The one the thing the SAT definitely doesn't reflect is how hard a student is willing to work to learn. Anecdotal evidence: my freshman college roommate scored significantly higher than me on the SAT, and yet, he then proceeded to fail out of college: _twice_; while I went on to graduate. Intelligence is meaningless without work ethic.
TheJaredtheJaredlong This was something I really wanted to talk about but didn't have time! I read some theory talking about how, ideally, there would be a way to tell how *dedicated* someone is because really, thats THE most important thing.
TheJaredtheJaredlong If you are strictly talking about the SAT as a measure of college success versus life success or overall intelligence (all of which are briefly touched on in the video) then you are 100% correct and this should be factored in. In fact this area called noncognitive assessment or grit, because of course everything has to have a fancy name, is something that higher ed evaluation and assessment peoples (like myself) are very interested in and it has become a hot topic. Because of course, we want to know not just if you are smart, but also if you can pick yourself up off the floor if you get flattened by a cement truck, or Organic Chemistry.
TheJaredtheJaredlong not to mention if you have a learning curb like I do. Its hard to take the SATs when I can't read some words properly or see the word wrong.
I did really well on my SATs, which helped me get a college scholarship, but look at me now: I'm watching this video, desperately trying to ignore the fact that finals are next week and I'm failing all my classes.
Gonna appeal to some Anime geeks here (I'm sure my icon alone will help): Power Levels in *Dragon Ball Z* are a lot like SAT scores. Completely meaningless towards your actual skill, and only serve to separate the upper and lower classes. The SAT test is like the first Chunin Exam in *Naruto* as well. It measures how you score under pressure, or your ability to cheat.
jasonb42notavailable Doesn't work. I didn't study for the SAT, did great on it. Failed more than half my classes my first year of college, because I couldn't study.
jasonb42notavailable I took a few practice SATs and didn't study for it. Did pretty mediocre on all except the real one and the same thing happened to me as did Earthenfist
Standardized testing in general is a horrible idea. Why? Because no one learns exactly the same way and no one has the same interests or motivation to study every subject currently taught in schools. I did well on the SAT but only because I practiced taking it, and memorized vocabulary that was specific to the tests. Neither of these skills is particularly useful in the working or even college world (at least not in the field that I'm going into). It's an entirely bullshit set of skills and a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. I learned more critiquing the SAT practice test questions, arguing with my SAT prep teacher than I did studying for the actual tests. We try so hard to distill human intellect into categorized subjects with numeric ratings but education deserves to be so much grander than that. I had enough motivation to put up with and excel at that sterile type of learning but I hated every minute of it. Real work, fulfilling work, tasks that build you as an individual have to do with knowledge that doesn't fly out of your head after the end of each test. Real knowledge is about experiences, discussion, critical reasoning and independent research, not vomiting words from a book in a way that matches the pattern the teachers have on their desk. It's disturbing how long kids and teens spend in a classroom, withering away during their most productive years when they could be learning specialized skills from a professional mentor. Kids could do so much more if we didn't shove them in a one-size-fits-all box.
fusobotic I partly disagree and also agree with your points. Please bear with me for a bit... lengthy reading below... but I think I make my point eventually. All of modern education is inherently standardized. Ok, so in general we are talking about "Western Academia". A regulated system of passing along the accumulated knowledge of the world* that hasn't really changed all that much since the ancient Greeks (*actually, it's your specific culture's idea of valuable knowledge, but for the sake of generalizing my explanation... "world"). As our boundaries of knowledge grow and change through time (and we filter that new knowledge down to younger generations of students), the knowledge of the top researchers/experts/professionals/scientists/etc. has to be distilled into age-appropriate levels so that, as students grow up, we can build on what they've learned previously in a predictable way until eventually they reach the "end" of their fundamental education (in the US at least, this is typically thought of as graduating from high school...) Without some form of standardized testing (or at least teaching), there is no structure to base a student's level of accumulated knowledge, and therefore no predictable way to advance them to the next Grade Year. If we only taught second graders what they wanted to learn and had no definition of what they "should have learned this year", how would we know when they're ready for third grade? Now, I'm NOT saying that the system of testing we have now is perfect, or even good. In fact, it is grossly inadequate in terms of measuring what students are ACTUALLY learning (and I wholeheartedly disagree with "teaching for the test" and rote regurgitation of facts), but given the way we have been passing knowledge from one generation to the next until now, it is a time-tested way of ensuring that society creates "adults" with a standard level of "knowledge". I totally agree that people learn in different ways and have different motivations and strengths. Auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and conceptual learners all have different modes of learning that are not always addressed in the traditional classroom. My Master's thesis focused on outdoor environmental education, specifically: using rivers and outdoor environments as classrooms to address this disparity. (Anywhere! Even just taking students out to an urban green-space or school yard for lessons a couple of times a week is considered "better" than those four-walled-mind-prison/creativity-killers). What the research shows us is really quite intuitive: students who are introverted/shy, students who learn through experiential (hands-on) means, and students with some forms of learning disabilities greatly benefit from (even EXCEL because of) activities and engagement outside of the traditional lecture-based classroom. Most students actually need the opportunity to engage in a variety learning modes in order to express their individual levels of understanding on a range of subjects, BUT the burden is placed HEAVILY on the educators! (not the system necessarily) A really good teacher knows the limits of the traditional classroom for engaging every student on a personal level and can develop a presentation style that can help address those limitations. Great teachers are few and far between and with the system we have in place, they are (sadly) dis-incentivized to actually teach for understanding and knowledge in order to meet standardized testing quotas. I was lucky enough to have had several FANTASTIC teachers throughout my academic career... Thank you: Mr. Murter, Mrs. Gamage, Dr. Earl, and Dr. Kimmel (and I'll include you too, Mike Rugnetta! Discussion provocateur.) You are absolutely correct that meaningful knowledge comes from being challenged by experiences, discussion, and critical thinking (and that each individual achieves this in entirely individualized ways). However, most people have to be taught how to think critically, and I think that responsibility falls on parents as well as teachers. It sounds like you got a very targeted learning experience discussing the SAT prep material with an instructor, but doesn't that personalized instruction say something about HOW you ended up learning so much more that way? I'm willing to bet there wasn't 20-30 students going through the practice tests with you and that teacher while you were arguing your points... I think there are too many people who are putting standardized testing and intelligence evaluation on equal footing. They are not, and can not be tested for and quantified with one catch-all "scantron" sheet. The goal of education should be much, much grander than that, but in a very basic way, the real goal of our primary education is socialization and establishing the "norms" of general adult knowledge, not grading intelligence. What should every adult know by the time they finish their fundamental education? Where should we set the bar? As has been pointed out in other comments, there are several types of intelligence, and they cannot all be tested for (at least not within one test, and certainly not within standardized testing as it exists currently), but I think we can all find some agreed level of "adult knowledge". What is it? The SAT in particular is outdated, but falls in line with the standardized testing that American students (mostly) have been exposed to from first grade through high school. I agree with this form of testing, BUT ONLY in so far as it is the system we are using to move students "up" through grade years, and ONLY through the lens of producing a standard level of socialization and education amongst adults. The test itself has very little correlation to success, intelligence, or even knowledge gained. I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable, intelligent, and successful, but only managed an average score despite extensive preparation materials AND taking the test twice. (Same with the ACT test.) To be truly effective, the education system needs to 1) incorporate methods that address the different styles of learning (kinesthetic/auditory/visual/conceptual), 2) identify how and when these other methods actually become beneficial to the students, AND once students have achieved what society determines is a "standard" level of adult knowledge, 3) provide outlets for specialization that allow them to learn skills and pursue a trade for which they are intellectually inclined. That last point is what university and higher education USED to be before Bachelor's degrees became the norm instead of a high school diploma. Now it seems as though the university system is just a more advanced high school curriculum. It's too general with only limited means of personal intellectual expression (at least until students reach a high level within their chosen major), and for some disciplines, you have to pursue a Master's or Doctorate degree to distinguish yourself as an educated expert in your field. In the mean time, I think it is wise to keep in mind that the numbers generated by these tests are generalizations, and maybe students shouldn't even be allowed to know what they scored?? That used to be said of your IQ. You weren't supposed to actually know what you scored because of some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. If you did well, you over-evaluate yourself from then on. If you did poorly, you under-evaluated yourself. If you scored as average, you never thought of yourself as being able to achieve more than mediocrity.... Here at PBS Idea Channel, WE ARE THE EDUCATED ELITE!
fusobotic So much of it is hard to iron out because of differences in students' backgrounds. I remember taking a practice SAT test and one of the verbal questions (__ is to __ as __ is to __) made no sense to me because I was from Vermont. It related avalanches to rocks, which made no sense to me since I know of avalanches as cascades of snow and ice; however, the test writer described avalanches as being composed of rocks and mud.
sonicpsycho13 You're right. Analogies are difficult because getting the correct answer is based largely on your exposure to and understanding of the terms and concepts being presented (which are different for everyone depending on where they live, what their teachers/parents have taught, their specific interests, abilities, etc.), and since this exposure is not standardized very well, there is a large variation in what people "know" at any particular grade year. This brings me back to my point about general standardization of education being the basis of moving students up to the next grade year. IF we had a better way to guarantee that all students were exposed to a standardized set of concepts at each grade level, and that set is exactly what is being tested, then the analogies would hold a higher value. My assumption is that is why there isn't just one or two analogies on any given test (not everyone knows about avalanches whether it's rocks or snow, and therefore have very little chance of understanding the question). The SAT has a whole section of analogies to allow for this variation and bias of each student's individual exposure, AND why the grading system allows you to gain more points for a right answer than penalizing you for an incorrect one. My instructors told me to NEVER leave an answer blank, because you've got a 1 in 4 chance of getting it right as opposed to a 0 percent chance, but also to not waste time on a question I absolutely don't know. Guess and move on. However the value of analogies (assuming you are familiar with at least the majority of the terms and concepts presented) comes from the question's ability to measure how well you understand the relationships between those concepts. For example: A fish is to swimming as a bird is to ____. -rocks -feathers -apple juice -flying Most everyone who understands anything about fish and birds knows the answer is flying, but you actually have to know about fish AND birds for this to be an easy question. In contrast: Wolf is lupine as fox is to ___. -bovine -equine -vulpine -cervine This question is FAR more difficult if you don't know anything about either wolves or foxes. It also doesn't help if you've never heard of the other terms in the answer section. This analogy "measures" two things: 1) have you been exposed to this level of taxonomy, and 2) can you discern the relationship between wolf and lupine to a degree that helps to clarify the relationship between foxes and ___. (vulpine) As a multiple choice question, it also helps to gauge critical thinking and the process of elimination (which I admit is more of a strategy of test-taking than actual learned knowledge, but that is supposed to be part of education also... have you been taught to think critically about what you know and reason out relationships of things you may not). If you know wolves and dogs are related and know they reside in the lupine category of taxonomy, you're off to a good start. If you've heard the term bovine in relation to cows, equine to horses, etc, you can eliminate those as possible answers, and you're doing much better. Again, this doesn't mean that everyone will have been exposed to this information, and therefore have a harder time with the question, BUT that's exactly what the question is supposedly "testing": what information have you been exposed to and understand that will allow you to get the correct answer. The student has to work through relationships they understand, identify what is irrelevant, and also have a grasp on what they don't know in order to be successful on this question. Analogies get EXTREMELY difficult and esoteric as the terms get increasingly specialized, AND the relationships between the items can become increasingly abstract. Factor in open-ended or fill-in-the-blank style questions as opposed to multiple choice, and things can get pretty heady. The end result is the same though: standardized tests are trying evaluate to what information a student has been exposed, and how well does that student understand that information. I agree that not everyone will be able to answer every question, but not everyone is SUPPOSED to be able to. If every question made sense to everyone, and they all get the correct answer, then it's not really a "test". Also, I realize that I'm coming off as defending the status quo of standardized testing in its current form and politics, but that's not really how I feel. The concept of testing to ensure a standardized level of knowledge and exposure to a defined set of age-appropriate knowledge is important. That's how we can be sure that when you get your HS diploma or a college degree, you ACTUALLY know a basic set of information. On the other hand, I vehemently disagree with testing results as predictors of anything. Your SAT score cannot say anything specific about how you will perform at the university level. I think that these kinds of tests are a terrible business model for the education system. They shouldn't have an impact on or describe what the educators are effective at teaching (at least not to the degree that teachers be incentivized to teach directly to the tests), but should be used as a way of keeping all seventh graders within a prescribed range of knowledge. This is a very complex topic with no straightforward answer. I think the business practices and motivations involved cloud the issue as to the importance and effectiveness of the testing procedure and the utility of the results. There is SOME value to standardized testing, but as a metric of evaluating the system as a whole (and ensuring a standard level of knowledge at specific educational milestones) rather than appraising the value of a student and his/her future success (or intelligence for that matter).
I feel human "intelligence" simply cannot be quantified. Only "Education". I live in the Southern United States, and where I live there are many people who don't have good Educational Opportunities or Financial Resources. YET Many those same people are wickedly intelligent, with problem solving skills and complex vocations that far exceed my own abilities despite my higher educational opportunities. And even with my opportunities I have Learning Disabilities that disqualify me from taking the SAT because "I would fail it due to a genetic disability". Yet I am considered one of the most intelligent people in my family, social group, and even in my school. I have shortcomings and dysfunctional cognitive abilities, but I have other abilities that far surpass my peers. Instead of looking at "Intelligence" as some D&D Stat that the SAT tries (and fails) to assume, I think there are different "flavors of intelligence"; An ever changing, complex gradient of mental abilities. Thank's for reading Mike
You cannot standardize the human mind, or humans in general. in Albert Einstein's own words: "Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid."
Hey Mike! As a first year English teacher in an inner-city school, I very much appreciated the fact that this video came out on the week before our state End of Course exam! I showed this to my students and we had a good conversation about the difficulty/impossibility of measuring intelligence and the racial discrepancies of the test results. I'm going to reply to this comment with some selections from what my students wrote in response to your video--they would LOVE to see you respond to their work at the end of next week's video!
andrewswafford Marnisha from Mr. Swafford's class: "Many students may get nervous during testing and may not do their best. Also, I think that there should be another method to test a students’ intelligence…If a student missed so many days of school, they may not know as much about a certain subject as the other kids. I also believe that teachers or the state should grade the standard test rather than computers and electronic grading."
andrewswafford Shay from Mr. Swafford's class: "Most of the students that are preparing for the big test are really not studying and honestly don’t care on what they make on the test."
andrewswafford Ashley from Mr. Swafford's class: "I think that standardized testing isn't the best idea because you could be having a bad day and not feel like taking the test, but you have to because its such a big part of your grade...Some students might forget some things or stress themselves out because its an important grade.Maybe they can look at your records you have your teachers video tape class discussions so they can how they class works."
andrewswafford Dalemonie from Mr. Swafford's class: "I believe it doesn’t show that they know anything because anybody can guess on multiple-choice test…I believe the best way to see a students knowledge is it to give them a test were they have to write out their answers instead of picking a letter or Christmas treeing the answer sheet…I feel like if the students write their answer in sentences you will see what they have learned more than bubbling."
andrewswafford Marissa from Mr. Swafford's class: "I think standardized testing isn't a good idea because if someone is not good at taking test [and they] just always do bad that doesn't mean they don't know [what's] on the test it just means they are not good at test taking....testing isn't a good way to show what kids know because some kids freak out under pressure or even just taking a state wide test."
Well im not american, but here in Russia we have kinda similar problems with graduation exams. They are just measuring your ability to take tests and to a lesser extand your ability to remember standardized question forms. As for me - i consider myself a multi-sided person and there is actually a lot of interesting spheres of knowlege for me to dip into, and these tests are just killing the slightest possibility of a man thinking differently, thinking creatively. I mean creative people are still here as we can see but was that really the point in education this harmful and narrow? I think it would be much more efficient to accept the students based on the interview. Imo it could be so much more fair and interesting, the education has a great purpose and means, sometimes it just happen to get a broken tool.
LastZepp1 Here in Norway students are accepted simply based on your average grades and well depending on who else are applying... As how it works here is that you go to a website and chose up to 10 educations (can be the same ones at different universities) and well then after sending in your things if not already filed electronically then you just wait and you will get into your highest priority which you had good enough grades (the grade requirement is decided by the people who applied... if there are lots of people applying and they have high grades then you need to beat them to get in... however if few people apply then everyone likely gets in regardless of their grades) How private schools does it I am not quite sure... And art and creative schools/educations often require something else to show that you have the skills needed
Jo Viljar Haugstulen Music&Arts schools in norway usually have an entrance exam where you preform such talents.. but you will also need an high average grade to be selected. unless there is extra room for more students ofc :)
Jo Viljar Haugstulen If you look at it stripped - you will see the root of the problem. The grades are besically the same with tests, but from the opposite side. While tests are purely formal and easy to account they give you grades based on the scripted questions. The school grades may differ greatly tho. They should be based on your perfomance and skil but frequently are given to the liars with pretty eyes (with potential) and to the ward workers (they earned it, right?). Its not only highly subjective, but also it cannot account for your way of thinking, your interests (as for me - i really enjoy astronomy and biology but the first wasnt even a thing and biology teacher was just basically hating me). I think education could and should be reformed to point out your strenghs and interests, not ability to follow the lead and obey the rules. Discipline is good, but there absolutely should be some freedom and specialization for those who want and need it
LastZepp1 Well the school and education system is very standardized and any specialization comes in rather late yes which likely won't changed for a long time as well... it would be really difficult to find a good way to change...
