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« Back to Do We Still Need the SAT? main page    Transcript for: Do We Still Need the SAT?transcript.726.html ANNOUNCER: Brought to you in part by ADM,feeding the world is the biggest challenge of the new century, whichis why ADM is conducting research into aquiculture and other new foodsources. ADM, supermarket to the world. Additional funding is provided by the JohnM. Olin Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Lynde and Harry BradleyFoundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Hello, I'm BenWattenberg. The SAT, the Scholastic Assessment Test, usually calledthe Scholastic Aptitude Test, is a rite of passage for most allAmerican high school students. But it wasn't always this way. Formost of our nation's history, the SAT simply didn't exist. A provocative new book by the authorNicholas Lemann looks at the history, consequences, and future of theSAT. It's called The Big Test: The Secret History of the AmericanMeritocracy. In it Lemann argues that the SAT has transformed theclass structure in the United States for the worse. Lemann is joined on Think Tank by ThomasKane, professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Governmentat Harvard University, and author of The Price of Admission: Rethinking How Americans Pay For College; and Nina Shokraii Rees, thesenior education policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation. The topic before the house, do tests pass,this week on Think Tank. (Musical break.) MR. WATTENBERG: Of all the factors thatcollege admissions committees consider for acceptance, perhaps noneis more important than an applicant's SAT score. This is almostprecisely as the test's founders would have had it. The EducationalTesting Service was founded in 1948 to administer the SAT toprospective college students. The idea behind the test was to enableelite colleges to select the most intellectually promising studentsfrom around the country on merit. The SAT's founders believed thatthis would establish what they called a natural aristocracy thatwould rise to prominence in the United States. It would replace acollege admissions procedure that typically relied on a traditionalclass system determined by wealth, status and prospects. Did the founders of the SAT succeed? Isthat the good news or the bad news? Has it become, as NicholasLemann puts it, the all-powerful bringer of individual destiny in theUnited States? To answer these and other questions, weturn to our expert panel. Lady, gentlemen, I thank you for joiningus. Let's go around the room quickly. Thefirst question is, is the SAT a good test? MR. LEMANN: In pure testing terms, intechie testing terms, yes, it's a very good test. It's a well-madetest. In the patois of testing, it has very high reliability anddecent validity. But the question about a test, a test is a tool. That's like saying, this set we're sitting on was built by thefollowing hammer. If the hammer is a good hammer, does that meanthis set is a good set? Not necessarily. I don't have a quarrel with the SAT as atest. The real question is, what's it used for, what affect does ithave on the society? I do question its use as a tool to structurethe society. MR. WATTENBERG: What do you think of theset? MR. LEMANN: Of the set, the set isbeautiful. MR. WATTENBERG: Thank you. Nina, what do you think of the SAT? MS. REES: I think it's a great test. Andthe reason why so many colleges and universities are using it foradmissions goes to show that it does predict fairly well how well astudent is going to do academically in that school. And also, at atime when not very many states require a criterion reference highschool exit examine, I think it's more important than ever before tohave a test in place, so that colleges and institutions of higherlearning can determine how to pick and choose the students. MR. WATTENBERG: As a baseline, so tospeak? MS. REES: Yes. MR. WATTENBERG: Tom? MR. KANE: I think the SAT is good at whatit was designed to do, and that is to provide some criterion fordifferentiating among high school students who have attended a widerange of different types of high schools with varying curricula. But, there are three reasons why it tends to be over used orover-weighted. One, because it is so much easier to read, easier toprocess than carefully reading the file. Two, that it provides some indicator thatcolleges can crow about, like it's hard for a college to crow aboutall those wonderful essays that they got, but it's much easier forcolleges to crow about the mean SAT scores of the students theyadmitted. And the third reason why it's over used,and probably the most difficult to dislodge is that it helpsadmissions officers with minimizing the main thing that they