According to The New York Times, a new report issued by a National Association for College Admission Counseling group questions the efficacy of the SAT & ACT. The report came from a year-long study by the group, which included some of the bigwigs of college admissions like William R. Fitzsimmons, the dean of admissions and financial aid at Harvard. Guess what their conclusion was? The test doesn’t work like it should. Surprised?

The report showed that standardized tests scores weren’t tied to what high schools were teaching. The NACAC also noted that “the test scores appear to calcify differences based on class, race/ethnicity and parental educational attainment.”

“It would be much better for the country to have students focusing on high school courses that, based on evidence, will prepare them well for college and also prepare them well for the real world beyond college, instead of their spending enormous amounts of time trying to game the SAT,” said Fitzsimmons.

The report didn’t stop there; it also went on to speak against using the tests at all because of the possibility that the tests are actively misshaping secondary education, encouraging students to game tests.

Hallelujah!

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I can say honestly that I’ve been waiting for the SAT bubble to burst for years now.

I remember studying for the SAT. I remember taking it twice before I was required to, just to eke out another few measly points on it. I remember learning tricks to circumvent what the test was supposed to do.

That is not what education is supposed to be.

Rather than learning the material, I spent my time taking an abbreviated course in “testing theory.” Unless you expect everyone to be writing tests, there’s something wrong with that system.

It’s good that some of the people at the top are recognizing the problems with the system. Too many factors are in the way with a one-day, one-sitting test that’s been around for years.

Unfortunately, the good news ends there.

The report suggested the use of the AP and International Baccalaureate exams as a stop-gap measure, since they supposedly reflect high school curricula better.

Stop-gap measure until what? Until we develop yet another achievement test.

Fantastic, we trade an old cage for a new one. Is another exam really going change things? I’m more than a little skeptical of just how new this brave new world is.

How certain can we be that we want our tests to reflect the current state of our high schools? Since No Child Left Behind, the low end of the testing spectrum has moved up a little bit, but the top scorers of student body are doing worse, if anything (at least according to the National Education Association).

The school system isn’t motivating them, and these tests are supposed to help locate the best and brightest, right? So why make something new in the image of something broken?

I’m not certain that I want another test. The only ones I’ve seen used on a national scale try to slim education down to straight rows of numbers. The AP tests rush us past courses where we could learn valuable things, the SAT and ACT are disconnected from the high school curriculum according to this new report, and I don’t think that one piece of testing will ever do everything it needs to.

As Mr. Fitzsimmons said in that same article: “No one in college admissions … can come away thinking that standardized tests can be a measure of someone’s true worth or ability