In my stats class at university, when we began the semester, my teacher showed us that the SAT is designed so that the results will resemble the normal distribution, or the "bell curve." It's a perfectly symmetrical distribution and it looks so satisfying. And yet, for those of us who would normally do fairly well on standardized testing (my ACT scores were fairly good for not having studied at all), the test is designed to push you toward the middle. There are "easier" questions that almost no one would answer wrong to bring up the grade and questions that are almost impossible and students taking the test are probably not going to know it that bring the grade down. If you ask me, that's on purpose. It's geared toward making it look like EVERYONE is average, that everyone centers around this mean that was planned from the beginning. The point is that if you can somehow do really well, you are in a minority and you are therefore better than everyone else. But what that really is is wasting your time on largely unimportant information to ensure that your data point - your score - is in the realm of what was least likely. You're trying to make your score as much of an outlier as possible rather than being close to the mean. If it were possible, there would be some students who would be so good that they would be out of the distribution. If we set it up like a hypothesis test, then we're trying to prove that all SAT scores will center around a mean of 800. And we can do tons of tests, but given that it is impossible to go beyond 1600 (or 1200), it's not really fair. I mean, standardized testing isn't fair anyway. It's rigged to show how well you can fight against a pre-determined system. I guess it could be a metaphor for discrimination. I'm not claiming a conspiracy, but statistically, it's incredibly manipulative. It makes no sense for the creators of the test to force the results into a normally distributed fashion. That's manipulation to falsely claim that all students who take the test are of a certain intelligence, and those that happen to do well are smarter, when in fact there is more going on than their ability to answer asinine questions correctly.
As someone studying education right now, this is something I've heard a lot about and I lived through my practicum placements. Truth is, any teacher who has come out of their university/college degree in the last 10+ years knows about the biases in the educational system and testing, and wants to implement differentiated instruction in the classroom. The problem is that teachers are asked to teach to, say, 25 students and there's no way to fully teach to the 25 different learning styles, much less the 25 different cultural backgrounds, or the 25 different sets of previous knowledge, or 25 [insert any other difference here]. We can (and are) work on lessening the biases, and increasing the differentiated instruction but in reality you can never have a system of mass public education where there is complete equality. Of course many problems are caused by chronic underfunding of education, forcing larger class sizes and minimal elective courses. Also, teachers often teach 4 or 5 different subjects per day (more for early years education), and that takes an incredible amount of time and effort to prepare lessons for. Giving a 'one size fits all' lesson and test is often all that teachers have time to do because, at least in my experience student teaching, they're working 16 hours a day.
I think you intentionally skipped over the fact that the SAT has had a writing portion for about 10 years when you made it seem like the entire test is graded like a scantron.
SivartAuhsoj We did intentionally skip it! There was a section about it, actually, that was removed after we learned they are axing the writing portion and will soon be returning to the old verbal / math, 1600 total score version.
***** It is important, but (if I remember right) the grading was too inconsistent and subjective to be worth the effort, and it isn't a very good example of putting thoughts on paper.
***** the sat writing section never measured 'how to organize thoughts on a page.' it was always graded almost exactly by how long your essay was. like, even if you wrote crap, writing more of it would improve your score. it was also really easy to game but only if you had someone to teach you how to. (eg: if you made up a book and then quotes a maded up quote from it that supported your argument, that would get you more points.) so basically it measured how fast you could write and if you could afford to pay someone to teach you how to beat the system.
SivartAuhsoj The writing section wasn't that much better than the multiple choice anyway. You had 25 minutes to write on a topic you may or may not have heard of before, there was no way anyone could actually write a thoughtful essay under those conditions. From my understanding the graders didn't even read the essays for that long anyway. They would quickly look it over for a checklist of things then move on.
I got a 1700 (btw I'm in 7th grade) and I thought it was pretty much just remembering formulas and very straightforward rather than actual "thinking" (keep in mind most of what I worked on was math)
Santiago Adams hmmm sounds more like memorization then anything to do with intelligence? Sounds pretty worthless... even if someone can remember something doesn't mean they can actually use that knowledge or fully understand it?
Jo Viljar Haugstulen I was under the impression that the SAT was only a predictor for success in college, not anything like intelligence, success in life, etc.
jasonb42notavailable So if you are good at memorization.. you will be successful in college? Sounds strange... because isn't college about you know critical thinking and using your what you know not just repeating it?
Jo Viljar Haugstulen What it tests, or why it works doesn't actually matter. As long as it predicts college performance of applying students better than other ways available then it's useful. If we can make it better, or find a better predicting non-test way, then we should use that.
If colleges are aware of what the SAT measures (SES status, especially income) then that may be its own incentive to use it. Colleges are increasingly profit based and want students with money and students who come from families with money and the type of clout that makes for a schmancy allumni. I never took the SAT myself, I took the ACT. I forgot to bring a calculator, and my friend slept through half of hers. We actually both ended up doing very well in college -I'm graduating with a Master's Degree this May and she's got her shiny art school degree and a steady job using it. Then again, a problem I have had throughout my college experience is how much we are asked to recall and regurgitate rather than critically think (and only temporarily; i.e, until the test is over). We learn how to take tests.
OnlyInThisLight I would agree. If the SAT is a reflection of socioeconomic status as well as academic aptitude and potential for high-income success (or fame) of the test taker, it benefits the college's chance for donations and keeps their prestige high. Most ivy league universities are probably reluctant to change to test optional for this reason - seeing that this has worked, both in profit and reputation.
OnlyInThisLight That's the most frustrating part of college for me. There are things that I am legitimately interested in learning, but a lot of my classes are determined by what the school thinks is important. Most of my time is wasted on memorizing meaningless information that I will regurgitate on a test and promptly forget. I end up having to play the system in order to have the time in invest in the subjects I'm interested in (a.k.a. the actual reason I went to college in the first place).
OnlyInThisLight In my opinion Its just useless to take those SAT and ACT. Like if one test can tell how smart or dumb some one is like really. That's like saying you are allowed to run one race to qualify in the Cross country team. I scored really well on the SAT but then I said " meh don't care."
Kinda sad there wasn't more discussion on the correlation vs causation going on here. What we typically think of as 'intelligence' seems to be just 'free time' + 'learning ethic'. Those growing up in a well off neighborhood with few chores/responsibilities besides school and with plenty of time for play/learning/studies are going to appear more intelligence because that's what 'being smart' seems to mean. Perhaps we could significantly fix the tests if we could even out (or just flat out improve) the living standards instead of trying to make tests check for a generic 'everybody has this' smarts.
Krzysztof Kotarba has nothing to do with Americans, it's because advertising law doesn't recognize KFC's chicken as chicken, thus it's false advertising to call it fried chicken. or that's what I heard at least.
Krzysztof Kotarba Americans are not part of the reasoning behind the change, if you even took a look at the link it says that they changed in order to de-emphasize the frying part of their signature dishes. It's to kinda make you forget its bad for you.
The editing on this one was really top notch. Very well done! As a European, I never really got what the SAT was, except that everyone in the USA had to take it, which confused me. This was a good explanation of it, and I'm glad for my American friends that things are changing about it.
I believe that standardized testing actually tests conceptual real-world skills instead of your "intelligence" or your ability to get the right answer. For example, your ability to perform under pressure and to adapt. Sitting there knowing that you're going to be compared to everyone else taking the test typically leads to stress. "How am I going to stack up against other people?" In that way, it's a great way to test how well you're going to do on your own. You're going to experience a lot of that in the real world. You have to roll with the punches, so to speak.
CrusadingChristian Then again, in the real world you won't necessarily be given months or even years to prepare for a given problem. So it's still not completely accurate, though your point is still valid in relation to more predictable events of high stress.
CrusadingChristian I believe that you are making Mike's argument. If the test is a measurement of how well you will succeed in the culture as it is; how well you fit the status quo then its not really an aptitude test. Its a way of reinforcing a cultural ideal, regardless of merit. It doesn't test for creativity of thought or problem solving except within the culturally defined and prescribed way.
+CrusadingChristian SAT: Real life: A) 21 take orders from your boss, work in groups to come up with the B) 45 best solution, creative solutions are rewarded, C) 87 communication skills critical, leadership skills invaluable, D) 56 you can use your electronic devices and wifi, and are payed. E) 88 Dose the SAT look anythink like "conceptual real-world skills" to you?
It's great to see this channel evolve from time to time when I've only been watching select videos that interest me from year to year and it always reminds me how I stumbled upon this video whenever I decide that a topic that I'm interested in gets explained in depth. Keep it up!
I have a fair amount of knowledge on this subject- I'm a test tutor for The Princeton Review. The go-to adage we teach is that "the SAT assesses your ability to take the SAT" and not much else. Your video does point to this very well but largely from a statistical and historical perspective; I think there is a logical argument to make as well. The goal of using a standardized test to score actual learning aptitude is possibly a futile goal. A standardized test needs to cover only subjects that have been taught to everyone however also needs to distribute scores across a wide range. You cannot expect a student who has not covered calculus, specialized sciences, or a foreign language to score well in those fields, but you cannot test only beginner subjects at the level they are normally addressed without having many students ace those subjects. To achieve the normal distribution of scores the SAT needs to call itself "fair" and useful, it needs to only cover the first few years of math, reading, and English while also employing "tricky" questions- questions asked in unusual ways, questions with confusing answers, or questions that take way too long to solve. I don't think we will ever be able to actually solve this problem with the structure of standardized tests unless we standardize all American education, and that is a much more problematic task.
In a competitive system, anything that's put forth as a goal will become a selection pressure and most elements of the system will conspire to maximize it. The SAT (and standardized testing in general) is part of a large, complicated, and high-pressure system that encompasses k-12 education, preschools, colleges, the educational publishing industry, and (to a lesser extent) both industries requiring college graduates and industries that hire mostly non-college-graduates. Whatever the SAT rewards will, generally, also be rewarded by colleges that allow people in based on SAT scores (because a university cannot fail most of its students; when students are unable to grasp the material, universities change the material, the presentation style, and the grading -- moving the goal posts in order to prevent angering all their customers). But, colleges also have pressure from the other side -- from industry -- to produce graduates that are capable of working in the ways that the industries in question would like them to (however, even industry is flexible; in many cases, firing incompetent people is more of a liability than keeping them on indefinitely, and in some cultures there are major cultural pressures to help those incapable of doing what they were hired to do succeed -- which is good for the individual, and the general idea may be good for the industry as a whole since cooperation in general is encouraged, but it also means that schools have less pressure to produce decent students). At the same time, low-paying jobs mostly performed by people with no college degrees have the expectation of a continued supply of potential job candidates who are not overqualified (and thus lack the expectation of a level of pay that would cut into the company's bottom line), so the entire school system on some level has the expectation and pressure to *fail* to produce successful students (or else tasks performed by non-college-graduates become more expensive, and thus less accessible -- meaning rising costs in retail, prepared food, and other service sectors). Again, this is far from ideal -- I'd prefer to pay more for McDonalds and have the people who work there actually be able to afford to eat -- but it's a pressure by industry on school systems. Then, sectors like shadow education factor very deeply into this -- shadow education gives the wealthy an additional advantage in schooling, thereby also shifting the less wealthy generally towards lower success rates, and also perpetuating itself and the university system (many private tutors are college students or graduate students who would be unable to pay for schooling without the extra income; graduate students are a particularly interesting case insomuch as they are more educated than most college graduates -- particularly postdoctoral students -- but are also generally less financially secure, and are dependent upon their position in the university ecosystem for what income they do have, ranging from stipends to tutoring income to income from actual non-tenure-track professorship). As a result, we have a lot of pressures all essentially conspiring to perpetuate a wealth-education divide (although almost certainly not intentionally; most systems that exist do so because they have mechanisms of self-perpetuation within them, and any system that exists to fight against another system cannot defeat that system without dissolving itself and any structures that it incorporated, meaning that while organizations dedicated to ameliorating inequitable wealth-education divisions can only succeed so much before they need to temper their attempts in order to keep themselves from extermination). Slow tweaks to the SAT might make it more equitable. That said, it's limited in how much we can reasonably combat specifically the rich-get-richer effect, because very few changes to a standardized test can make such a test easier for students in general while also making it harder for private tutors to provide an edge in. We also run the risk of merely raising the pivot point of who gets the unreasonable edge -- if we make a tweak that takes a long time and a lot of practice to give a student an edge it, do we move the set of students expected to score abnormally highly from the top thirty percent of income to the top ten percent of income? When we do that, we haven't really benefited the bottom ninety percent -- we've just taken the advantage away from twenty percent of the people and given it to the ten percent who were going to have an even more extreme unfair advantage anyway. That said, I can't really claim that I'm against standardized tests as a whole. Standardized tests can hide biases, but the alternative is completely uncontrolled testing based on teacher's personal opinions, which are also biased but far less open to analysis, scrutiny, and adjustment. When a standardized test has a clearly measurable bias, we can experiment with adjusting the test to minimize that bias; when school systems have a clearly measurable bias, the best we can do is fire teachers who spout racial slurs or sleep with students -- i.e., the most obvious sources of bias, but also probably the least competent people in terms of producing systematic bias, and a much smaller percentage of the source of bias than we could get merely by tweaking a set of questions until the white kids don't all get triple the average black kid's score.
Things I like about the recent IdeaChannel episodes. 1) Mikes' rate of speech has slowed. 2) the background music is no longer constant and no longer as fast as Mikes' rate of speech (can you say, "distracting") 3) The amount of GIF's has slowed and are no longer just a box that forces me to chose either to watch the GIF box or watch Mike. 4) the animations are becoming more "crashcourse-y". To the IdeaChannel team -Thank you for making these changes.
Is it mostly universities that require SAT/ACT scores? I was homeschooled, so I never took either test. I went to community college first, got an associates degree, then transferred into university without a problem.
Rachel Morris I think community colleges are less likely to ask for them. I know I had to give SAT scores when applying to colleges, but, I remember being told a lot that they didn't place as much value on them as people tend to think. Like, my high school teachers told me things like -- having a high SAT score is nice, but it's your essay and more personalized things that are more likely to get you in. An SAT score is just one factor in a long list of things on your application, so it's not something to worry too much about. I know I didn't stress too much about it and got a pretty decent score.
Rachel Morris Most 4 year colleges and universities require it. If you go to community college, I believe you're "automatically" accepted because you're within the "region" of the college. Then, when anyone transfers from college to college, admissions officers don't need to see SAT/ACT scores because those tests are used to determine college readiness, which one would already of proof of if he/she went to community college or transferred from a different college. These policies vary depending on where you're from and/or which colleges/universities you're interested in. Hope everything made sense!
Rachel Morris I got my schooling 100% paid for because of a high ACT score, so if that tells you anything about the importance of them to some schools....
I was also homeschooled, and took the ACT. I am attending community college now, mostly because I am paying for school myself. My scores allowed me to apply and be accepted to universities without obtaining a GED, and to receive scholarships. (Though I still ended up at a community college for two years) Wherever I applied, test scores were indeed required.
One of my college professors didn't do test but learning journals weighing your ability to make connections and come up with new ideas as what to score.
I took the SATs in my freshman year (while I was currently in algebra and -- what is actually tested on the SATs) and received a 2130. I took it again in my junior year (after taking calculus and other higher level courses) and scored a 1780. Clearly, I have slacked off, and the test itself is not flawed >.>
As a middle and high school teacher, I completely appreciate this episode. The point you made, "there are business models" that can be replicated is a good one. The more we try base schools on a business model - as if human being are widgets - the more we are going to fail students. Standardization is this idea that we should all be judged by the same measurement, which is laudable. But life, and life skills, are far more complicated and can never be judged based on any one metric.
In my teaching I am trying to move away from knowledge testing to treating the students ability to ask good questions. Remembering facts is no longer a critical skill. Knowing how to ask the right question of the right source and process the answer is becoming the focus of my teaching. The exam becomes an open Internet exam where the students are asked to show how they find evidence to support our refrute a piece of information. The oral exam has the student asking the lecturer questions and is assessed on the quality of those questions. This is also linked to the ability to reflect on the confidence you have in knowledge and what parts need to be questioned. In computer science you can see most tasks as questioning. Test Driven development is about writing good tests. Debugging us questioning code. Optimization is about questioning performance.
Jimmy Dinh I am teaching at university. I have started with my masters classes in Serious Games and Advanced Game Technology. I am going to be making changes to my first year courses and my third year courses this fall. I have also volunteered to work with the local elementary school and look at the ICT curriculum were I will look at how the approach fits with kids from 6 to 10.
Simon McCallum That's really awesome. I remember the best of my professors and teachers. What they all had in common was that they tend to be the ones challenging us to think and reason, not necessarily come to a definite answer or solution. As a teacher myself now, at the elementary school level, I try to get my students to think and be mindful of their words and ideas. This is in Hong Kong, where "learning" is rote memorization and a regurgitation of information. I can't stand seeing students here just being passive when they've been born with a brain that can do so much more than that.
This opens up the question of what exactly is success? Is success having an awesome RUclips Channel with 100k+ subscribers? Or is success simply completing college? We have some examples (outliers that they are) of people who have failed or dropped out of college but are unarguably successful. The SAT and other standardized testing not only tries to mold a stratification of intelligence, but by inference, molds a concept of success. In a way, you could say that, at any point which you create a test with relative scoring (such as the SAT) you have defined not only who will be successful, but what successful is supposed to look like. Thus, you narrow the possiblitiy of true innovation and creativity by categorizing possible outcomes as successful or not successful based on previous test scores. In other words, someone who aces the SAT's but drops out of college after 2 years and goes on to make a RUclips channel with say, a small community of loyal subscibers (contrast to Mike and IdeaChannel) that allows them to live a modest life would not be considered "successful" becuase they didnt live up to the pre-subscribed prophecy handed down by their 1600 SAT.
Many years ago, I was a college counselor in an inner city catholic high school. I was able to place several students with low SAT scores into some very good schools who had great support programs for all students. The students did well and most graduated. It was obvious to me that good study skills and support was responsible, as well as the desire of the students to do well.