get introuble with faculty over, and that is, it minimizes the chances thatsomebody is going to arrive on campus and completely fall on theirface. It also increases the chances that they deny somebody whowould have done well on campus. The faculty don't care about thesecond type of error, they care about the first type of error, andthe SAT helps minimize that. MR. WATTENBERG: Okay. We're going tocome back to that. Nick, all the reviewers of your book saythat the history part of it is terrific and it is a fascinatingstory. Why don't you sort of briefly march us through the history oftesting in America, and how we got to this place, and then we willtry to talk about whether it's a good place or a bad place, and whatwe might do with it. MR. LEMANN: The first mass IQ test wasthe Army Alpha, given in 1918 to all First World War recruits. Oneof the people who wrote and administered the test was Carl Brigham, ayoung psychologist at Princeton, and Brigham then went on to do twothings in the early '20s. One is write the SAT, and the other iswrite a truly horrifying New Genesis tract, which to his great credithe later renounced. The SAT was an adopted Army Alpha IQ Testmade a little kind of harder and more literary to be used in collegeadmissions. In 1933, James Bryant Conant was made president ofHarvard. He took over a Harvard that was filled with what we wouldcall loosely preppies, people who had gone to boarding schools,inherited wealth, everything was sort of set out for them, as Conantsaw it, and he wanted to replace them with super-brainy peopleselected from all backgrounds, from all over the country. Conant had a young assistant named HenryChauncey, who is now 94 years old and very hale and hearty, and isthe source for much of the book. He called in Chauncey and said, howdo I find this new kind of student for Harvard? And Chauncey wentout and looked and said, there is this man, Brigham, who has a testcalled the SAT, you should use that to select these kids. As Chauncey tells the story, Conant said,one thing I need to know, is it a test of pure intelligence, puremental ability? I don't want an achievement test. I don't want toknow how good their school was, how much they studied, I just want toknow their brain power. And, you know, Chauncey assured him thatthat was the case, and Conant adapted it. And then, starting fromthere, it just -- Conant was a very powerful man, and he was wellpositioned to spread the use of the test. So it just spread andspread and spread from being something to pick 10 scholarships forHarvard a year to a general scholarship test for all Ivy Leagueschools, to the general admission test for all Ivy League schools, tothe current system where over two million kids a year take it. MR. WATTENBERG: One of the predicatesbehind Conant's theory of testing is that going to Harvard is a goodthing. And, it is carried on to this very moment, Harvard is seenbroadly, metaphorically, the Ivy League, Stanford, the great schools,that this gives people a great advantage. I am not a big admirer ofthe Ivy League schools necessarily. I think some of the stateuniversities in this country stack up very, very well. Nina, is this part of the great hustle ofIvy League academia? MS. REES: Well, I have to admit that thekey flaw that I found in your theory is that unless you went to aschool like Harvard, you would somehow be relegated to the middleclass and be stuck there for the rest of your life. MR. LEMANN: I don't think I say that inthe book, by the way. MS. REES: Well, it sort of comes out thatway in some places, especially if you read the Afterword. MR. LEMANN: I would like to -- well, Irespond. -- MR. WATTENBERG: You say especially if youread the Afterword? MS. REES: Yes, of the book. I mean, Ithink the book is a very fine book, historically speaking, I learnedthings that I didn't know before about the SAT test and ETS. But, atthe end, it sort of weaves it into this theory that you have, which Idon't agree with. I think a lot of students are going to a lot ofstate universities, community colleges some of them, if they're doingwell in those studies, can move on to schools like Harvard. But thereal determinant of going into schools like Harvard is how much moneyyou have. And as these schools become more and more expensive, it'sgoing to be more difficult for a lot of qualified individuals who aredoing well academically to enter these schools of highereducation. And, to be honest with you, I think thebig dilemma right now in education, in my view, is not so much withstudents who are not doing well enough on the SAT to go to Harvard,but with those kids in high school who never even finish high school,drop out, or finish school and are not interested in even enteringcollege because of the high