The SAT Is Unfair, And Why We Should Keep It

This is a record of my thoughts after helping a friend entering the SAT-prep business.  While there are all sorts of tricks, ultimately students get better at taking the SAT by taking SATs.  Typically when i was doing this free-lance, i would have an initial meeting to check the student's overall preparedness and send them home with a practice SAT and instructions to take it under test conditions.  They would send it back to me and i would grade it and make comments.  Then we'd spend the next two weekly sessions going over their answers.  At the end of Session 3, i'd send them home with another test.  Repeat for three to six tests.  For a typical, committed student getting a 500 on each section at the beginning, i can raise their score to a 650-700 on math over the course of ten 90-minute sessions.  Maybe i'm overqualified as a math tutor, but my wife can achieve similar results on reading and writing in ten two-hour sessions.  In my eyes, she's very, very good at reading, writing and teaching, but her credentials are as an engineer-turned-mother.

On the face of it, the existence of private tutors says bad things about the SAT.  The SAT is supposed to test your preparedness in math, writing and reading.  However, if your parents can afford 30-50 hours of some professional's time, you can increase your score by 450-600 points in one academic quarter.  That's not just new learning in math, reading and writing; that's learning the SAT.  For reference, 600 points takes you from Ohio State (inner-quartile range 1185-2096) to Harvard (2100-2380).  The rest of your application would come into play, but if the SAT can be swayed so much by spending money, isn't it a bit of a charade?

It was this thinking that made me seriously consider not taking SAT-prep students, even though they're a very reliable source of income.  After some reflection, i think there's a lot of hubris in the above argument.  To get that 150 point improvement, the student has to really engage with the learning process. They have to take multiple four-hour tests on their own time and carefully follow my instructions to take the tests in a way that may feel very uncomfortable.  I haven't done a controlled study, but i'll bet students would gain 80-100 points per section just by taking five tests over ten weeks and going over the answers themselves.  My involvement might make this more palatable and effective, but the student's willingness to work is at least as important as the money spent on their effort.

I can't speak about the English sections, but the math section of the SAT is a pretty good summary of the math you ought to know before going to college.  I find practice tests very helpful to diagnose gaps in a student's learning and re-teach as needed.  Speaking as a future professor, i want to assume complete SAT math proficiency on day one of my class.  (Actually, i want to assume more than that, but i'll settle.)  Making students go through a remedial diagnostic with a dedicated tutor before college is a good thing.  It saves having to do it as a remedial college course that will permanently delay the student's academic track.

Having a standardized measure of proficiency is helpful to admission departments.  High school GPAs are almost meaningless unless the department happens to know the school.  Since anything that affects college admissions is treated as high-stakes, of course parents will learn to game the system.  That's not a fault of the SAT, its a fault of the culture surrounding college admissions.  (That's a separate rantpost.)  I really like the SAT as a measure of potential success, but i want to abandon the idea that it is purely a measure of math, reading and writing.  It is also a measure of the student's willingness to work and the support structure they can rely on to help them through difficult and unpleasant tasks.  Yes, i want students to arrive in my classes with basic math proficiency.  But when my midterm turns out unexpectedly hard, i also want someone those students can run to who will tell them "Its okay, you're still smart.  Yes he's a mean professor.  Now go back to class."  And i want them to be willing to work.  If they can get through the class without working, they're in the wrong class.  In fact, i want Admissions to populate my classes with students who have all the qualities measured by the SAT, even if its not supposed to measure them.  So as game-able and maligned as it is, i vote we keep it.

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Of course, i'm opening myself up to a charge of elitism here.  My parents were very supportive of my education and a high SAT score got me into a very good school.  What about the kids who can't afford SAT-prep?  Since anyone likely to level such a charge is already offended, i might as well address it here.

What help do we want to provide?  The baseline in the field is Kaplan's 18-hour onsite classes, which will set you back $600.  Its a classroom setting so they can't tailor the instruction to you specifically, but they provide proctoring for exams and their lecture series hits all the fundamentals.  Not a bad deal; they almost always see modest point improvement.  The next level up is local firms who tailor classes to the school system and provide more advanced study strategies.  The company down the street from us is so good they have actually driven the local Kaplan out of business even though they are charging $1000.  Beyond that, you can dump almost limitless money into private tutoring, but a typical bill is $2000-3000.

For college admission to be a useful opportunity, the admitted student must have a decent secondary education.  Sometimes this is provided by the local school district, sometimes not; and there are many wonderful organizations out there trying to fill in the gaps.  Private tutoring is usually overkill if the student is highly motivated, so we're really looking to provide a $600-1000 service to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.  But that money is really buying 20-30 hours of somebody's time, usually at $30-40/hour.  If a disadvantaged student (is the PC term still 'under-served'?) has reached the point where SAT-prep is an issue, someone has already invested hundreds of hours in their education.  An extra 30 hours of volunteer time per student shouldn't be a big deal.  Besides, SAT-prep is a good exercise in its own right.  Before sending kids off to expensive colleges, we should make sure they have the fundamentals down pat.

(Aside: I'm really impressed with efforts i've seen locally to bring good education to communities who can't afford it.  If you are a volunteer who wants help doing SAT-prep, i'd love to talk about that.)

 Okay, i couldn't resist the separate rant: If you're going to push a kid into college, please don't abandon them at the door.  I don't care if you're a parent or an organization, if you provided the support for them to excel, get good grades, build up their resume, etc., i'm going to assume you're still around when its my turn to teach them.  I don't want to be a mean prof, but i have to assume they are as resourceful and resilient as they appear on their applications.  And part of their bank of resources is you.  That's not to encourage helicoptering, but moral support and life guidance is very important for the first couple years.  The SAT, indeed much of the admission process, is partly a measure of support structure.  You do everyone a disservice if your child gets into a good school with your support and then fails out without it.