8 requirements 1) Submit a creative work. 2) Submit a written criticism of a piece of literature. 3) Submit a physical fitness record (went running or biking or hiking, etc.) 4) Demonstrate a basic understanding of how government functions. 5) Be able to list at least 10 world leaders as well as the elected officials who represent you. 6) Submit grades from past schooling. 7) Submit proof of volunteering. 8) Know your social security number by heart. Got all these? Are they of quality? Welcome to Higher Education.
Seth Waters However, that isn't how all "higher education" works. It does to some extent for becoming a bachelor student in a university; however many community colleges and some universities just take any one. There might be one requirement and that is have a C+ average but many don't have that requirement.
Seth Waters I quickly grasp concept's and remember them forever. But I forget my own age and my wife has to constantly remind me. I could barely name 2 world leaders, and my CRN has a 4 in it... I think....
Seth Waters so if you 1) have no creative skills 2) have no original opinions, or are critiquing a work that isn't recognized by the arbiter as "literature" 3) are disabled or otherwise physically impaired 4) clash with the political bias of the arbiter 5) are not interested in foreign affairs 6) were homeschooled 7) are too busy earning wages to spend your very expensive time and energy on unpaid labour, or 8) haven't memorized your social, because you carry the card with you like you ought you should not be allowed to pursue a higher education?
Seth Waters Speaking as someone with a graduate degree in Political Science. #5 is not important. Knowing how systems work, and the powers of various offices is useful, but knowing the random name that is currently sitting in the chair is not useful. Not when the ability to look those things up is so common. Also, #2 is subjective. What is literature? And what constitutes meaningful or coherent criticism? Are we divining the author's intent, or only how the work reflects the feelings of the reader?
It's all about money. The reason we still have the SAT is so that the people making, grading, promoting and in management positions at the College Board can have a job. Also, behind the SAT are thousands of tutoring websites and companies who need the SAT as this is why most kids get tutored. Lose the SAT, they lose their job. But for people to spend money on preparing for and taking the SAT it has to be seen as important. That's where many colleges come in who support the "non-profit" College Board by making the test an important factor in admissions. The fact that an increasing number of have made the SAT optional is bad news for the College Board which is why they changed it (i felt so much pride when they mentioned that now each reading section would contain a historical document). What it all comes down to in the end is that we created the SAT. Thinking top schools will guarantee future success even though people from any college can be successful. Hard work, building long lasting connections, and effective group work I believe are the biggest factors to a successful professional career.
As an Asian, let me explain why, I think, Asians as an average get better test scores. It's ridiculous how Asian parents stress over standardized tests. Maybe it's because they're raised with the ideologies that only provable success is actually success, but in my experience, it's because many of the Asian parents are immigrants (1st or 2nd generation) and they're disillusioned by what the tests actually are. When I tried to explain to my mom that some well paying jobs don't even require college she thought I was lying. Unless they've heard of the college because it's well known as a good college, they don't see it as a viable means for a future. They don't think it's possible to live comfortably at all unless you go to Berkeley or Stanford. My mom signed me up for an (Asian) SAT class, and they claimed that no respectable college will accept anyone with an SAT score of less than 2200. So all in all, I think Asians get better scores because Asian parents make a big deal about them and force their kids to work harder than other races. Again, just generalizing, but it's what I've noticed.
Thank you for doing a video on this. As a high school junior, who has gone through test after test after test, and has just experienced Minnesota's somewhat miserable failure with Pearson and administering the MCAs, I very strongly feel that standardized testing does very little to measure much of anything. I test well. I have scored well for years without putting any effort in at all in my classes and at these statewide and nationwide tests. I have met a lot of people in my school career, and I will most likely meet a lot more, but there are people out there who are intelligent, who I would claim know far more than me, and yet they score very poorly on standardized tests. Simply speaking it isn't fair to them. Teachers get to know their students, and I believe that they are the best judgment of how smart, and even how good of a person that their students are. However, it isn't easy asking each teacher to evaluate their students, especially when they only spend three months getting to know each kid. The tl;dr of it is that standardized tests are not the best way to test anything. They, in a perfect world, ought to be abolished, because there are people naturally skilled in them and there are people who aren't. It is somewhat biased. Talk to those who know the students best; they are the best indicators of their potential, because they know firsthand. One simple test will never know what potential a student may have. Take it from a junior in high school. I am one of those affected. And too often, it seems, we teenagers are not asked our opinions. (We can vote in the next election, people! Time to start thinking about those who are about to join you.)
Hmm here in Norway we don't really have anything like it... how things are done here is that well you get judge on your average grade (out of all of the subjects and the exams) And when applying for a public university you simply go to website and list up to 10 choices and then you will be notified if you get in and which you get into (if you got in anywhere) Oh and you also see the previous grade requirement for last year (grade requirement is if there is 50 places then the ones with the highest grades get in... however if there are fewer then 50 applying then everyone who applied will get in)
Jo Viljar Haugstulen I wanted to apply to University of Oslo because it's such an incredible school but only their grad school offers courses in English and I don't have time to learn Nynorsk + Bokmal (may I ask, are they very different? My small amount of understanding was that Nynorsk was conversational and Bokmal was written + scientific).
Bokmal and Nynorsk are pretty similar and your probably only need to learn Bokmal Well of course they are different but well not horribly different and I am not sure but I think they mostly just use Bokmal in and around Oslo but I am not sure
Here, in Canada, we have a similar system (in Ontario at least). I think that our methods, canada's and norway's, are vastly superior to the american model.
JohnIbanoff Well if I remember right the way they do it in Finland is probably even better if I remember right they usually do quite a bit better then Norway and most countries in tests and such which test reading and math skills and other such things
Can I just say it's really interesting to watch how PBS idea channel has grown what with having different sets, backgrounds, and dramatisations? It's really cool. Of course I will always love Mike vlogging in front of the wall of records--in fact, that in of itself is very profound... but I also love seeing how you guys are now dramatising your stories. :)
I think jumping to the conclusion that the test is at fault is... hmm. I think it's looking at the issue from the wrong angle. If people with a better educational background (more tutoring, better funded schools, etc) do better on the test, then it should be an accurate predictor for success in academia, too. It's probably not a measure of innate ability, but it is still a good measure of how prepared people are for college. The problem, then, is not the test. The problem is the massive inequalities in education. It is fairly well established that richer neighborhoods have better schools where students do better. I posit that this is the root of the problem, not the tests. Not that I think tests are ideal or even necessarily good, but I think claiming that they are representative of things other than what they claim is a bit disingenuous. Edit: I'm seeing a lot of "it only tests your ability to take tests" in the comments. I would argue the same as the above: college involves a lot of test-taking, so if you are good at taking tests, you are more likely to succeed at college. Maybe college shouldn't be so reliant on test-taking-ability, but I still argue that the fault is with the institutions surrounding the tests, not the tests themselves. They serve the institutions and do what the institutions need them to do. It's the institutions that have the wrong goals and priorities.
GengarMarmalade Then you're probably smart. But that's irrelevant to the point of the video, which isn't saying that those lowers on the socioeconomic ladder can't do well on the test, rather, he's pointing out that those with more resources and privilege tend to do better than those who don't. Basically, you got a good score, awesome, you can get into a good college, but had you been born into a high income family you probably would've gotten an even higher score and then go to an Ivy League or equally prestigious school. His point was more about how the SAT and standardized testing perpetuates the existing power structure, not that the test is necessarily bad at testing what you know.
Where's the rule that says I can't make a tangentially related comment that doesn't necessarily address or respond to the video's thesis? I didn't miss the point, I just find it relevant to point out for the sake of perspective that statistical generalizations are hardly representative of absolute fact. Without hard data it's hard to know just how many exceptions to this curve of socioeconomic background vs test scores there are in either direction, and while I'm sure it all averages out on paper I still think it's handy to remember that not all poor people do poorly and not all rich people do well. Which is not the same as noting the trends in general, but again, perspective: it's easy for the human brain to go from "low income implies low score" to "low income equals low score."
GengarMarmalade You nailed something that bothers me in virtually all news-articles. "Statistics shows that X is /something something/ Y" is shortcut for lazy journalistic that became acceptable. This lazy attitude creates a constant reproduction of a culture of simple-mindedness. This culture erodes societies ability to think critically and complementary about hard and complex issues. I would love to see a news-article that for once discusses a variance of data, or a significance of changes in poll data... I believe that exposure to more advanced concepts in news and media will push people to learn more. In contrast with today's culture of satisfactory-media that "gives people what the want".
ashkuigp I wouldn't label it as label it "lazy" journalism. Journalist write what will be read be the general populous. A wall of difficult text wont be of benefit to the average person and will simply deter someone who might otherwise look deeper.
MrBloodmountain I hear your concern on the notion of "wall of difficult text" but there are ways to convey and present difficult subjects without creating an unbreakable threshold of scientific jargon. There are ways to familiarize complex and interconnected issue and at least give some basic intuition about its structure. And besides: variance, cause≠correlation, and some basic notion of statistical significance are not hard, inexpiable things. I bet Mike could explain those three in a five minutes.
This kinda reminded me of how schools art set up in a design style. Most schools are designed to be factory like according to the industrial revolution, cause the thought was and maybe still is that most students will go into factory work. For instance the desks mimic the lay out of factories with each person in a row, the bell is meant to mimic break/start/ ending bell, and they design of the building is supposed to be factory like with big bricks and so on. In fact, many times the architects that make prisons and factories make schools as well.
I did well on tests throughout my schooling because my brain has an easy time remembering straight forward facts; however, I struggle with the ability to discuss concepts in real time (I often feel overwhelmed and unprepared and have to go away and think about the subject for a while before I feel comfortable giving my ideas up to discussion) and would have benefited from a learning system that was more freeform than "1 + 1 = 2". Facts have their place, but that place shouldn't be the entirety of education.
I'm so glad somebody mentioned that NPR episode, because I remembered the story but couldn't remember where I heard it, and it had been bugging me all week!
I took the SAT back in 2009 and scored a little over 2000. Part of scoring decently is just knowing the tricks. I took a prep class a few weeks before that was taught by a former SAT grader. She explained how wrong answers net you negative points so avoid answering questions you weren't 100% sure on. Leaving those blank was the best choice. But the most useful piece of information was about the written portion of the test that isn't graded by machines. The prep class tutor told us that they spend so little time on each written essay that it's better to go for quantity over quality. Having several pages with near nonsense is better than just a few well thought out paragraphs. She said it also looks good to make a reference to a book you've read, and that if you haven't read any books covering the subject of the essay topic to just make one up. They don't look into it to confirm it's real it just looks smart that you "made a connection to a book." So the SAT is really just a how-well-do-you-know-the-rules-of-this-specific-test-that-you've-never-taken-and-never-will-take-again test.
Under 70! If SAT tests are originally based on IQ tests, we can assume that IQ tests are also flawed. And they are. IQ tests only affirm to a person's ability to learn new things quickly, not how "smart" someone actually is.
You clearly dont get IQ then. IQ is meant to be a result of how fast people can learn something new, therefore be smart. Any person could be 'smart' if they would really try to. For an example, theres a person that learned 11 langues fluently(?) In a short time. (1-3 years) this person have an extremly high IQ, since he did learn it faster than avarage (5-20 years). Thats what IQ is. (I still thinks the IQ test doesnt work that good, but just as a reminder to you what IQ even is.)
Joshua Fizer I fail to see the difference between being able to learn things quickly and being smart. The less effort it takes somebody to learn something, the smarter they are.
Joshua Fizer Is that how all SATs are done? In the UK, our assessments are almost always subject specific. Is it really a case of "X is to Y as A is to what?" rather than actual knowledge on a topic? Cause if so, that's the most arse-backwards method of assessment and working out what you want to study that I've ever heard of.
True. For example me and one of my friends took an online qi test. I scored 120 and she scored 130, however I'm getting A's, B's and A stars in my gsces while my friend is getting D's and C's in the same classes.
Assessment has been all the rage in my multiple subjects credential program lately. One great exercise we did was taking three tests back to back. The first being your standard multiple choice test, followed by a short answer, and then finally project based assessment. Each assessment type asks the test taker to use different tactics in order to complete it. The multiple choice relied on knowing what it wasn't. In other words eliminating the impossible, and then evaluating the remaining answers that fit best with what you knew and what the question asked. Short answer allowed for more freedom in choice and application but was hindered but what the test taker believed the reader wanted to hear. In other words, writing for the teacher. Lastly project based assessment asked you to predict before testing it with physical material. Once constructed you would diagram the configuration that worked and explain how and why that was the case. In that assessment model prior knowledge was assessed, application, and their ability to explain the fundamental principle behind it. Although it may have still been bound to writing for the teacher, but it allowed for room for experimentation. Anyway this is the major push right now, especially in California with the new common core. When and how to use certain kinds of assessment. One final thought that is often overlooked is what the test does for the test taker. Tests like the SAT are not meant to be a chance for growth, rather it is a time to test what you "know" at a very superficial level. Testing for a score. Plus little to no feedback is given to the test taker on HOW they can improve. Like when I was taking the CSET, when you didn't pass it was like "whelp your number isn't this number. Pay us more money for another chance to make your number this number!" I'm just glad the last major test in my life like that is the RICA. THEN I'M DONE.
I am a math teacher. I love math and I love education (understood as the teaching/learning experience and not as the paperwork and bureaucracy it is usually surrounded by). Having said that, I don't like tests (with scores) in general and hate standardized tests because their objective is to measure something that in my opinion can´t be measured. You CAN "teach" even an elementary school student to add vectors in space and they can get a good score on it. But that doesn't mean that the student really understand what vectors are or why they are useful. And the fact that teaching has been focused on getting students prepared for the tests has only reinforced this test-culture. I think that we are never going to get rid of tests or standardized tests, because as you said, is convenient and less expensive than an individual personalized assessment of every student, which would be ideal. Also, how else can you decide who goes to university (for example) when the demand is way larger than the offer? You'll need a score on a test, because it would be impractical to compare and rank qualitative data. There are, however, some disciplines in which standardized tests can completely disappear: art, graphic design, programming... It is not difficult to imagine a university that focuses on teaching and creating a learning environment for students without making any test at all. The diploma wouldn't mean much and the students will rely on their portfolios to get a job or demonstrate their knowledge. The "certification" will be on the student's ability to demonstrate their knowledge (in whatever way necessary) and/or the employer's ability to verify their candidates knowledge.
I know lots of people. The people I know who are geniuses looked at the SATs and said, "Pfft, I'll go build a business/write a book/champion a cause/develop a theory/pontificate instead. I don't need a test to confirm that I'm intelligent; I am intelligent, so I'll go put my mind to work" and they changed the world around them either for the bad or the good, and were leaders in everything they did and everywhere they went The people I know with a midling-high intellect looked at the SATs and said, "Omg, the entire universe hangs on this test and I won't make it anywhere unless I prove myself" and they studied for hundreds of hours to perform well on it. They got into decent universities and are now doing the socially venerated white-collar equivalent of bagging groceries (don't get me wrong, these are highly specialized groceries... pharmacology, accounting, human resources) The people I know with a normal intellect looked at the SATs and said, "Only a soft fleshed fool would bother himself with that" and totally rejected it, got a technical certification or joined the labor force and started families where they were foundational and irreplacable members of their communities. All the smart people I know were so smart they realized that the prismatic nature of intelligence is so vast and contextual that attempting to quantify it is presently impossible. Knowing this, they balked & went and did something useful (a trait curiously shared by the working class "normal" intellects) If you ask normal "intellectuals" if they know how to fix their car, 99% of those you ask will say no, or offer some assurance that they're pretty sure they could change a tire if they needed to. But the "dumb people," when asked if a person who can't fix a car should be considered intelligent, will balk and condemn those being discussed as hopeless fools*. It is clear that attempting to use a test to measure intelligence is a doomed prospect. It doesn't work. Cue chorus of: "BUT THE SATs AREN'T MEASURING INTELLIGENCE, THEY'RE--" Please stop. * This is not some law I am declaring, it is a paraphrase of tendency you can observe around you.
Thanks Mike for taking your SATs in the Stanley Parable. It's nice to know at least one person was doing real work in that building... I mean when I was there I just spent the whole time in some broom closet.
We will most likely pass the need for standardized testing when the toasters take over the world. But seriously. We will always want a standardized test. We (at least in this society) want there to be a base line to judge by and compare ourselves to. Also you completely neglected to talk about the SATs with an eye towards quote unqoute learning disabilities i.e. dyslexia, skytopia, dysgraphia, ADD/ADHD, etc. I can say form personal experience that such "disabilities" heavily effect the out come if such tests.
so your saying that when calls me stupid or disabled because i think differently that the stand idle student is completely and utterly irreverent? i find this offensive.
Ok i totally misunderstood you before. Thank you for clearing that up. and um, while yes a larger portion of tumblr users have a bias against white heterosexual men, there are also a lot of tumblr users who are trying to change that hate.
I'm an Australian with a very limited idea of how American school works, so correct me if I'm wrong. I think the way America does things is that it is absolutely compulsory to take subjects like maths, sciences, and english, and at the end of it all, you sit an exam that covers everything, the SAT. As a person currently receiving an Australian high school education, this sounds like insanity. In Australia, the last two years of high school are called VCE (in victoria, WACE in western australia, etc). You pick six subjects to study over the two years. The only compulsory subject is English, or English as a Second Language. There are four (that my school offers) different levels of maths you can do (Specialist, Methods, Advanced General, Foundation), but you do not HAVE to do one. The subjects you can take are diverse, depending what subjects your school offers. For example, I am taking English, Maths Methods, Music Performance, Religion and Society (because at my school religion is compulsory), Biology, and Chemistry. My friend is taking English, Advanced General Maths, Religion and Society, Accounting, History, and Business Management. Throughout the second year you do a series of assessments called SACs (sometimes SATs), that account for half your score for that subject at the end. The end of year exam accounts for the other half. For each subject you get a Study Score out 50, and an over all score taken from your Stady Scores called the ATAR (Australian tertiary application ranking, I think), which you use to apply for universities. If traditional education is not your cup of tea, you chose to go down the VCAL (Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning, again different in each state). As I'm doing VCE, not VCAL, I can't tell you much about it, but I know it involves a lot of self teaching and work placement, and completing VET (Vocational Education and Training) courses. So you can see that high school can be very tailored to your strengths and interests to ensure you get the best ATAR score you can. I admit it's not perfect, but it seems a hell of a better then taking a number of compulsory subjects and sitting one test for all of them. Also KFC isn't just a string of letters, it stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken?