costs, or because the schools are notreaching out to them enough. MR. WATTENBERG: You think the SATs nowhave become a class deal that sets up a privileged class in America? And it's not based -- it's not a merit based class. MR. LEMANN: But there's a perception outthere in the world that the college admissions moment and the SAT inparticular is highly determinant of where you end up in life. Now,there's a debate that, you know, Tom is an active participant in, inthe academy about how true that really is, but that's a widespreadperception. What we're arguing about here is, I mean,I want an America that looks the way you are saying America, and youare saying America looks right now. An America where where you wentto college just doesn't matter all that much. MR. WATTENBERG: I never said it doesn'tmatter, no one said it doesn't matter. MR. LEMANN: I fear that we're moving toomuch in the direction of it mattering tremendously. MR. WATTENBERG: Let's cut to the chase,Nina said that it's a wonderful book, but she doesn't agree with whatyou want to do. Why don't you tell us in your own words, before weall jump on you, what you want to do? MR. LEMANN: Okay. What I would like todo, I do think we need some kind of national yardstick, some test,some big test that is given to all high school students. MR. WATTENBERG: Created and administeredby the federal government? MR. LEMANN: I would rather have it doneby them than by ETS, because it's a private. Private, non-profitsare the most unaccountable institutions in America. You know,they're less accountable than corporations, self-perpetuating board,you know the drill. I would like to see a national schoolleaving achievement test, the kind that was just endorsed by a stateby state. I would just like to see it be national, so I don't thinkwe disagree that much, based on national curriculum standards. Ithink that would be a much better system, partly because it creates awhole different set of incentives. The SAT creates incentives for --does not incentivize schools to improve their general quality, and itdoes not incentivize students to study hard in school. A nationalachievement test that would be similar to the New York Regents putpressure on -- they make it possible to measure how good a school is,make them suffer the consequence if they're not teaching, and theymake the kid want to study. MR. WATTENBERG: The final point of yourthesis is, we should take these tests, but then disregardthem? MR. LEMANN: No. My final point is, thesystem was set up by people who wanted to make higher educationAmerica's personnel office. The idea was, you know, opportunity inan open contest for the rewards in America is a good thing, but thatrace should be pretty much over by age 21 or 22. You should haveeverybody firmly tracked and slotted by that age. What I would say is, I like the idea of arace for opportunity, but I would like it to be less dependent on thecollege credential, and more dependent on what you actually do, howyou perform out there in the world. MR. WATTENBERG: Aren't you being a littledisingenuous? I mean, as I understood it, you are basically comingout for preference by class and race? MR. LEMANN: Right now, affirmativeaction, thumbs up/thumbs down, I'm thumbs up. But I don't believethat -- MR. WATTENBERG: And affirmative action inthe sense of preference, I mean, so we're not using those funny wordsagain. MR. LEMANN: Yes. And I can make thecase, if you want me to. MR. WATTENBERG: Not yet, not now. MR. LEMANN: The larger vision of the bookis really not, you know, that I'm an affirmative action moonie whowants to create a kind of, you know, racial gerrymandering regimethrough schools. MR. WATTENBERG: Now, lady and gentleman,Tom, how do you come out on this? I mean, here, Nick is in favor ofnational tests, both assessment and aptitude? MR. LEMANN: I'm not for a nationalaptitude test. I would like to phase that out, and phase in an allachievement system. MR. WATTENBERG: A federally designednational test based on a federally designed national curriculum, andfor preference for admission into good schools, what do youthink? I'm saving you for last. MR. KANE: I think, as I mentioned before,there is an important distinction, semantic distinction betweenassessment and aptitude tests. In practice the scores are verycorrelated. So in the world afterwards admissions decisions based onan aptitude test like we have now versus an achievement test I'm notsure would make that much of a difference, in terms of therelationship parents income and where a kid goes to school. AlthoughI agree with Nick that the symbolism is better. I'd rather have kidsworking hard in high school, thinking that they're trying to maximizetheir score on some test, rather than trying to game the SAT test. So