Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Huh?
Read this story about changing the admissions policy to get rid of the SAT II (Subject Tests). This line leaps out at me:
Mark Rashid, professor at UC Davis and former chair of the UC Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools, oversaw the changes before they were passed.
"The subject test scores are pretty close to useless in predicting who will do well when they come to the University of California," he said. This is, of course, exactly the opposite of what has been argued in the past in the attempt to revamp the SAT I, when the affirmative action folks insisted that the SAT I was useless when we had the SAT II. Though the SAT I was revamped, that didn't make whole lot of difference, though the new research apparently insisted that even the subject tests were useless, except when they weren't.
You can see some discussion from the Rashid faction in response to a paper by Saul Geiser if you want more information. See who is more believable. While I understand the "taking the SAT II itself is the barrier" argument, it isn't what Rashid is saying in the Daily Cal article.
"I think it levels the playing field more because if you didn't go to a school that didn't cover a subject in great detail, you're at a disadvantage," said freshman Jillian Tessier. If you went to a school which didn't cover math or English or science or whatnot, you're probably not all that prepared for college anyway. I don't recall the SAT IIs requiring having "covered a subject in great detail." I thought any course which covered the relevant topic would provide sufficient detail, but I guess it's been a long time since I've taken SAT IIs. Perhaps schools should start teaching subjects again.
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