This is a good point but I absolutely hate when my classmates use this as an excuse to fail. "SAT scores don't matter because you can still be succesfull!" No, just because some succesfull people did bad on there SATs doesn't mean you shouldn't try at all. Get your lazy ass off your Xbox, and start studying. Because right now all these kids think that failing your SAT means nothing. NO, it still means SOMETHING, so don't screw over our generation by being stupid. Don't use this video as an excuse to basically drop out please.
Mind you, there's no such thing as "failing" the SAT. We are only being compared to how we stack up with other high school students on a scale of 1-100. The reason why we can't fully accept a correlation with intelligence and the SAT is because it gives people the delusion that their level of competence is fixed. The test only measures how well you take the test, that's why students of higher family incomes tend to have a better advantage in receiving higher scores. The SAT can open doors for people applying to college and it does have some merit in measuring college-readiness, yet it will never dictate a person's future success. The SAT helps but it is still meaningless. It solely depends on the individual's own purpose.
Mind you, there's no such thing as "failing" the SAT. We are only being compared to how we stack up with other high school students on a scale of 1-100. The reason why we can't fully accept a correlation with intelligence and the SAT is because it gives people the delusion that their level of competence is fixed. The test only measures how well you take the test, that's why students of higher family incomes tend to have a better advantage in receiving higher scores. The SAT can open doors for people applying to college and it does have some merit in measuring college-readiness, yet it will never dictate a person's future success. The SAT helps but it is still meaningless. It solely depends on the individual's own purpose.
0:00 Stanley noticed that the background was actually part of the office he was employed in. Amazed at such a coincidence, Stanley decided to tell the world in the comment section of said video that this was the case, informing them at what point the video was at, what the background was of, and why this matters. After carefully making sure the grammar and spelling is correct, he felt proud of his handiwork, and was ready to share it with the world. Stanley hit the "Post" button and
we don't need no education we don't need no thought control no dark sarcasm in the classroom teachers, leave them kids alone Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone! All in all, you're just another brick in the wall
I got a 2110 (not that that means anything besides that I was raised in a wealthy, homogenous area). I raised my score 240 points solely by listening to boards of canada -- props to you for having them on your wall -- on the way to the test.
The alternative to SATs AND the hugely expensive, largely pointless university system is a return to apprenticeships. It won't happen though because employers don't want to foot the cost of training and students want the freedom to change employers at the drop of a hat. no loyalty in either direction ensures three decades of needless debt as a "Welcome to your working life" gift. An even better alternative is to start your own business straight from high school.
Mat BroomfieldBut what about THE CHILDREN? Do you hate children, you baby killer? But seriously, apprenticeship did a lot of good for individuals and for the economy and its influence is all but missing in this day of near meaningless college degrees and state professional licensing. Primary school and college didn't prepare me for life past academia at all and I wouldn't be in the relatively privileged position I'm in now if I didn't have an adult friend who's acted as a mentor to me. I'm afraid most kids today aren't as lucky as I was.
I like the idea of apprenticeship, but unfortunately, I think it would really only work for people who knew what they wanted to do. In some cases, college can be a good way of exposing young adults to a wider array of information they couldn't get in high school that further pushes them towards fields they may want to join. If only education could be simultaneously deep and wide.
Mat Broomfield most startups fail within a few years. i can't imagine starting up a business immediately after high school with no money or connections improving the odds at all
Good to bring up. Thing is, though, that apprenticeships and post-secondary degrees have different objectives. In an apprenticeship, one learns "this is how you do the thing"; in a classroom, one more often wishes to learn "this is what is important to know about the thing". If that is all the would-be learners are looking for, that can be found much more efficiently as part of a group, without the awkwardness of a "journeyman historian". The modem education system morphed into its current state from tutoring after all! Apprenticeships are still out there for the working-skills, on-the-job sort of knowledge.
Robo Pie Most startups fail because they are poorly conceived and planned. If schools were teaching valuable skills in this area, the odds could be greatly improved.
My wife and I are both in graduate school, and I have a few friends who have completed their graduate study. What is striking about graduate study is that a good number of the programs don't have a test in class, until the end of the program as a whole. So there is this focus on actual learning while in the program, but when you get out you have to prove that you learned in what is necessary as approved by a board. Even after graduate school, you have to take some exams for licensure in certain areas. So while in school, you have this focus on education, but when you get out, all that education gets transformed into fitting a mold and not stretching that education and creativity that grad school brings.What I am getting at is that it seems that standardized tests only mark what you "know" and not how you can apply creativity and problem solving to such "knowledge."
The SAT test like most of formal education is not a measure of intelligence, but a measure of long-term obedience to a systems requirements. Most college grads know that passing a class isn't about learning a broad spectrum understanding of a topic, it is about completing assignments and regurgitating what the professor wants. Similarly SAT is about learning how to pass the SAT. That said, genuine and useful education CAN happen in the background and through the process of completing these tasks, but is not necessary to completing the requirements. In a way though, formal education is accomplishing its purpose, not to education, but to prepare workers for the job market: a place where their main purpose will be to do what they are told. It's a system that "works" but it isn't one that fosters creativity and diverse thinking. It's a system that doesn't reward divergent thinking. Many creative entrepreneurs I know never went to college or cared about the SAT. I think this says something about the hegemony of thought and behavior that is found within our western education system.
I just finished taking the SAT and my studying courses basically explained one thing to me: the SAT will always ask the same types of questions over and over again and you just have to memorize how to answer them. To study for the SAT I actually did minimal learning, I just had to memorize how to take the test. And it worked. I did well on the SAT. I know there are people better at some subjects than I am and I still scored better because I memorized the tricks.
I am glad you guys have brought this up. It's something that I have been thinking about since leaving high school. I am completely on board with something new but I don't think it will happen any time soon. I'm glad to see that College Board is trying to do something. I think it's just too easy for both grading purposes as well as college selection purposes. Seeing a list of thousands of applicants is daunting and dwindling that by setting a threshold number on a test is incredibly easy. I think my major issue with it is something that you didn't directly mention and it's the issue of teaching to the test. This takes place more for state tests and Advanced Placement (AP) exams, but I think all standardized tests are included to a degree. With these state tests learning has become less about learning and more about "teaching to the test." I know I had several talks with my chemistry teacher during return visits to my school and we got talking about this kind of thing and he told me about how the science department was basically being threatened by the district because students didn't do well on the state exam. That meant that there was less funding being given by the state to support the school. So basically because students weren't learning what they "needed" to learn the teachers are getting repercussions. I just think this whole issue is an unforeseen fiasco that not enough people are trying to do something about.
The SAT and ACT test is a university Admissions college from high school like required. In community colleges they don’t accept SAT/ACT scores is called ACCUPLACER testing is a community College Testing.
Thankfully in Brazil we are finally getting our own terrible standard test! Because if it's broken everywhere else and we don't have the problem, we need to get it right now.
As someone doing their GCSE's (British SATs) this video really spoke to me. A lot of the things I'm currently revising don't feel like they're being taught for the sake of learning, they feel like they're being taught for the sake of taking the tests. The entire curriculum of RS is based around answering the exam questions and not for the subject matter. I sometimes feel like GCSEs aren't a test of knowledge or intelligence but a test of how well you can revise. The worst part is that, largely, My GCSE's won't help me get a job because employers know try don't show anything about the person. It's like everyone but the government knows that exams are pointless.
I am about to complete my freshmen year of college here in Auburn University in Alabama and I took the ACT about five times, it is quite similar to the SAT. I agree with what you are saying. My parents paid for me to take classes that were designed to help me score better on the test and they did. I am now attending school on a scholarship that well out weights the money spent on those classes. I would contend that not only does this test favor those with the money to pay for extra help, these tests are also not a good gauge of how well students will preform in college. There are so many outside factors in college that just don't exist in high school, well for me at least. There are so many distractions like staying up until 4 in the morning watching RUclips, or getting involved too much with Greek life in college. The ACT doesn't evaluate how well you combat new and very powerful distractions that are simply not present when living at home with your parents. Additionally, I feel it is simply a test of how well you can take a test. It is not a gauge of how well you can solve problems or what knowledge you posses. It tests how well you can prepare for a standardized test that is almost the same every time. For example, when I was preparing for the ACT, I didn't learn new math concepts or read extra chapters in my science text book, I took multiple practice tests and devised strategies for them. For the math section I knew I had to limit myself to problems I could solve quickly and accurately, I only had about one minute per question. I am quite good at math, but I had to skip over problems that I knew I could solve, but simply didn't have the time to do. And the science section does not require much scientific knowledge. it simply tests how well you can read terribly designed graphs and answer questions about them. The test is broken, it does not evaluate what it was designed to evaluate and those with resources have a significant advantage over those without!
I appreciated the less amount of music used in this episode. Sometimes when you're using big words to convey complex ideas it's distracting. Great work on this episode, editors!
Your use of the Stanley Parable as a background makes me really wish you have an episode focusing on/using/referring to it some way. At the very least, your use suggests that you've now played it, which makes me happy for some inexplicable reason.
I remember the regents were very important for graduation in my high school, Xaverian. The regents had written, multiple choice, short answers and essays. They covered the information we were learning and were also mandated in New York. Would something like those be a solution, even though they are being done away with or are?
Wait, you guys got a full studio done? Last i remembered you were hanging records off of cardboard suspended in your living room, Mike. This is awesome i'd love to see a video about your setup one of these days
I'm planning on taking the ACT pretty soon, and unfortunately, no matter what was said in this video, there is no escape if I want to get into to a prestigious college of any kind.
As an educator, it's difficult to grapple with standardized testing. On the one hand, setting educational standards is a very good thing, ensuring teachers have a foundation upon which to build a curriculum and that all students will have the same level of exposure to ideas in a way that builds upon what was already learned. A fourth grade teacher doesn't need to worry about whether or not the third grade teachers taught "A" because it's part of the standards. Likewise, testing is important because it shows teachers that they're getting through to their students; it's like a diagnostic for the teacher more than the student. Standardized Testing, for whatever reason, really throws a wrench in that. As implemented, the focus is strictly on the numbers and that's bad news! Schools are hesitant to hold students back because it reflects poorly on them, which results in students moving forward that haven't met the determined standards. Teachers' worth is evaluated based on a student's performance on one test that may be vastly different from what has been done in the classroom leading up to that point. A teacher can do an excellent job teaching math critically and analytically, giving the students the tools they need to succeed, but the rigid structure of Standardized Tests can throw many students off. Testing anxiety, too, gets in the way. I don't, however, see any changes happening anytime soon. Standardized Testing is a cheap way to evaluate a large swath of teachers, students, and schools. They give concrete numbers; "Ash got a 76% on reading comprehension" is a lot more digestible than "Ash's overall performance, shown through this portfolio of work, demonstrates a grasp of reading comprehension on par with the average fourth grader." People get real stupid when numbers show up and hate reading. Oh, and on that "they hate reading" bit: tl;dr Standardized Tests suck. They aren't going away.
I think colleges are also tempted by the idea of having an objective comparison between students from different schools and backgrounds. Trying to choose between thousands of strangers as to who would be the best fit for your educational community is kind of a crazy thing. And clearly the SAT is not actually an answer, but the reductive approach of "well, these people look similar on paper but this one has a higher score, so let's go with that" at least makes it easier to make a decision, even if it's not a good one. I might argue that it goes similarly in the opposite direction with things like the US News & World Reports or Princeton Review rankings; you tour some schools, they seem good, one's ranked higher, so it's probably better so given the choice (and equivalent financial aid) maybe you go there.
Standardizing testing other than the SAT is extremely important not because it measures students, but because it measures teachers and their curriculum. Here in New York, most of our highscool tests are standardized (although i think they've been restructuring this system recently). Tests like these are the benchmark to which schools are measured. If there wasn't a standard math test, how would colleges ensure that their students are coming in with the basic knowledge to complete higher courses? In my community college, there are plenty of pre-college math courses because many students (from mostly poorer districts) aren't ready for tough courses like calculus. This is a double edged sword though. Many of my high school teachers would specifically teach to the standardized test at the end of the year (NY Regents Exam) and nothing else. They would focus on only teaching the test, and nothing else because it would make them look good. Better teachers would teach beyond the test, and as a student I took much more away from those classes. I've heard my professors talk about an interesting solution to the problems of having one giant test looming over the entire class, it is to have a few standard questions that that every school needs to include in their final exam. A sort of litmus test that ensures students can do important tasks, but doesn't restrict the teachers. Standardized testing does seem to be a terrible way to measure a students inherent aptitude, but does help in measuring how much they learned, or rather how well they've been taught.
i am 16 and i am in Oakland community college i am just about to finish my first year. I did not have to take the sat. There are plenty of other alternatives you just have to look for them. and no i never was home schooled
I am interested to hear your thoughts on the idea that if you do poorly on the SAT or ACT, you will be better at the other. I know you said you were focusing in on the SAT in this episode, but this is something I have always wondered. When I took the SAT I had average scores (makes sense, from what you said--I am a middle class, hispanic/white woman) so my teachers encouraged me to try the ACT instead...they said that each test focuses on two different things, so it was likely I would do better with a second go. And they were right??? I had a pretty flippin' good ACT score. Would you guys be willing to do a part two of this episode and talk about the ACT?
I feel it is also important to note that because the SAT's, ACT, use multiple choice questions, the tests also check the "Test Taking" skill and ability. For those who are unfamiliar with this, it normally starts off with going through the test, and answering the questions that you know you have the answer for. After that is complete, you go back to the questions that you skipped and try reducing the options, and then picking answers that have a higher chance of being correct. An example of this would be: A question on the test has four possible answers: A,B,C, and D. Through reduction, you know that B is incorrect. Which leaves A,C, and D. If D is "All of the Above." It would include B, and is therefore incorrect as well. Which leaves you with A and C. Seems like a 50/50 chance of getting it right, until you realize in most multiple choice tests, standardized tests included, answers near the center of the tests have a higher likely hood of being correct. So you choose C. That is unless you feel there have been too many answer recently that have been B or C. In that case, go with A. If the test doesn't have a trend of giving each question a "D: None of the Above", "D: All of the Above", or something similar, there is a higher chance of that answer being correct when it does show up. The primary reason this technique works, is many tests score unanswered questions the same as wrong answers, so there is no penalty for not guessing. Even tests that don't score incorrect and missing answers the same benefit from this technique, because many times, you can reduce a questions's possible options to a degree where you feel safe guessing. I acknowledge that this in itself is a worthy skill, but I doubt they are testing for it in the Language section.
As someone growing up with a severe anxiety disorder, my ability to learn can be very unpredictable. I can honestly range from being completely fine with school to being unable to get out of bed in the morning due to unending panic attacks; and that has been one of my largest problems. I know that these tests are completely mandatory at my school and I am put in an environment that is basically asking for anxiety and I can barely do an addition problem when in the midst of a panic attack. I can't help but feel I am set up for failure before I even take the test knowing all this and the school system thinks they are setting up a level playing field when they are giving me a test that was created to treat every student the same way; which is in a way giving children without disorders and advantage.
I'm a sophomore right now preparing to take the PSAT, ACT, and SAT. The tests really only seem to be measuring certain qualities and facts I don't care about outside studying to get a good score. I believe if there wasn't a test but something like a 1v1 interview with no predetermined questions handed out by says teachers or counselors would be a good fix. People can't spend money to get ahead, takes enormous stress off of students to do well, can be a much better indicator what traits people actually look for, etc.
I mean when I took SAT prep, it was really just a class teaching about how to take the test. Finding out a lot of things like "If you don't know, DONT GUESS". I mean my whole school career up to that point with multiple choice quizzes was "guess, you've got a 25% chance of being right!" That was told to me for YEARS by teachers. And then the SAT comes 'round and unless you take a class, you have no idea that guessing will take points off, while leaving it blank just doesn't add points. Guessing is outright detrimental to your score and I never would have known had I not had an opportunity to take the classes I did.
I took the SAT 4 times, studying more each successive time to get the best score I could get. Between my first PSAT, then SAT, and second SAT 2 years later I had exactly the same score each time. The third time I took it I made 200 points better simply because I decided to focus less on getting each question right and more on answering more questions quicker and guessing on hard or in depth questions. I studied the hardest for my fourth try and made the exact same score again. My 1810 means nothing. As a student who graduated with highest honors from my university among others who made 2100s and failed to finish school because of a few hard classes, I can say that the SAT was a much better identifier of those who had more experience with testing under pressure. I'm a teacher now and I've told countless students that if they want to get better at the SAT or ACT the just need to take timed practice tests, as many as possible, and stop studying individual topics or questions. It has made scores go up for every student I have told to do so. The test is just a test. Those who are more comfortable with the test will do better.
![Stromae, Pomme - “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Visualizer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1F3OGIFnW1k/mqdefault.jpg)
The one the thing the SAT definitely doesn't reflect is how hard a student is willing to work to learn. Anecdotal evidence: my freshman college roommate scored significantly higher than me on the SAT, and yet, he then proceeded to fail out of college: _twice_; while I went on to graduate. Intelligence is meaningless without work ethic.
TheJaredtheJaredlong This was something I really wanted to talk about but didn't have time! I read some theory talking about how, ideally, there would be a way to tell how *dedicated* someone is because really, thats THE most important thing.