I'd rather have them focusing on their course work. Ironically though, I think that it'sprobably unrealistic to expect that those test scores would becomeless important. The same forces that have made them become moreimportant are still out there and are still heavily at work, and thatis, again, parents certainly perceive that going to a more eliteschool is related -- it's not the only thing that matters, certainlythere is a wide distribution of outcomes for kids who attend any kindof college, but it's a way of trying to hedge your bet. It's the onething you can control, where you kid goes to college. And I thinkparents are going to continue to try to push. And the more eliteschools are going to continue to get an increasing share of theapplications from the highest test score kids, and as a result willbe come more and more selective. MR. WATTENBERG: Nina, there used to bethose games, what's wrong with this picture, you know. What's wrongwith this picture? MS. REES: Hypothetically, I think havinga national test of sorts that measures students against a high bar isan attractive thing to have. But, in practice the federal governmentso far hasn't been able to come up with any kind of nationalstandards, history standards is one example, that has really set thebar high enough for anyone to be able to take is seriously. So Idon't like that notion at all. I like the ETS designing the SAT testa lot. MR. WATTENBERG: ETS is the EducationalTesting Service who administers the SAT and designs it. MS. REES: Because it is a privatelyadministered test, and because then universities use it foradmissions, and in fact when the whole debate on national testing wasunderway in Washington, one of the things that my organization wasconsidering to sponsor was -- MR. WATTENBERG: The HeritageFoundation. MS. REES: The Heritage Foundation, yes,was to get groups like the Educational Testing Service, and SylvanLearning Center, to come up with a range of private tests, so thatparents who have fourth graders and eighth graders could thenpurchase those and administer them on their students to see if theirstudents are actually learning, or whether the report card they'rebringing home from school is somehow showing how well they'reperforming next to their next door neighbor. So I guess I agree withyou to some extent that even if you had a criteria reference highschool exit exam, you're probably going to see the samediscrepancies, and the same number of low income, Hispanic, and blackkids not performing as well as they should. And this is, again, aproblem in our K through 12 system which we're not addressing headon. MR. WATTENBERG: Speaking of thedifferential scores of blacks and Latinos and whites, where do you --I don't want to get into it in depth, but where do you all come outon the Murray Hernstein bell curve argument? A simple littlequestion. MR. KANE: Actually, it's related to anissue that came up earlier. Are IQ scores related to earnings? Thequestion is without a doubt yes. And is there some evidence thatthere is some, maybe some genetic base, the answer is probably yes. But, even if the answers to those two are yes, I'm not sure thatwe're headed towards a society that's rigidly structured based on IQ,and that is kids with the same IQ have a wide range of outcomes. Soeven though average incomes rise with IQ, there is still a wide rangeof outcomes, and I don't see that going away. MS. REES: To be honest, I don'tknow. MR. WATTENBERG: Neither do I. MS. REES: One of the studies we'reconducting at the Heritage Foundation is looking at high achievinginner city schools, with at least 75 percent minority students thatare performing above the 75th percentile on the state test. Andwe're noticing, we've found at least 25 of them around the nation. And the key thing they have in common is the fact that they set thebar very high early on. They rely on research based, replicable,reliable research early on to teach reading and math and what haveyou, they have devoted principles, devoted teachers. So unless, inmy view, you could -- in my view you can replicate the success ofthese schools easily, if you roll up your sleeves and set out to doso. And until that's done, I'm reluctant to buy into the Murraynotion that blacks and Hispanics cannot achieve. MR. LEMANN: I agree. I mean, I thinkNina has very forcefully disagreed with the bell curve, as I read it,which is in the tradition of Jansen's famous article arguing that allthese interventions in schools are completely worthless, becauseyou're going to run up against racial differences in intelligence. Ijust don't believe that. And it's a very destructive argument,because it leads exactly away from the things that work, such as Ninawas describing. MR. KANE: Even if you don't improvesomebody's