, being a paper that decides whether one joins college or not, can be considered to be a test that dictates the life path of a person. Due to the magnitude of the test, I think that the paper should be the most competent test that individuals take during their lifetime. Paper with the ability to alter the career of a person should be free from bias as well affordable to the students before they can join college. The paper will also look at the relevance of the SATs in the current education system of the country. It will outline the magnitude of the test to the life of the students.
Introduction
The SAT is a test that is widely used as means to join colleges in the United States. The test was introduced in 1926 but has been modified over the years. The test was originally known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test but is now simply known as the SAT (Berliner 66). The SAT is administered by the College Board, which is a nonprofit organization that is found in the United States. However, it is developed by a different organization, which is the Educational Testing Service. The main aim of the test is to ensure that the students are ready to join college. The paper is designed in such a way that it is not in line with the high school curriculum.
The current SAT takes a duration of about 3hours and 45 minutes to complete. The paper has a range of scores that are between 600 and 2400. It has three section each with a total of 800 points (Bartl 67). The three main section are mathematics, writing, and reading. All the scores in the paper are multiples of 10 (Figure 1). The total score of the paper is obtained by adding the scores from the three sections.
Figure 1: Mean scores for reading, math, and writing
The paper has ten subsections and an extra 25-minute experimental section that may be found in any of the three sections. The experimental section does not count in the final score of the SAT because it is used to normalize questions (Card and Payne 72). The paper is set in a way that the easier questions appear closer to the beginning while the harder questions are towards the end of the section. However, this concept may not apply to all the sections. It has an estimated cost of about 52 dollars, excluding the fee charged for lateness. The SAT or the ACT are requirements for the students to be enrolled in most universities.
Problem Statement.
The SAT resembles an aptitude test, which tests the reasoning and reasoning of the students (Barret 96: Israel 23). It does not test the students on what they have learned from their high school courses. Students are taught many disciplines when they are in high school, which creates some form of specialization from the students. Some of them are very keen on their studies and have perfect knowledge of the fields that they have been taught. When the SAT does not test the students on the areas that they have covered while in high school, it is as if it renders the education obtained from high school null and void. Most students will not put much effort into their high school studies, especially if they know that they can access college education without even been tested for their high school education. In my opinion, the current SAT system acts as a demoralizing factor in the lives of the students. It has been proven that high school grades are a better indicator of college success than the SATs. For this reason, the high school education covered by the student should be incorporated in the test.
The SAT is considered to be ineffective because it is quite expensive for some students to access. The average cost of the test is about 52 dollars which is quite expensive for some families (Israel 48). There are families that cannot afford to even pay for the education; let alone to pay for a test that will allow them to join college. The expensive nature of the test demoralizes most of the students as well as their guardians from paying for the test because some of the students fear that they may fail. The test in itself does not guarantee that the students will join college, which at times discourages the students from taking the test. It should be free to ensure that the students that fail do not lose their money.
The SAT cannot be used as a good guide to the career path that students take once they join college. The SAT is used to measure the intelligence of the students who are joining college rather than test their skills to know which fields they can be successful in (Thomson and DeLeonibus 67). When students join college, they specialize in the specific careers that they wish to undertake. Before they join college, they should be tested on the fields they are proficient in to act as a guide to the relevant career they should undertake. Different careers have different skills requirements, for this reason, when the students know their strong skills, they can easily choose the career path to follow.
` Since the test is taken at times when the students are still tackling their high school education, they may put too much emphasis on the SAT and forget their schoolwork (Robinson 101). Since they know that it is crucial to them joining college, they can allocate less time for their studies. When the students allocate less time to their studies, it has a detrimental effect on their future studies because they will follow the same trait of not studying when they join college.
The preparation of the test takes a lot of time and is expensive. A lot of emphases is put on the SAT and this makes students study for a long period to ensure that they pass in their exams. The preparation process is also very expensive because the students awaiting the SAT must purchase textbooks that are used as a guide to the test (Chall et al. 72). Some of the students have problems paying the fee for taking the test and for this reason, they will lack the required materials to successfully tackle the test. In the end, students from wealthy families end up performing better than those from poor backgrounds (figure 2).
Figure 2: SAT scores by family income
Another reason the SAT is considered weak is because the test has an unfamiliar format that the students are unfamiliar with (Murray 55). They take this test once in their lifetime, which creates some form of tension between them. Some of them develop phobia when they are tackling a problem for the first time, which applies in the case of them sitting on a paper for the first time. The format that the test takes is multiple-choice questions, and this may create some form of confusion to the students that have never sat for a multiple choice questions.
The SAT is set in a way that it tricks the students. If the test is designed in a way that the student will fail, then it is a wrong measure because some of the students are good at memorizing books and very poor at solving puzzles or riddled questions. The aim of the SAT is to gauge the preparedness of the student to join college rather than gauge the ability of the students to solve puzzles (Fodor 38).
It has been defined that the scores obtained by students from the SAT are irrelevant when it comes to predicting the success of the students in college (Robinson 66). The grades that they attained during their first year are not related to the score they attain in their SATs. The students that sit for the SAT tests are placed in examination rooms with very new people and a new environment (Stier 49). The new environment creates some form of tension to the students, and it may lead to them failing in the test. A new environment to some people is enough to offset their minds so much that their concentration is tampered with.
Recommendations.
I think that students should be tested based on the education they have covered in their high school. The fields that the students cover should be incorporated in the test to make sure that the effort put in studying for all the fields should not be wasted (Stier 77). Some of them put a lot of effort in their high school studies, and it would be a shame if they are ruled out of joining college because they failed a test that is constructed to trick them. They already prove that they have a good memory and understanding by being in high school. For this reason, they should not be barred from joining college if they fail the test.
I think that the government should subsidize the test to ensure that all the students in the country sit on it. Some of the students lack the required finances to pay for the exam and even the required materials to pass the test. The government is usually in power to ensure that the best interests of all the people; so it should be upon the government to ensure that the students with limited financial abilities sit for the SAT (Gruber 76).
The SAT should be made in a way to ensure that the skills that the students have are taken into consideration when they are being tested. They have other skills apart from studying such as acting and even music (Berliner 44). Some of these skills should be depicted in a student to ensure that they utilize their full potential based on their skills. Some of the skills not tested by the test are very key indicators for the career paths of most individuals. A whole career can be built on a single skill. For example, the talent of acting can develop into a career of acting. If the skills of these students are identified in the test, they can choose their career paths very easily.
The government should provide the required reading materials for the students that cannot afford the books. Some of the students that line up to sit for the test lack the required materials to read and ensure that they pass the test (Kelly-Benjamin 58). The government should provide a level ground for all the students to be tested on because the rich students can afford the required materials to pass their exams.
Parents should also reduce the amount of pressure they place on their children to pass the test. The pressure that these parents place on their children may be enough to make the students fail their test. Some them breakdown when they are under pressure (Orr 18). They students should be left to carry out their studies in the environment, they view as comfortable for them. The government should ensure that the students sit for their SAT in the places they are comfortable. For the students to tackle their tests well, they need to feel comfortable.
Conclusion.
Although the SAT is a good test, the fact that it does not incorporate some of the key aspects highlighted in the paper makes it incompetent in some way. The test should comprehensively determine the preparedness of the student in all aspects as opposed to the three areas assessed. It is administered to the students while they are still in high school and determines their career path once they leave school. The SAT should be amended to depict the skills that the students are proficient in and make sure that the students join college to do the course that they can easily tackle. The government should also intervene to make sure that all the students in the country sit for the test and in a very comfortable way.
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