That's what grades are for
TheJaredtheJaredlong If you are strictly talking about the SAT as a measure of college success versus life success or overall intelligence (all of which are briefly touched on in the video) then you are 100% correct and this should be factored in. In fact this area called noncognitive assessment or grit, because of course everything has to have a fancy name, is something that higher ed evaluation and assessment peoples (like myself) are very interested in and it has become a hot topic. Because of course, we want to know not just if you are smart, but also if you can pick yourself up off the floor if you get flattened by a cement truck, or Organic Chemistry.
TheJaredtheJaredlong not to mention if you have a learning curb like I do. Its hard to take the SATs when I can't read some words properly or see the word wrong.
TheJaredtheJaredlong Unfortunately, I have the problem of being fairly smart but incredibly lazy. Just like your friend :(
I did really well on my SATs, which helped me get a college scholarship, but look at me now: I'm watching this video, desperately trying to ignore the fact that finals are next week and I'm failing all my classes.
cookieaddictions LOL... Same here ;)
Dead
Gonna appeal to some Anime geeks here (I'm sure my icon alone will help):
Power Levels in *Dragon Ball Z* are a lot like SAT scores. Completely meaningless towards your actual skill, and only serve to separate the upper and lower classes.
The SAT test is like the first Chunin Exam in *Naruto* as well. It measures how you score under pressure, or your ability to cheat.
djf2564 That may well be the best analogy using DBZ I have ever read.
*applauds
Holy shit you're right
djf2564 I loved the Chunin Exam. That was just perfect.
True, it's the ability to cheat and not be discovered
I got an 1800 and never felt like I was being tested on anything but how to score well on the SAT.
bobtheman1y Perhaps that is the test. If you can make yourself study for the SAT, chances are you can make yourself study for college.
jasonb42notavailable And college is as pointless as studying for a test? Not for actually knowing and learning the material?
jasonb42notavailable Doesn't work. I didn't study for the SAT, did great on it. Failed more than half my classes my first year of college, because I couldn't study.
jasonb42notavailable I took a few practice SATs and didn't study for it. Did pretty mediocre on all except the real one and the same thing happened to me as did Earthenfist
I got the same exact score. I did not study in any form. It's such bullshit.
Standardized testing in general is a horrible idea. Why? Because no one learns exactly the same way and no one has the same interests or motivation to study every subject currently taught in schools. I did well on the SAT but only because I practiced taking it, and memorized vocabulary that was specific to the tests. Neither of these skills is particularly useful in the working or even college world (at least not in the field that I'm going into). It's an entirely bullshit set of skills and a waste of time as far as I'm concerned. I learned more critiquing the SAT practice test questions, arguing with my SAT prep teacher than I did studying for the actual tests. We try so hard to distill human intellect into categorized subjects with numeric ratings but education deserves to be so much grander than that. I had enough motivation to put up with and excel at that sterile type of learning but I hated every minute of it. Real work, fulfilling work, tasks that build you as an individual have to do with knowledge that doesn't fly out of your head after the end of each test. Real knowledge is about experiences, discussion, critical reasoning and independent research, not vomiting words from a book in a way that matches the pattern the teachers have on their desk. It's disturbing how long kids and teens spend in a classroom, withering away during their most productive years when they could be learning specialized skills from a professional mentor. Kids could do so much more if we didn't shove them in a one-size-fits-all box.
fusobotic I partly disagree and also agree with your points. Please bear with me for a bit... lengthy reading below... but I think I make my point eventually.
All of modern education is inherently standardized. Ok, so in general we are talking about "Western Academia". A regulated system of passing along the accumulated knowledge of the world* that hasn't really changed all that much since the ancient Greeks (*actually, it's your specific culture's idea of valuable knowledge, but for the sake of generalizing my explanation... "world"). As our boundaries of knowledge grow and change through time (and we filter that new knowledge down to younger generations of students), the knowledge of the top researchers/experts/professionals/scientists/etc. has to be distilled into age-appropriate levels so that, as students grow up, we can build on what they've learned previously in a predictable way until eventually they reach the "end" of their fundamental education (in the US at least, this is typically thought of as graduating from high school...) Without some form of standardized testing (or at least teaching), there is no structure to base a student's level of accumulated knowledge, and therefore no predictable way to advance them to the next Grade Year. If we only taught second graders what they wanted to learn and had no definition of what they "should have learned this year", how would we know when they're ready for third grade?
Now, I'm NOT saying that the system of testing we have now is perfect, or even good. In fact, it is grossly inadequate in terms of measuring what students are ACTUALLY learning (and I wholeheartedly disagree with "teaching for the test" and rote regurgitation of facts), but given the way we have been passing knowledge from one generation to the next until now, it is a time-tested way of ensuring that society creates "adults" with a standard level of "knowledge".
I totally agree that people learn in different ways and have different motivations and strengths. Auditory, visual, kinesthetic, and conceptual learners all have different modes of learning that are not always addressed in the traditional classroom. My Master's thesis focused on outdoor environmental education, specifically: using rivers and outdoor environments as classrooms to address this disparity. (Anywhere! Even just taking students out to an urban green-space or school yard for lessons a couple of times a week is considered "better" than those four-walled-mind-prison/creativity-killers). What the research shows us is really quite intuitive: students who are introverted/shy, students who learn through experiential (hands-on) means, and students with some forms of learning disabilities greatly benefit from (even EXCEL because of) activities and engagement outside of the traditional lecture-based classroom.
Most students actually need the opportunity to engage in a variety learning modes in order to express their individual levels of understanding on a range of subjects, BUT the burden is placed HEAVILY on the educators! (not the system necessarily) A really good teacher knows the limits of the traditional classroom for engaging every student on a personal level and can develop a presentation style that can help address those limitations. Great teachers are few and far between and with the system we have in place, they are (sadly) dis-incentivized to actually teach for understanding and knowledge in order to meet standardized testing quotas. I was lucky enough to have had several FANTASTIC teachers throughout my academic career... Thank you: Mr. Murter, Mrs. Gamage, Dr. Earl, and Dr. Kimmel (and I'll include you too, Mike Rugnetta! Discussion provocateur.)
You are absolutely correct that meaningful knowledge comes from being challenged by experiences, discussion, and critical thinking (and that each individual achieves this in entirely individualized ways). However, most people have to be taught how to think critically, and I think that responsibility falls on parents as well as teachers. It sounds like you got a very targeted learning experience discussing the SAT prep material with an instructor, but doesn't that personalized instruction say something about HOW you ended up learning so much more that way? I'm willing to bet there wasn't 20-30 students going through the practice tests with you and that teacher while you were arguing your points...
I think there are too many people who are putting standardized testing and intelligence evaluation on equal footing. They are not, and can not be tested for and quantified with one catch-all "scantron" sheet. The goal of education should be much, much grander than that, but in a very basic way, the real goal of our primary education is socialization and establishing the "norms" of general adult knowledge, not grading intelligence. What should every adult know by the time they finish their fundamental education? Where should we set the bar? As has been pointed out in other comments, there are several types of intelligence, and they cannot all be tested for (at least not within one test, and certainly not within standardized testing as it exists currently), but I think we can all find some agreed level of "adult knowledge". What is it?
The SAT in particular is outdated, but falls in line with the standardized testing that American students (mostly) have been exposed to from first grade through high school. I agree with this form of testing, BUT ONLY in so far as it is the system we are using to move students "up" through grade years, and ONLY through the lens of producing a standard level of socialization and education amongst adults. The test itself has very little correlation to success, intelligence, or even knowledge gained. I consider myself to be fairly knowledgeable, intelligent, and successful, but only managed an average score despite extensive preparation materials AND taking the test twice. (Same with the ACT test.)
To be truly effective, the education system needs to 1) incorporate methods that address the different styles of learning (kinesthetic/auditory/visual/conceptual), 2) identify how and when these other methods actually become beneficial to the students, AND once students have achieved what society determines is a "standard" level of adult knowledge, 3) provide outlets for specialization that allow them to learn skills and pursue a trade for which they are intellectually inclined. That last point is what university and higher education USED to be before Bachelor's degrees became the norm instead of a high school diploma. Now it seems as though the university system is just a more advanced high school curriculum. It's too general with only limited means of personal intellectual expression (at least until students reach a high level within their chosen major), and for some disciplines, you have to pursue a Master's or Doctorate degree to distinguish yourself as an educated expert in your field.
In the mean time, I think it is wise to keep in mind that the numbers generated by these tests are generalizations, and maybe students shouldn't even be allowed to know what they scored?? That used to be said of your IQ. You weren't supposed to actually know what you scored because of some kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. If you did well, you over-evaluate yourself from then on. If you did poorly, you under-evaluated yourself. If you scored as average, you never thought of yourself as being able to achieve more than mediocrity....
Here at PBS Idea Channel, WE ARE THE EDUCATED ELITE!
fusobotic So much of it is hard to iron out because of differences in students' backgrounds. I remember taking a practice SAT test and one of the verbal questions (__ is to __ as __ is to __) made no sense to me because I was from Vermont. It related avalanches to rocks, which made no sense to me since I know of avalanches as cascades of snow and ice; however, the test writer described avalanches as being composed of rocks and mud.
sonicpsycho13
You're right. Analogies are difficult because getting the correct answer is based largely on your exposure to and understanding of the terms and concepts being presented (which are different for everyone depending on where they live, what their teachers/parents have taught, their specific interests, abilities, etc.), and since this exposure is not standardized very well, there is a large variation in what people "know" at any particular grade year.
This brings me back to my point about general standardization of education being the basis of moving students up to the next grade year. IF we had a better way to guarantee that all students were exposed to a standardized set of concepts at each grade level, and that set is exactly what is being tested, then the analogies would hold a higher value. My assumption is that is why there isn't just one or two analogies on any given test (not everyone knows about avalanches whether it's rocks or snow, and therefore have very little chance of understanding the question). The SAT has a whole section of analogies to allow for this variation and bias of each student's individual exposure, AND why the grading system allows you to gain more points for a right answer than penalizing you for an incorrect one. My instructors told me to NEVER leave an answer blank, because you've got a 1 in 4 chance of getting it right as opposed to a 0 percent chance, but also to not waste time on a question I absolutely don't know. Guess and move on.
However the value of analogies (assuming you are familiar with at least the majority of the terms and concepts presented) comes from the question's ability to measure how well you understand the relationships between those concepts.
For example:
A fish is to swimming as a bird is to ____.
-rocks
-feathers
-apple juice
-flying
Most everyone who understands anything about fish and birds knows the answer is flying, but you actually have to know about fish AND birds for this to be an easy question.
In contrast:
Wolf is lupine as fox is to ___.
-bovine
-equine
-vulpine
-cervine
This question is FAR more difficult if you don't know anything about either wolves or foxes. It also doesn't help if you've never heard of the other terms in the answer section. This analogy "measures" two things: 1) have you been exposed to this level of taxonomy, and 2) can you discern the relationship between wolf and lupine to a degree that helps to clarify the relationship between foxes and ___. (vulpine)
As a multiple choice question, it also helps to gauge critical thinking and the process of elimination (which I admit is more of a strategy of test-taking than actual learned knowledge, but that is supposed to be part of education also... have you been taught to think critically about what you know and reason out relationships of things you may not). If you know wolves and dogs are related and know they reside in the lupine category of taxonomy, you're off to a good start. If you've heard the term bovine in relation to cows, equine to horses, etc, you can eliminate those as possible answers, and you're doing much better. Again, this doesn't mean that everyone will have been exposed to this information, and therefore have a harder time with the question, BUT that's exactly what the question is supposedly "testing": what information have you been exposed to and understand that will allow you to get the correct answer. The student has to work through relationships they understand, identify what is irrelevant, and also have a grasp on what they don't know in order to be successful on this question.
Analogies get EXTREMELY difficult and esoteric as the terms get increasingly specialized, AND the relationships between the items can become increasingly abstract. Factor in open-ended or fill-in-the-blank style questions as opposed to multiple choice, and things can get pretty heady.
The end result is the same though: standardized tests are trying evaluate to what information a student has been exposed, and how well does that student understand that information. I agree that not everyone will be able to answer every question, but not everyone is SUPPOSED to be able to. If every question made sense to everyone, and they all get the correct answer, then it's not really a "test".
Also, I realize that I'm coming off as defending the status quo of standardized testing in its current form and politics, but that's not really how I feel. The concept of testing to ensure a standardized level of knowledge and exposure to a defined set of age-appropriate knowledge is important. That's how we can be sure that when you get your HS diploma or a college degree, you ACTUALLY know a basic set of information. On the other hand, I vehemently disagree with testing results as predictors of anything. Your SAT score cannot say anything specific about how you will perform at the university level. I think that these kinds of tests are a terrible business model for the education system. They shouldn't have an impact on or describe what the educators are effective at teaching (at least not to the degree that teachers be incentivized to teach directly to the tests), but should be used as a way of keeping all seventh graders within a prescribed range of knowledge.
This is a very complex topic with no straightforward answer. I think the business practices and motivations involved cloud the issue as to the importance and effectiveness of the testing procedure and the utility of the results. There is SOME value to standardized testing, but as a metric of evaluating the system as a whole (and ensuring a standard level of knowledge at specific educational milestones) rather than appraising the value of a student and his/her future success (or intelligence for that matter).
That was extremely eloquent and accurate. Nicely put random internet user.
YOUR AMAZING !
Right now, with common core, we're not moving away from standardized testing, but deeper into it.
I feel human "intelligence" simply cannot be quantified. Only "Education".
I live in the Southern United States, and where I live there are many people who don't have good Educational Opportunities or Financial Resources. YET Many those same people are wickedly intelligent, with problem solving skills and complex vocations that far exceed my own abilities despite my higher educational opportunities.
And even with my opportunities I have Learning Disabilities that disqualify me from taking the SAT because "I would fail it due to a genetic disability". Yet I am considered one of the most intelligent people in my family, social group, and even in my school. I have shortcomings and dysfunctional cognitive abilities, but I have other abilities that far surpass my peers.
Instead of looking at "Intelligence" as some D&D Stat that the SAT tries (and fails) to assume, I think there are different "flavors of intelligence"; An ever changing, complex gradient of mental abilities.
Thank's for reading Mike
You cannot standardize the human mind, or humans in general.
in Albert Einstein's own words: "Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid."
Federico Olivares I love that quote
“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.” - Bhagavad Gita
They test the amount of time between the tears and the ice cream.
+AgentWashingtub m8 where's season 14
AgentWashingtub i hope not...
Hey Mike! As a first year English teacher in an inner-city school, I very much appreciated the fact that this video came out on the week before our state End of Course exam! I showed this to my students and we had a good conversation about the difficulty/impossibility of measuring intelligence and the racial discrepancies of the test results. I'm going to reply to this comment with some selections from what my students wrote in response to your video--they would LOVE to see you respond to their work at the end of next week's video!
andrewswafford Marnisha from Mr. Swafford's class:
"Many students may get nervous during testing and may not do their best. Also, I think that there should be another method to test a students’ intelligence…If a student missed so many days of school, they may not know as much about a certain subject as the other kids. I also believe that teachers or the state should grade the standard test rather than computers and electronic grading."
andrewswafford Shay from Mr. Swafford's class:
"Most of the students that are preparing for the big test are really not studying and honestly don’t care on what they make on the test."
andrewswafford Ashley from Mr. Swafford's class:
"I think that standardized testing isn't the best idea because you could be having a bad day and not feel like taking the test, but you have to because its such a big part of your grade...Some students might forget some things or stress themselves out because its an important grade.Maybe they can look at your records you have your teachers video tape class discussions so they can how they class works."
andrewswafford Dalemonie from Mr. Swafford's class:
"I believe it doesn’t show that they know anything because anybody can guess on multiple-choice test…I believe the best way to see a students knowledge is it to give them a test were they have to write out their answers instead of picking a letter or Christmas treeing the answer sheet…I feel like if the students write their answer in sentences you will see what they have learned more than bubbling."
andrewswafford Marissa from Mr. Swafford's class:
"I think standardized testing isn't a good idea because if someone is not good at taking test [and they] just always do bad that doesn't mean they don't know [what's] on the test it just means they are not good at test taking....testing isn't a good way to show what kids know because some kids freak out under pressure or even just taking a state wide test."
Well im not american, but here in Russia we have kinda similar problems with graduation exams. They are just measuring your ability to take tests and to a lesser extand your ability to remember standardized question forms. As for me - i consider myself a multi-sided person and there is actually a lot of interesting spheres of knowlege for me to dip into, and these tests are just killing the slightest possibility of a man thinking differently, thinking creatively. I mean creative people are still here as we can see but was that really the point in education this harmful and narrow?
I think it would be much more efficient to accept the students based on the interview. Imo it could be so much more fair and interesting, the education has a great purpose and means, sometimes it just happen to get a broken tool.
LastZepp1 Here in Norway students are accepted simply based on your average grades and well depending on who else are applying...
As how it works here is that you go to a website and chose up to 10 educations (can be the same ones at different universities) and well then after sending in your things if not already filed electronically then you just wait and you will get into your highest priority which you had good enough grades (the grade requirement is decided by the people who applied... if there are lots of people applying and they have high grades then you need to beat them to get in... however if few people apply then everyone likely gets in regardless of their grades)
How private schools does it I am not quite sure...