IQ score, if you improve their ability to write, or theirability to express themselves, they're going to do better. MR. WATTENBERG: All right. We have towrap up soon, but let me just try to put some context in this thing. We are going through now a phase where education in all the polls hasbecome the number one political issue in America. All of a suddensomething that was quite controversial, which is the so-calledstandards movement, really originated I believe by Al Shankar of theAmerican Federation of Teachers, who was a brilliant and a greatAmerican by my lights, and his thought was that the school system isso crazy quilt that you had to have standards, and to have tests. Ithink everybody here agrees with that. And a third leg of Shankar'striangle was stakes or consequences. Now, everyone here is forstandards, everyone here is for tests. Where do you stand onconsequences? Can you have a standards system withoutconsequences? MR. KANE: I think it's important to askconsequences for whom? If it's consequences -- MR. WATTENBERG: Consequences for thestudent who does not do well on the test. MR. KANE: I am less comfortable with highstakes consequences for individual students -- MR. WATTENBERG: But, there are highstakes, they're getting into college. MR. KANE: But, the even higher stakes ofdo you graduate from high school, period, I'd be less comfortablewith. I would be more comfortable, though, with consequences forschool principals. There's consequences for school superintendents,or maybe even teachers, although there there's an awful lot ofbouncing around in student performance that happens from year toyear. MR. WATTENBERG: But, I mean, the answerto my question, should there be consequences for students who don'tdo well on tests is yes or no. MR. KANE: In some circumstances, withrespect to going to college, probably yes. With respect tograduating from high school, I'm not so sure. MR. WATTENBERG: Your view onconsequences? MS. REES: I think you need carrots andsticks to make the system work. And I agree that you need to haveconsequences, not just for the students but also the teachers and theprincipals, but these consequences need to kick in early on in life,you can't wait until high school to determine if a student is goingto go to college based on a test. MR. LEMANN: I'm for consequences, but letme say that the social promotion thing is a bit of a sort of trendyissue right now. The studies on it that I've read show that itdoesn't actually work. In other words, if you hold the kid backthose kids tend to fall further behind, not to be helped by thesecond year in third grade. I'd come down on a yes or no on yes, butI also strongly agree with Tom that one big purpose of these tests isto hold the school accountable, and the teachers and the principaland the administrators. That's very, very, very important, as wellas holding the students accountable. That's what Bush has done inTexas, and I think it's terrific. And I'm also for abolishing tenurefor all these people. Make them stand or fall on whether they'reactually teaching kids in school, because kids only get onechildhood, and if the administrators screw it up they don't have asecond chance. MR. WATTENBERG: I like that. Okay. Thank you, Tom Kane, Nick Lemann,and Nina Skokraii Rees. And thank you. We encourage feedback fromour viewers via email. It's very important to us. We read it all. And I answer many of them personally. Soon we will be reading thebest of them on the air. For Think Tank, I'm Ben Wattenberg. ANNOUNCER: We at Think Tank depend onyour views to make our show better. Please send your questions andcomments to New River Media, 1150 Seventeenth Street, Northwest,Washington, D.C. 20036, or email us at thinktank@pbs.org. To learnmore about Think Tank, visit PBS Online at www.pbs.org. And pleaselet us know where you watch Think Tank. This has been a production of BJW,Incorporated, in association with New River Media, which are solelyresponsible for its content. Brought to you in part by ADM, feeding theworld is the biggest challenge of the new century, which is why ADMis conducting research into aquiculture and other new food sources. ADM, supermarket to the world. Additional funding is provided by the JohnM. Olin Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Lynde and Harry BradleyFoundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. (End of program.) Back to top  Think Tank is made possible by generous support from the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Bernard and Irene Schwartz Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Donner Canadian Foundation, the Dodge Jones Foundation, and Pfizer, Inc. ©Copyright Think Tank. All rights reserved. 
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