And art and creative schools/educations often require something else to show that you have the skills needed
Jo Viljar Haugstulen Music&Arts schools in norway usually have an entrance exam where you preform such talents.. but you will also need an high average grade to be selected. unless there is extra room for more students ofc :)
***** Thanks don't really know much about them as Music and Art really isn't my thing
Jo Viljar Haugstulen If you look at it stripped - you will see the root of the problem. The grades are besically the same with tests, but from the opposite side. While tests are purely formal and easy to account they give you grades based on the scripted questions. The school grades may differ greatly tho. They should be based on your perfomance and skil but frequently are given to the liars with pretty eyes (with potential) and to the ward workers (they earned it, right?). Its not only highly subjective, but also it cannot account for your way of thinking, your interests (as for me - i really enjoy astronomy and biology but the first wasnt even a thing and biology teacher was just basically hating me). I think education could and should be reformed to point out your strenghs and interests, not ability to follow the lead and obey the rules. Discipline is good, but there absolutely should be some freedom and specialization for those who want and need it
LastZepp1 Well the school and education system is very standardized and any specialization comes in rather late yes which likely won't changed for a long time as well... it would be really difficult to find a good way to change...
In my stats class at university, when we began the semester, my teacher showed us that the SAT is designed so that the results will resemble the normal distribution, or the "bell curve." It's a perfectly symmetrical distribution and it looks so satisfying.
And yet, for those of us who would normally do fairly well on standardized testing (my ACT scores were fairly good for not having studied at all), the test is designed to push you toward the middle. There are "easier" questions that almost no one would answer wrong to bring up the grade and questions that are almost impossible and students taking the test are probably not going to know it that bring the grade down.
If you ask me, that's on purpose. It's geared toward making it look like EVERYONE is average, that everyone centers around this mean that was planned from the beginning. The point is that if you can somehow do really well, you are in a minority and you are therefore better than everyone else. But what that really is is wasting your time on largely unimportant information to ensure that your data point - your score - is in the realm of what was least likely. You're trying to make your score as much of an outlier as possible rather than being close to the mean. If it were possible, there would be some students who would be so good that they would be out of the distribution. If we set it up like a hypothesis test, then we're trying to prove that all SAT scores will center around a mean of 800. And we can do tons of tests, but given that it is impossible to go beyond 1600 (or 1200), it's not really fair. I mean, standardized testing isn't fair anyway. It's rigged to show how well you can fight against a pre-determined system.
I guess it could be a metaphor for discrimination.
I'm not claiming a conspiracy, but statistically, it's incredibly manipulative. It makes no sense for the creators of the test to force the results into a normally distributed fashion. That's manipulation to falsely claim that all students who take the test are of a certain intelligence, and those that happen to do well are smarter, when in fact there is more going on than their ability to answer asinine questions correctly.
As someone studying education right now, this is something I've heard a lot about and I lived through my practicum placements. Truth is, any teacher who has come out of their university/college degree in the last 10+ years knows about the biases in the educational system and testing, and wants to implement differentiated instruction in the classroom. The problem is that teachers are asked to teach to, say, 25 students and there's no way to fully teach to the 25 different learning styles, much less the 25 different cultural backgrounds, or the 25 different sets of previous knowledge, or 25 [insert any other difference here]. We can (and are) work on lessening the biases, and increasing the differentiated instruction but in reality you can never have a system of mass public education where there is complete equality.
Of course many problems are caused by chronic underfunding of education, forcing larger class sizes and minimal elective courses.
Also, teachers often teach 4 or 5 different subjects per day (more for early years education), and that takes an incredible amount of time and effort to prepare lessons for. Giving a 'one size fits all' lesson and test is often all that teachers have time to do because, at least in my experience student teaching, they're working 16 hours a day.
I think you intentionally skipped over the fact that the SAT has had a writing portion for about 10 years when you made it seem like the entire test is graded like a scantron.
SivartAuhsoj We did intentionally skip it! There was a section about it, actually, that was removed after we learned they are axing the writing portion and will soon be returning to the old verbal / math, 1600 total score version.
***** It is important, but (if I remember right) the grading was too inconsistent and subjective to be worth the effort, and it isn't a very good example of putting thoughts on paper.
***** the sat writing section never measured 'how to organize thoughts on a page.' it was always graded almost exactly by how long your essay was. like, even if you wrote crap, writing more of it would improve your score.
it was also really easy to game but only if you had someone to teach you how to. (eg: if you made up a book and then quotes a maded up quote from it that supported your argument, that would get you more points.) so basically it measured how fast you could write and if you could afford to pay someone to teach you how to beat the system.
Thoggnee It's optional
SivartAuhsoj The writing section wasn't that much better than the multiple choice anyway. You had 25 minutes to write on a topic you may or may not have heard of before, there was no way anyone could actually write a thoughtful essay under those conditions. From my understanding the graders didn't even read the essays for that long anyway. They would quickly look it over for a checklist of things then move on.
I got a 1700 (btw I'm in 7th grade) and I thought it was pretty much just remembering formulas and very straightforward rather than actual "thinking" (keep in mind most of what I worked on was math)
I agree.
Santiago Adams hmmm sounds more like memorization then anything to do with intelligence?
Sounds pretty worthless... even if someone can remember something doesn't mean they can actually use that knowledge or fully understand it?
Jo Viljar Haugstulen I was under the impression that the SAT was only a predictor for success in college, not anything like intelligence, success in life, etc.
jasonb42notavailable So if you are good at memorization.. you will be successful in college? Sounds strange... because isn't college about you know critical thinking and using your what you know not just repeating it?
Jo Viljar Haugstulen What it tests, or why it works doesn't actually matter. As long as it predicts college performance of applying students better than other ways available then it's useful. If we can make it better, or find a better predicting non-test way, then we should use that.
If colleges are aware of what the SAT measures (SES status, especially income) then that may be its own incentive to use it. Colleges are increasingly profit based and want students with money and students who come from families with money and the type of clout that makes for a schmancy allumni. I never took the SAT myself, I took the ACT. I forgot to bring a calculator, and my friend slept through half of hers. We actually both ended up doing very well in college -I'm graduating with a Master's Degree this May and she's got her shiny art school degree and a steady job using it. Then again, a problem I have had throughout my college experience is how much we are asked to recall and regurgitate rather than critically think (and only temporarily; i.e, until the test is over). We learn how to take tests.
OnlyInThisLight I would agree. If the SAT is a reflection of socioeconomic status as well as academic aptitude and potential for high-income success (or fame) of the test taker, it benefits the college's chance for donations and keeps their prestige high.
Most ivy league universities are probably reluctant to change to test optional for this reason - seeing that this has worked, both in profit and reputation.
OnlyInThisLight That's the most frustrating part of college for me. There are things that I am legitimately interested in learning, but a lot of my classes are determined by what the school thinks is important. Most of my time is wasted on memorizing meaningless information that I will regurgitate on a test and promptly forget. I end up having to play the system in order to have the time in invest in the subjects I'm interested in (a.k.a. the actual reason I went to college in the first place).
OnlyInThisLight In my opinion Its just useless to take those SAT and ACT. Like if one test can tell how smart or dumb some one is like really. That's like saying you are allowed to run one race to qualify in the Cross country team. I scored really well on the SAT but then I said " meh don't care."
www.psychologicalscience.org/pdf/ps/Frey.pdf?origin=publication_detail
it has a strong correlation with IQ
Love the background choice in the beginning. :)
Really Stanley?
The Parable. The Stanley Parable.
Wonder which door he took when he finished the test.
Stanley was most fond of the SAT system, almost as fond as he was of button pressing.
It tests social class and how good at taking test you are. Wait--
[watches video]
It tests social class and how good at test taking you are.
Kinda sad there wasn't more discussion on the correlation vs causation going on here.
What we typically think of as 'intelligence' seems to be just 'free time' + 'learning ethic'. Those growing up in a well off neighborhood with few chores/responsibilities besides school and with plenty of time for play/learning/studies are going to appear more intelligence because that's what 'being smart' seems to mean.
Perhaps we could significantly fix the tests if we could even out (or just flat out improve) the living standards instead of trying to make tests check for a generic 'everybody has this' smarts.
Pretty sure KFC stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken?
HungryButler It doesn't! It *used* to. But now it just stands for KFC. Check it: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acronym#Pseudo-acronyms
PBS Idea Channel What about Bp? British petroleum right?
PBS Idea Channel because muricans can't remember three words that doesn't mean popular acronyms doesn't mean anything.
Krzysztof Kotarba has nothing to do with Americans, it's because advertising law doesn't recognize KFC's chicken as chicken, thus it's false advertising to call it fried chicken. or that's what I heard at least.
Krzysztof Kotarba Americans are not part of the reasoning behind the change, if you even took a look at the link it says that they changed in order to de-emphasize the frying part of their signature dishes. It's to kinda make you forget its bad for you.
I appreciate the Stanley Parable background.
The editing on this one was really top notch. Very well done!
As a European, I never really got what the SAT was, except that everyone in the USA had to take it, which confused me. This was a good explanation of it, and I'm glad for my American friends that things are changing about it.
I believe that standardized testing actually tests conceptual real-world skills instead of your "intelligence" or your ability to get the right answer. For example, your ability to perform under pressure and to adapt. Sitting there knowing that you're going to be compared to everyone else taking the test typically leads to stress. "How am I going to stack up against other people?" In that way, it's a great way to test how well you're going to do on your own. You're going to experience a lot of that in the real world. You have to roll with the punches, so to speak.
CrusadingChristian Then again, in the real world you won't necessarily be given months or even years to prepare for a given problem. So it's still not completely accurate, though your point is still valid in relation to more predictable events of high stress.
CrusadingChristian I believe that you are making Mike's argument. If the test is a measurement of how well you will succeed in the culture as it is; how well you fit the status quo then its not really an aptitude test. Its a way of reinforcing a cultural ideal, regardless of merit. It doesn't test for creativity of thought or problem solving except within the culturally defined and prescribed way.
Bluecho4 But is that not what school does?
+CrusadingChristian
SAT: Real life:
A) 21 take orders from your boss, work in groups to come up with the
B) 45 best solution, creative solutions are rewarded,
C) 87 communication skills critical, leadership skills invaluable,
D) 56 you can use your electronic devices and wifi, and are payed.
E) 88
Dose the SAT look anythink like "conceptual real-world skills" to you?
But then again, people hiring don't look at your SAT, it doesn't determine how well you do on the job you want to do.
It's great to see this channel evolve from time to time when I've only been watching select videos that interest me from year to year and it always reminds me how I stumbled upon this video whenever I decide that a topic that I'm interested in gets explained in depth. Keep it up!
Totally not taking the SAT this Saturday...0 . 0
Wolffang731 Good Luck!
Dakota Hicks Just wanna throw this out there...
Awesome propic
Good luck, my man! Hope you do good!
pokemoneinstein
Thanks man! :)
Dakota Hicks .
I have a fair amount of knowledge on this subject- I'm a test tutor for The Princeton Review. The go-to adage we teach is that "the SAT assesses your ability to take the SAT" and not much else. Your video does point to this very well but largely from a statistical and historical perspective; I think there is a logical argument to make as well. The goal of using a standardized test to score actual learning aptitude is possibly a futile goal.
A standardized test needs to cover only subjects that have been taught to everyone however also needs to distribute scores across a wide range. You cannot expect a student who has not covered calculus, specialized sciences, or a foreign language to score well in those fields, but you cannot test only beginner subjects at the level they are normally addressed without having many students ace those subjects.
To achieve the normal distribution of scores the SAT needs to call itself "fair" and useful, it needs to only cover the first few years of math, reading, and English while also employing "tricky" questions- questions asked in unusual ways, questions with confusing answers, or questions that take way too long to solve.
I don't think we will ever be able to actually solve this problem with the structure of standardized tests unless we standardize all American education, and that is a much more problematic task.
In a competitive system, anything that's put forth as a goal will become a selection pressure and most elements of the system will conspire to maximize it. The SAT (and standardized testing in general) is part of a large, complicated, and high-pressure system that encompasses k-12 education, preschools, colleges, the educational publishing industry, and (to a lesser extent) both industries requiring college graduates and industries that hire mostly non-college-graduates.
Whatever the SAT rewards will, generally, also be rewarded by colleges that allow people in based on SAT scores (because a university cannot fail most of its students; when students are unable to grasp the material, universities change the material, the presentation style, and the grading -- moving the goal posts in order to prevent angering all their customers). But, colleges also have pressure from the other side -- from industry -- to produce graduates that are capable of working in the ways that the industries in question would like them to (however, even industry is flexible; in many cases, firing incompetent people is more of a liability than keeping them on indefinitely, and in some cultures there are major cultural pressures to help those incapable of doing what they were hired to do succeed -- which is good for the individual, and the general idea may be good for the industry as a whole since cooperation in general is encouraged, but it also means that schools have less pressure to produce decent students). At the same time, low-paying jobs mostly performed by people with no college degrees have the expectation of a continued supply of potential job candidates who are not overqualified (and thus lack the expectation of a level of pay that would cut into the company's bottom line), so the entire school system on some level has the expectation and pressure to *fail* to produce successful students (or else tasks performed by non-college-graduates become more expensive, and thus less accessible -- meaning rising costs in retail, prepared food, and other service sectors). Again, this is far from ideal -- I'd prefer to pay more for McDonalds and have the people who work there actually be able to afford to eat -- but it's a pressure by industry on school systems. Then, sectors like shadow education factor very deeply into this -- shadow education gives the wealthy an additional advantage in schooling, thereby also shifting the less wealthy generally towards lower success rates, and also perpetuating itself and the university system (many private tutors are college students or graduate students who would be unable to pay for schooling without the extra income; graduate students are a particularly interesting case insomuch as they are more educated than most college graduates -- particularly postdoctoral students -- but are also generally less financially secure, and are dependent upon their position in the university ecosystem for what income they do have, ranging from stipends to tutoring income to income from actual non-tenure-track professorship).
As a result, we have a lot of pressures all essentially conspiring to perpetuate a wealth-education divide (although almost certainly not intentionally; most systems that exist do so because they have mechanisms of self-perpetuation within them, and any system that exists to fight against another system cannot defeat that system without dissolving itself and any structures that it incorporated, meaning that while organizations dedicated to ameliorating inequitable wealth-education divisions can only succeed so much before they need to temper their attempts in order to keep themselves from extermination).
Slow tweaks to the SAT might make it more equitable. That said, it's limited in how much we can reasonably combat specifically the rich-get-richer effect, because very few changes to a standardized test can make such a test easier for students in general while also making it harder for private tutors to provide an edge in. We also run the risk of merely raising the pivot point of who gets the unreasonable edge -- if we make a tweak that takes a long time and a lot of practice to give a student an edge it, do we move the set of students expected to score abnormally highly from the top thirty percent of income to the top ten percent of income? When we do that, we haven't really benefited the bottom ninety percent -- we've just taken the advantage away from twenty percent of the people and given it to the ten percent who were going to have an even more extreme unfair advantage anyway.
That said, I can't really claim that I'm against standardized tests as a whole. Standardized tests can hide biases, but the alternative is completely uncontrolled testing based on teacher's personal opinions, which are also biased but far less open to analysis, scrutiny, and adjustment. When a standardized test has a clearly measurable bias, we can experiment with adjusting the test to minimize that bias; when school systems have a clearly measurable bias, the best we can do is fire teachers who spout racial slurs or sleep with students -- i.e., the most obvious sources of bias, but also probably the least competent people in terms of producing systematic bias, and a much smaller percentage of the source of bias than we could get merely by tweaking a set of questions until the white kids don't all get triple the average black kid's score.
Things I like about the recent IdeaChannel episodes. 1) Mikes' rate of speech has slowed. 2) the background music is no longer constant and no longer as fast as Mikes' rate of speech (can you say, "distracting") 3) The amount of GIF's has slowed and are no longer just a box that forces me to chose either to watch the GIF box or watch Mike. 4) the animations are becoming more "crashcourse-y". To the IdeaChannel team -Thank you for making these changes.
Is it mostly universities that require SAT/ACT scores?
I was homeschooled, so I never took either test. I went to community college first, got an associates degree, then transferred into university without a problem.
Rachel Morris I think community colleges are less likely to ask for them. I know I had to give SAT scores when applying to colleges, but, I remember being told a lot that they didn't place as much value on them as people tend to think. Like, my high school teachers told me things like -- having a high SAT score is nice, but it's your essay and more personalized things that are more likely to get you in. An SAT score is just one factor in a long list of things on your application, so it's not something to worry too much about. I know I didn't stress too much about it and got a pretty decent score.
Rachel Morris Most 4 year colleges and universities require it. If you go to community college, I believe you're "automatically" accepted because you're within the "region" of the college. Then, when anyone transfers from college to college, admissions officers don't need to see SAT/ACT scores because those tests are used to determine college readiness, which one would already of proof of if he/she went to community college or transferred from a different college. These policies vary depending on where you're from and/or which colleges/universities you're interested in.
Hope everything made sense!
Rachel Morris
I got my schooling 100% paid for because of a high ACT score, so if that tells you anything about the importance of them to some schools....
I was also homeschooled, and took the ACT. I am attending community college now, mostly because I am paying for school myself. My scores allowed me to apply and be accepted to universities without obtaining a GED, and to receive scholarships. (Though I still ended up at a community college for two years) Wherever I applied, test scores were indeed required.
One of my college professors didn't do test but learning journals weighing your ability to make connections and come up with new ideas as what to score.
I took the SATs in my freshman year (while I was currently in algebra and -- what is actually tested on the SATs) and received a 2130. I took it again in my junior year (after taking calculus and other higher level courses) and scored a 1780.
Clearly, I have slacked off, and the test itself is not flawed >.>
As a middle and high school teacher, I completely appreciate this episode. The point you made, "there are business models" that can be replicated is a good one. The more we try base schools on a business model - as if human being are widgets - the more we are going to fail students. Standardization is this idea that we should all be judged by the same measurement, which is laudable. But life, and life skills, are far more complicated and can never be judged based on any one metric.
In my teaching I am trying to move away from knowledge testing to treating the students ability to ask good questions. Remembering facts is no longer a critical skill. Knowing how to ask the right question of the right source and process the answer is becoming the focus of my teaching.
The exam becomes an open Internet exam where the students are asked to show how they find evidence to support our refrute a piece of information. The oral exam has the student asking the lecturer questions and is assessed on the quality of those questions.
This is also linked to the ability to reflect on the confidence you have in knowledge and what parts need to be questioned.
In computer science you can see most tasks as questioning. Test Driven development is about writing good tests. Debugging us questioning code. Optimization is about questioning performance.
Oh man, I wish we'd have you teaching some of our courses - get into Information Security! ;)
Simon McCallum May I ask what grade/level you're teaching, and subject? Thanks! I agree with this method!
Jimmy Dinh I am teaching at university. I have started with my masters classes in Serious Games and Advanced Game Technology. I am going to be making changes to my first year courses and my third year courses this fall. I have also volunteered to work with the local elementary school and look at the ICT curriculum were I will look at how the approach fits with kids from 6 to 10.
Simon McCallum That's really awesome. I remember the best of my professors and teachers. What they all had in common was that they tend to be the ones challenging us to think and reason, not necessarily come to a definite answer or solution. As a teacher myself now, at the elementary school level, I try to get my students to think and be mindful of their words and ideas. This is in Hong Kong, where "learning" is rote memorization and a regurgitation of information. I can't stand seeing students here just being passive when they've been born with a brain that can do so much more than that.
I LOVE THAT. I hope there will be more of these in the future.
This opens up the question of what exactly is success? Is success having an awesome RUclips Channel with 100k+ subscribers? Or is success simply completing college? We have some examples (outliers that they are) of people who have failed or dropped out of college but are unarguably successful. The SAT and other standardized testing not only tries to mold a stratification of intelligence, but by inference, molds a concept of success. In a way, you could say that, at any point which you create a test with relative scoring (such as the SAT) you have defined not only who will be successful, but what successful is supposed to look like. Thus, you narrow the possiblitiy of true innovation and creativity by categorizing possible outcomes as successful or not successful based on previous test scores. In other words, someone who aces the SAT's but drops out of college after 2 years and goes on to make a RUclips channel with say, a small community of loyal subscibers (contrast to Mike and IdeaChannel) that allows them to live a modest life would not be considered "successful" becuase they didnt live up to the pre-subscribed prophecy handed down by their 1600 SAT.
It tests your ability to take a test.
Many years ago, I was a college counselor in an inner city catholic high school. I was able to place several students with low SAT scores into some very good schools who had great support programs for all students. The students did well and most graduated. It was obvious to me that good study skills and support was responsible, as well as the desire of the students to do well.
8 requirements
1) Submit a creative work.
2) Submit a written criticism of a piece of literature.
3) Submit a physical fitness record (went running or biking or hiking, etc.)
4) Demonstrate a basic understanding of how government functions.
5) Be able to list at least 10 world leaders as well as the elected officials who represent you.
6) Submit grades from past schooling.
7) Submit proof of volunteering.
8) Know your social security number by heart.
Got all these? Are they of quality? Welcome to Higher Education.
Seth Waters However, that isn't how all "higher education" works. It does to some extent for becoming a bachelor student in a university; however many community colleges and some universities just take any one. There might be one requirement and that is have a C+ average but many don't have that requirement.
Seth Waters I quickly grasp concept's and remember them forever.
But I forget my own age and my wife has to constantly remind me.
I could barely name 2 world leaders, and my CRN has a 4 in it... I think....
Seth Waters
so if you
1) have no creative skills
2) have no original opinions, or are critiquing a work that isn't recognized by the arbiter as "literature"
3) are disabled or otherwise physically impaired
4) clash with the political bias of the arbiter
5) are not interested in foreign affairs
6) were homeschooled
7) are too busy earning wages to spend your very expensive time and energy on unpaid labour, or
8) haven't memorized your social, because you carry the card with you like you ought
you should not be allowed to pursue a higher education?
Seth Waters Speaking as someone with a graduate degree in Political Science. #5 is not important. Knowing how systems work, and the powers of various offices is useful, but knowing the random name that is currently sitting in the chair is not useful. Not when the ability to look those things up is so common.
Also, #2 is subjective. What is literature? And what constitutes meaningful or coherent criticism? Are we divining the author's intent, or only how the work reflects the feelings of the reader?
Again, these are just arbitrary requirements that YOU think should be important.
It's all about money. The reason we still have the SAT is so that the people making, grading, promoting and in management positions at the College Board can have a job. Also, behind the SAT are thousands of tutoring websites and companies who need the SAT as this is why most kids get tutored. Lose the SAT, they lose their job. But for people to spend money on preparing for and taking the SAT it has to be seen as important. That's where many colleges come in who support the "non-profit" College Board by making the test an important factor in admissions. The fact that an increasing number of have made the SAT optional is bad news for the College Board which is why they changed it (i felt so much pride when they mentioned that now each reading section would contain a historical document). What it all comes down to in the end is that we created the SAT. Thinking top schools will guarantee future success even though people from any college can be successful. Hard work, building long lasting connections, and effective group work I believe are the biggest factors to a successful professional career.
As an Asian, let me explain why, I think, Asians as an average get better test scores. It's ridiculous how Asian parents stress over standardized tests. Maybe it's because they're raised with the ideologies that only provable success is actually success, but in my experience, it's because many of the Asian parents are immigrants (1st or 2nd generation) and they're disillusioned by what the tests actually are. When I tried to explain to my mom that some well paying jobs don't even require college she thought I was lying. Unless they've heard of the college because it's well known as a good college, they don't see it as a viable means for a future. They don't think it's possible to live comfortably at all unless you go to Berkeley or Stanford. My mom signed me up for an (Asian) SAT class, and they claimed that no respectable college will accept anyone with an SAT score of less than 2200. So all in all, I think Asians get better scores because Asian parents make a big deal about them and force their kids to work harder than other races. Again, just generalizing, but it's what I've noticed.
@Sharanya Ghosh it is now they changed it it used to be 2400
Thank you for doing a video on this. As a high school junior, who has gone through test after test after test, and has just experienced Minnesota's somewhat miserable failure with Pearson and administering the MCAs, I very strongly feel that standardized testing does very little to measure much of anything. I test well. I have scored well for years without putting any effort in at all in my classes and at these statewide and nationwide tests. I have met a lot of people in my school career, and I will most likely meet a lot more, but there are people out there who are intelligent, who I would claim know far more than me, and yet they score very poorly on standardized tests. Simply speaking it isn't fair to them. Teachers get to know their students, and I believe that they are the best judgment of how smart, and even how good of a person that their students are. However, it isn't easy asking each teacher to evaluate their students, especially when they only spend three months getting to know each kid.
The tl;dr of it is that standardized tests are not the best way to test anything. They, in a perfect world, ought to be abolished, because there are people naturally skilled in them and there are people who aren't. It is somewhat biased. Talk to those who know the students best; they are the best indicators of their potential, because they know firsthand. One simple test will never know what potential a student may have.
Take it from a junior in high school. I am one of those affected. And too often, it seems, we teenagers are not asked our opinions. (We can vote in the next election, people! Time to start thinking about those who are about to join you.)
Hmm here in Norway we don't really have anything like it...
how things are done here is that well you get judge on your average grade (out of all of the subjects and the exams)
And when applying for a public university you simply go to website and list up to 10 choices and then you will be notified if you get in and which you get into (if you got in anywhere)
Oh and you also see the previous grade requirement for last year (grade requirement is if there is 50 places then the ones with the highest grades get in... however if there are fewer then 50 applying then everyone who applied will get in)
Jo Viljar Haugstulen I wanted to apply to University of Oslo because it's such an incredible school but only their grad school offers courses in English and I don't have time to learn Nynorsk + Bokmal (may I ask, are they very different? My small amount of understanding was that Nynorsk was conversational and Bokmal was written + scientific).
Bokmal and Nynorsk are pretty similar and your probably only need to learn Bokmal
Well of course they are different but well not horribly different and I am not sure but I think they mostly just use Bokmal in and around Oslo but I am not sure
Jo Viljar Haugstulen Thank you very much!
Here, in Canada, we have a similar system (in Ontario at least). I think that our methods, canada's and norway's, are vastly superior to the american model.
JohnIbanoff Well if I remember right the way they do it in Finland is probably even better if I remember right they usually do quite a bit better then Norway and most countries in tests and such which test reading and math skills and other such things
Can I just say it's really interesting to watch how PBS idea channel has grown what with having different sets, backgrounds, and dramatisations? It's really cool.
Of course I will always love Mike vlogging in front of the wall of records--in fact, that in of itself is very profound... but I also love seeing how you guys are now dramatising your stories. :)
I think jumping to the conclusion that the test is at fault is... hmm. I think it's looking at the issue from the wrong angle. If people with a better educational background (more tutoring, better funded schools, etc) do better on the test, then it should be an accurate predictor for success in academia, too. It's probably not a measure of innate ability, but it is still a good measure of how prepared people are for college.
The problem, then, is not the test. The problem is the massive inequalities in education. It is fairly well established that richer neighborhoods have better schools where students do better. I posit that this is the root of the problem, not the tests. Not that I think tests are ideal or even necessarily good, but I think claiming that they are representative of things other than what they claim is a bit disingenuous.
Edit: I'm seeing a lot of "it only tests your ability to take tests" in the comments. I would argue the same as the above: college involves a lot of test-taking, so if you are good at taking tests, you are more likely to succeed at college. Maybe college shouldn't be so reliant on test-taking-ability, but I still argue that the fault is with the institutions surrounding the tests, not the tests themselves. They serve the institutions and do what the institutions need them to do. It's the institutions that have the wrong goals and priorities.
Portfolios demonstrating students work & abilities / resumes / essays / interviews seems like the best way to go for admissions.
I'm from a low income background and got a 1420 on the Verbal/Mathematics portions. Didn't even use any extra test preparation. Variance?
GengarMarmalade Then you're probably smart. But that's irrelevant to the point of the video, which isn't saying that those lowers on the socioeconomic ladder can't do well on the test, rather, he's pointing out that those with more resources and privilege tend to do better than those who don't. Basically, you got a good score, awesome, you can get into a good college, but had you been born into a high income family you probably would've gotten an even higher score and then go to an Ivy League or equally prestigious school. His point was more about how the SAT and standardized testing perpetuates the existing power structure, not that the test is necessarily bad at testing what you know.
Where's the rule that says I can't make a tangentially related comment that doesn't necessarily address or respond to the video's thesis? I didn't miss the point, I just find it relevant to point out for the sake of perspective that statistical generalizations are hardly representative of absolute fact. Without hard data it's hard to know just how many exceptions to this curve of socioeconomic background vs test scores there are in either direction, and while I'm sure it all averages out on paper I still think it's handy to remember that not all poor people do poorly and not all rich people do well. Which is not the same as noting the trends in general, but again, perspective: it's easy for the human brain to go from "low income implies low score" to "low income equals low score."
GengarMarmalade You nailed something that bothers me in virtually all news-articles. "Statistics shows that X is /something something/ Y" is shortcut for lazy journalistic that became acceptable. This lazy attitude creates a constant reproduction of a culture of simple-mindedness. This culture erodes societies ability to think critically and complementary about hard and complex issues.
I would love to see a news-article that for once discusses a variance of data, or a significance of changes in poll data... I believe that exposure to more advanced concepts in news and media will push people to learn more. In contrast with today's culture of satisfactory-media that "gives people what the want".
ashkuigp I wouldn't label it as label it "lazy" journalism. Journalist write what will be read be the general populous. A wall of difficult text wont be of benefit to the average person and will simply deter someone who might otherwise look deeper.
MrBloodmountain I hear your concern on the notion of "wall of difficult text" but there are ways to convey and present difficult subjects without creating an unbreakable threshold of scientific jargon. There are ways to familiarize complex and interconnected issue and at least give some basic intuition about its structure.
And besides: variance, cause≠correlation, and some basic notion of statistical significance are not hard, inexpiable things. I bet Mike could explain those three in a five minutes.
This kinda reminded me of how schools art set up in a design style. Most schools are designed to be factory like according to the industrial revolution, cause the thought was and maybe still is that most students will go into factory work. For instance the desks mimic the lay out of factories with each person in a row, the bell is meant to mimic break/start/ ending bell, and they design of the building is supposed to be factory like with big bricks and so on. In fact, many times the architects that make prisons and factories make schools as well.
I did well on tests throughout my schooling because my brain has an easy time remembering straight forward facts; however, I struggle with the ability to discuss concepts in real time (I often feel overwhelmed and unprepared and have to go away and think about the subject for a while before I feel comfortable giving my ideas up to discussion) and would have benefited from a learning system that was more freeform than "1 + 1 = 2". Facts have their place, but that place shouldn't be the entirety of education.
I'm so glad somebody mentioned that NPR episode, because I remembered the story but couldn't remember where I heard it, and it had been bugging me all week!
omg Stanley Parable
I took the SAT back in 2009 and scored a little over 2000. Part of scoring decently is just knowing the tricks. I took a prep class a few weeks before that was taught by a former SAT grader. She explained how wrong answers net you negative points so avoid answering questions you weren't 100% sure on. Leaving those blank was the best choice. But the most useful piece of information was about the written portion of the test that isn't graded by machines. The prep class tutor told us that they spend so little time on each written essay that it's better to go for quantity over quality. Having several pages with near nonsense is better than just a few well thought out paragraphs. She said it also looks good to make a reference to a book you've read, and that if you haven't read any books covering the subject of the essay topic to just make one up. They don't look into it to confirm it's real it just looks smart that you "made a connection to a book." So the SAT is really just a how-well-do-you-know-the-rules-of-this-specific-test-that-you've-never-taken-and-never-will-take-again test.
Under 70!
If SAT tests are originally based on IQ tests, we can assume that IQ tests are also flawed. And they are.
IQ tests only affirm to a person's ability to learn new things quickly, not how "smart" someone actually is.
Joshua Fizer Yep, IQ tests are aptitude tests. The other kind are achievement tests.
You clearly dont get IQ then. IQ is meant to be a result of how fast people can learn something new, therefore be smart. Any person could be 'smart' if they would really try to.
For an example, theres a person that learned 11 langues fluently(?) In a short time. (1-3 years) this person have an extremly high IQ, since he did learn it faster than avarage (5-20 years).
Thats what IQ is.
(I still thinks the IQ test doesnt work that good, but just as a reminder to you what IQ even is.)
Joshua Fizer I fail to see the difference between being able to learn things quickly and being smart. The less effort it takes somebody to learn something, the smarter they are.
Joshua Fizer Is that how all SATs are done? In the UK, our assessments are almost always subject specific. Is it really a case of "X is to Y as A is to what?" rather than actual knowledge on a topic?
Cause if so, that's the most arse-backwards method of assessment and working out what you want to study that I've ever heard of.
True. For example me and one of my friends took an online qi test. I scored 120 and she scored 130, however I'm getting A's, B's and A stars in my gsces while my friend is getting D's and C's in the same classes.
Assessment has been all the rage in my multiple subjects credential program lately. One great exercise we did was taking three tests back to back. The first being your standard multiple choice test, followed by a short answer, and then finally project based assessment. Each assessment type asks the test taker to use different tactics in order to complete it. The multiple choice relied on knowing what it wasn't. In other words eliminating the impossible, and then evaluating the remaining answers that fit best with what you knew and what the question asked. Short answer allowed for more freedom in choice and application but was hindered but what the test taker believed the reader wanted to hear. In other words, writing for the teacher. Lastly project based assessment asked you to predict before testing it with physical material. Once constructed you would diagram the configuration that worked and explain how and why that was the case. In that assessment model prior knowledge was assessed, application, and their ability to explain the fundamental principle behind it. Although it may have still been bound to writing for the teacher, but it allowed for room for experimentation.
Anyway this is the major push right now, especially in California with the new common core. When and how to use certain kinds of assessment.
One final thought that is often overlooked is what the test does for the test taker. Tests like the SAT are not meant to be a chance for growth, rather it is a time to test what you "know" at a very superficial level. Testing for a score. Plus little to no feedback is given to the test taker on HOW they can improve. Like when I was taking the CSET, when you didn't pass it was like "whelp your number isn't this number. Pay us more money for another chance to make your number this number!"
I'm just glad the last major test in my life like that is the RICA. THEN I'M DONE.
Wait I thought KFC stood for Kentucky Fried Chicken... then again I'm not American
Most people I know say that and that's probably where they got the name, but they can't call it Kentucky Fried Chicken for legal reasons
***** We call Kentucky Fried Chicken KFC in Asia, if you say Kentucky Fried Chicken, they all seem confused.
me too.
***** That's what I thought.
***** in my country, everyone calls it Kentucky. nobody knows it by KFC
I am a math teacher. I love math and I love education (understood as the teaching/learning experience and not as the paperwork and bureaucracy it is usually surrounded by). Having said that, I don't like tests (with scores) in general and hate standardized tests because their objective is to measure something that in my opinion can´t be measured. You CAN "teach" even an elementary school student to add vectors in space and they can get a good score on it. But that doesn't mean that the student really understand what vectors are or why they are useful. And the fact that teaching has been focused on getting students prepared for the tests has only reinforced this test-culture.
I think that we are never going to get rid of tests or standardized tests, because as you said, is convenient and less expensive than an individual personalized assessment of every student, which would be ideal. Also, how else can you decide who goes to university (for example) when the demand is way larger than the offer? You'll need a score on a test, because it would be impractical to compare and rank qualitative data.
There are, however, some disciplines in which standardized tests can completely disappear: art, graphic design, programming... It is not difficult to imagine a university that focuses on teaching and creating a learning environment for students without making any test at all. The diploma wouldn't mean much and the students will rely on their portfolios to get a job or demonstrate their knowledge. The "certification" will be on the student's ability to demonstrate their knowledge (in whatever way necessary) and/or the employer's ability to verify their candidates knowledge.
I know lots of people.
The people I know who are geniuses looked at the SATs and said, "Pfft, I'll go build a business/write a book/champion a cause/develop a theory/pontificate instead. I don't need a test to confirm that I'm intelligent; I am intelligent, so I'll go put my mind to work" and they changed the world around them either for the bad or the good, and were leaders in everything they did and everywhere they went
The people I know with a midling-high intellect looked at the SATs and said, "Omg, the entire universe hangs on this test and I won't make it anywhere unless I prove myself" and they studied for hundreds of hours to perform well on it. They got into decent universities and are now doing the socially venerated white-collar equivalent of bagging groceries (don't get me wrong, these are highly specialized groceries... pharmacology, accounting, human resources)
The people I know with a normal intellect looked at the SATs and said, "Only a soft fleshed fool would bother himself with that" and totally rejected it, got a technical certification or joined the labor force and started families where they were foundational and irreplacable members of their communities.
All the smart people I know were so smart they realized that the prismatic nature of intelligence is so vast and contextual that attempting to quantify it is presently impossible. Knowing this, they balked & went and did something useful (a trait curiously shared by the working class "normal" intellects)
If you ask normal "intellectuals" if they know how to fix their car, 99% of those you ask will say no, or offer some assurance that they're pretty sure they could change a tire if they needed to. But the "dumb people," when asked if a person who can't fix a car should be considered intelligent, will balk and condemn those being discussed as hopeless fools*.
It is clear that attempting to use a test to measure intelligence is a doomed prospect. It doesn't work.
Cue chorus of: "BUT THE SATs AREN'T MEASURING INTELLIGENCE, THEY'RE--"
Please stop.
* This is not some law I am declaring, it is a paraphrase of tendency you can observe around you.
Thanks Mike for taking your SATs in the Stanley Parable. It's nice to know at least one person was doing real work in that building... I mean when I was there I just spent the whole time in some broom closet.
We will most likely pass the need for standardized testing when the toasters take over the world.
But seriously. We will always want a standardized test. We (at least in this society) want there to be a base line to judge by and compare ourselves to.
Also you completely neglected to talk about the SATs with an eye towards quote unqoute learning disabilities i.e. dyslexia, skytopia, dysgraphia, ADD/ADHD, etc. I can say form personal experience that such "disabilities" heavily effect the out come if such tests.
so your saying that when calls me stupid or disabled because i think differently that the stand idle student is completely and utterly irreverent? i find this offensive.
Ok i totally misunderstood you before. Thank you for clearing that up.
and um, while yes a larger portion of tumblr users have a bias against white heterosexual men, there are also a lot of tumblr users who are trying to change that hate.
I'm an Australian with a very limited idea of how American school works, so correct me if I'm wrong.
I think the way America does things is that it is absolutely compulsory to take subjects like maths, sciences, and english, and at the end of it all, you sit an exam that covers everything, the SAT.
As a person currently receiving an Australian high school education, this sounds like insanity.
In Australia, the last two years of high school are called VCE (in victoria, WACE in western australia, etc). You pick six subjects to study over the two years. The only compulsory subject is English, or English as a Second Language. There are four (that my school offers) different levels of maths you can do (Specialist, Methods, Advanced General, Foundation), but you do not HAVE to do one. The subjects you can take are diverse, depending what subjects your school offers. For example, I am taking English, Maths Methods, Music Performance, Religion and Society (because at my school religion is compulsory), Biology, and Chemistry. My friend is taking English, Advanced General Maths, Religion and Society, Accounting, History, and Business Management.
Throughout the second year you do a series of assessments called SACs (sometimes SATs), that account for half your score for that subject at the end. The end of year exam accounts for the other half. For each subject you get a Study Score out 50, and an over all score taken from your Stady Scores called the ATAR (Australian tertiary application ranking, I think), which you use to apply for universities.
If traditional education is not your cup of tea, you chose to go down the VCAL (Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning, again different in each state). As I'm doing VCE, not VCAL, I can't tell you much about it, but I know it involves a lot of self teaching and work placement, and completing VET (Vocational Education and Training) courses.
So you can see that high school can be very tailored to your strengths and interests to ensure you get the best ATAR score you can. I admit it's not perfect, but it seems a hell of a better then taking a number of compulsory subjects and sitting one test for all of them.
Also KFC isn't just a string of letters, it stands for Kentucky Fried Chicken?
This is a good point but I absolutely hate when my classmates use this as an excuse to fail. "SAT scores don't matter because you can still be succesfull!" No, just because some succesfull people did bad on there SATs doesn't mean you shouldn't try at all. Get your lazy ass off your Xbox, and start studying. Because right now all these kids think that failing your SAT means nothing. NO, it still means SOMETHING, so don't screw over our generation by being stupid. Don't use this video as an excuse to basically drop out please.
Mind you, there's no such thing as "failing" the SAT. We are only being compared to how we stack up with other high school students on a scale of 1-100. The reason why we can't fully accept a correlation with intelligence and the SAT is because it gives people the delusion that their level of competence is fixed. The test only measures how well you take the test, that's why students of higher family incomes tend to have a better advantage in receiving higher scores. The SAT can open doors for people applying to college and it does have some merit in measuring college-readiness, yet it will never dictate a person's future success. The SAT helps but it is still meaningless. It solely depends on the individual's own purpose.
Mind you, there's no such thing as "failing" the SAT. We are only being compared to how we stack up with other high school students on a scale of 1-100. The reason why we can't fully accept a correlation with intelligence and the SAT is because it gives people the delusion that their level of competence is fixed. The test only measures how well you take the test, that's why students of higher family incomes tend to have a better advantage in receiving higher scores. The SAT can open doors for people applying to college and it does have some merit in measuring college-readiness, yet it will never dictate a person's future success. The SAT helps but it is still meaningless. It solely depends on the individual's own purpose.
0:00 Stanley noticed that the background was actually part of the office he was employed in. Amazed at such a coincidence, Stanley decided to tell the world in the comment section of said video that this was the case, informing them at what point the video was at, what the background was of, and why this matters. After carefully making sure the grammar and spelling is correct, he felt proud of his handiwork, and was ready to share it with the world. Stanley hit the "Post" button and
42
I love that in the first scene you used the 2 doors from The Stanley Parable.
we don't need no education
we don't need no thought control
no dark sarcasm in the classroom
teachers, leave them kids alone
Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone!
All in all, you're just another brick in the wall
I got a 2110 (not that that means anything besides that I was raised in a wealthy, homogenous area). I raised my score 240 points solely by listening to boards of canada -- props to you for having them on your wall -- on the way to the test.
The alternative to SATs AND the hugely expensive, largely pointless university system is a return to apprenticeships. It won't happen though because employers don't want to foot the cost of training and students want the freedom to change employers at the drop of a hat. no loyalty in either direction ensures three decades of needless debt as a "Welcome to your working life" gift.
An even better alternative is to start your own business straight from high school.
Mat BroomfieldBut what about THE CHILDREN? Do you hate children, you baby killer?
But seriously, apprenticeship did a lot of good for individuals and for the economy and its influence is all but missing in this day of near meaningless college degrees and state professional licensing. Primary school and college didn't prepare me for life past academia at all and I wouldn't be in the relatively privileged position I'm in now if I didn't have an adult friend who's acted as a mentor to me. I'm afraid most kids today aren't as lucky as I was.
I like the idea of apprenticeship, but unfortunately, I think it would really only work for people who knew what they wanted to do. In some cases, college can be a good way of exposing young adults to a wider array of information they couldn't get in high school that further pushes them towards fields they may want to join. If only education could be simultaneously deep and wide.
Mat Broomfield most startups fail within a few years. i can't imagine starting up a business immediately after high school with no money or connections improving the odds at all
Good to bring up. Thing is, though, that apprenticeships and post-secondary degrees have different objectives. In an apprenticeship, one learns "this is how you do the thing"; in a classroom, one more often wishes to learn "this is what is important to know about the thing". If that is all the would-be learners are looking for, that can be found much more efficiently as part of a group, without the awkwardness of a "journeyman historian". The modem education system morphed into its current state from tutoring after all! Apprenticeships are still out there for the working-skills, on-the-job sort of knowledge.
Robo Pie Most startups fail because they are poorly conceived and planned. If schools were teaching valuable skills in this area, the odds could be greatly improved.
My wife and I are both in graduate school, and I have a few friends who have completed their graduate study. What is striking about graduate study is that a good number of the programs don't have a test in class, until the end of the program as a whole. So there is this focus on actual learning while in the program, but when you get out you have to prove that you learned in what is necessary as approved by a board. Even after graduate school, you have to take some exams for licensure in certain areas. So while in school, you have this focus on education, but when you get out, all that education gets transformed into fitting a mold and not stretching that education and creativity that grad school brings.What I am getting at is that it seems that standardized tests only mark what you "know" and not how you can apply creativity and problem solving to such "knowledge."
The SAT test like most of formal education is not a measure of intelligence, but a measure of long-term obedience to a systems requirements. Most college grads know that passing a class isn't about learning a broad spectrum understanding of a topic, it is about completing assignments and regurgitating what the professor wants. Similarly SAT is about learning how to pass the SAT. That said, genuine and useful education CAN happen in the background and through the process of completing these tasks, but is not necessary to completing the requirements. In a way though, formal education is accomplishing its purpose, not to education, but to prepare workers for the job market: a place where their main purpose will be to do what they are told. It's a system that "works" but it isn't one that fosters creativity and diverse thinking. It's a system that doesn't reward divergent thinking. Many creative entrepreneurs I know never went to college or cared about the SAT. I think this says something about the hegemony of thought and behavior that is found within our western education system.
I just finished taking the SAT and my studying courses basically explained one thing to me: the SAT will always ask the same types of questions over and over again and you just have to memorize how to answer them. To study for the SAT I actually did minimal learning, I just had to memorize how to take the test. And it worked. I did well on the SAT. I know there are people better at some subjects than I am and I still scored better because I memorized the tricks.
Bonus points to you guys for the background in the opening. Well played.
I am glad you guys have brought this up. It's something that I have been thinking about since leaving high school. I am completely on board with something new but I don't think it will happen any time soon. I'm glad to see that College Board is trying to do something. I think it's just too easy for both grading purposes as well as college selection purposes. Seeing a list of thousands of applicants is daunting and dwindling that by setting a threshold number on a test is incredibly easy.
I think my major issue with it is something that you didn't directly mention and it's the issue of teaching to the test. This takes place more for state tests and Advanced Placement (AP) exams, but I think all standardized tests are included to a degree. With these state tests learning has become less about learning and more about "teaching to the test." I know I had several talks with my chemistry teacher during return visits to my school and we got talking about this kind of thing and he told me about how the science department was basically being threatened by the district because students didn't do well on the state exam. That meant that there was less funding being given by the state to support the school. So basically because students weren't learning what they "needed" to learn the teachers are getting repercussions. I just think this whole issue is an unforeseen fiasco that not enough people are trying to do something about.
his voice makes this video so much better
The SAT and ACT test is a university Admissions college from high school like required. In community colleges they don’t accept SAT/ACT scores is called ACCUPLACER testing is a community College Testing.
Thankfully in Brazil we are finally getting our own terrible standard test! Because if it's broken everywhere else and we don't have the problem, we need to get it right now.
As someone doing their GCSE's (British SATs) this video really spoke to me. A lot of the things I'm currently revising don't feel like they're being taught for the sake of learning, they feel like they're being taught for the sake of taking the tests. The entire curriculum of RS is based around answering the exam questions and not for the subject matter. I sometimes feel like GCSEs aren't a test of knowledge or intelligence but a test of how well you can revise. The worst part is that, largely, My GCSE's won't help me get a job because employers know try don't show anything about the person. It's like everyone but the government knows that exams are pointless.
Wow! On the same level as Boards of Canada and Wendy Carlos, that's a pretty big honor! Greatly appreciated! Thanks!
I am about to complete my freshmen year of college here in Auburn University in Alabama and I took the ACT about five times, it is quite similar to the SAT. I agree with what you are saying. My parents paid for me to take classes that were designed to help me score better on the test and they did. I am now attending school on a scholarship that well out weights the money spent on those classes.
I would contend that not only does this test favor those with the money to pay for extra help, these tests are also not a good gauge of how well students will preform in college. There are so many outside factors in college that just don't exist in high school, well for me at least. There are so many distractions like staying up until 4 in the morning watching RUclips, or getting involved too much with Greek life in college. The ACT doesn't evaluate how well you combat new and very powerful distractions that are simply not present when living at home with your parents.
Additionally, I feel it is simply a test of how well you can take a test. It is not a gauge of how well you can solve problems or what knowledge you posses. It tests how well you can prepare for a standardized test that is almost the same every time. For example, when I was preparing for the ACT, I didn't learn new math concepts or read extra chapters in my science text book, I took multiple practice tests and devised strategies for them. For the math section I knew I had to limit myself to problems I could solve quickly and accurately, I only had about one minute per question. I am quite good at math, but I had to skip over problems that I knew I could solve, but simply didn't have the time to do. And the science section does not require much scientific knowledge. it simply tests how well you can read terribly designed graphs and answer questions about them.
The test is broken, it does not evaluate what it was designed to evaluate and those with resources have a significant advantage over those without!
I appreciated the less amount of music used in this episode. Sometimes when you're using big words to convey complex ideas it's distracting. Great work on this episode, editors!
Can you talk about more in depth about shadow education, diploma mill,and ghostwriter aka essay mill ?
Your use of the Stanley Parable as a background makes me really wish you have an episode focusing on/using/referring to it some way. At the very least, your use suggests that you've now played it, which makes me happy for some inexplicable reason.
I remember the regents were very important for graduation in my high school, Xaverian. The regents had written, multiple choice, short answers and essays. They covered the information we were learning and were also mandated in New York. Would something like those be a solution, even though they are being done away with or are?
Loving that Alpines reference! Those guys are GOOD.
Wait, you guys got a full studio done? Last i remembered you were hanging records off of cardboard suspended in your living room, Mike. This is awesome i'd love to see a video about your setup one of these days
FTC "Ring it Up!!" FIRST would be happy to know that you used it as the example for collaboration.
I'm planning on taking the ACT pretty soon, and unfortunately, no matter what was said in this video, there is no escape if I want to get into to a prestigious college of any kind.
That first background... Stanley.
I need to play that again. brb.
That Stanley Parable background is nice for this video. It works really well.
As an educator, it's difficult to grapple with standardized testing. On the one hand, setting educational standards is a very good thing, ensuring teachers have a foundation upon which to build a curriculum and that all students will have the same level of exposure to ideas in a way that builds upon what was already learned. A fourth grade teacher doesn't need to worry about whether or not the third grade teachers taught "A" because it's part of the standards. Likewise, testing is important because it shows teachers that they're getting through to their students; it's like a diagnostic for the teacher more than the student.
Standardized Testing, for whatever reason, really throws a wrench in that. As implemented, the focus is strictly on the numbers and that's bad news! Schools are hesitant to hold students back because it reflects poorly on them, which results in students moving forward that haven't met the determined standards. Teachers' worth is evaluated based on a student's performance on one test that may be vastly different from what has been done in the classroom leading up to that point. A teacher can do an excellent job teaching math critically and analytically, giving the students the tools they need to succeed, but the rigid structure of Standardized Tests can throw many students off. Testing anxiety, too, gets in the way.
I don't, however, see any changes happening anytime soon. Standardized Testing is a cheap way to evaluate a large swath of teachers, students, and schools. They give concrete numbers; "Ash got a 76% on reading comprehension" is a lot more digestible than "Ash's overall performance, shown through this portfolio of work, demonstrates a grasp of reading comprehension on par with the average fourth grader." People get real stupid when numbers show up and hate reading.
Oh, and on that "they hate reading" bit:
tl;dr Standardized Tests suck. They aren't going away.
I think colleges are also tempted by the idea of having an objective comparison between students from different schools and backgrounds. Trying to choose between thousands of strangers as to who would be the best fit for your educational community is kind of a crazy thing. And clearly the SAT is not actually an answer, but the reductive approach of "well, these people look similar on paper but this one has a higher score, so let's go with that" at least makes it easier to make a decision, even if it's not a good one. I might argue that it goes similarly in the opposite direction with things like the US News & World Reports or Princeton Review rankings; you tour some schools, they seem good, one's ranked higher, so it's probably better so given the choice (and equivalent financial aid) maybe you go there.
Standardizing testing other than the SAT is extremely important not because it measures students, but because it measures teachers and their curriculum. Here in New York, most of our highscool tests are standardized (although i think they've been restructuring this system recently). Tests like these are the benchmark to which schools are measured. If there wasn't a standard math test, how would colleges ensure that their students are coming in with the basic knowledge to complete higher courses? In my community college, there are plenty of pre-college math courses because many students (from mostly poorer districts) aren't ready for tough courses like calculus. This is a double edged sword though. Many of my high school teachers would specifically teach to the standardized test at the end of the year (NY Regents Exam) and nothing else. They would focus on only teaching the test, and nothing else because it would make them look good. Better teachers would teach beyond the test, and as a student I took much more away from those classes. I've heard my professors talk about an interesting solution to the problems of having one giant test looming over the entire class, it is to have a few standard questions that that every school needs to include in their final exam. A sort of litmus test that ensures students can do important tasks, but doesn't restrict the teachers. Standardized testing does seem to be a terrible way to measure a students inherent aptitude, but does help in measuring how much they learned, or rather how well they've been taught.
Is that a FIRST Tech Challenge Robot at 7:09? Would really love to see a show about FIRST, very interesting organization!
lol nice touch with the stanley parable-esque thing at the beginning
i am 16 and i am in Oakland community college i am just about to finish my first year. I did not have to take the sat. There are plenty of other alternatives you just have to look for them. and no i never was home schooled
I am interested to hear your thoughts on the idea that if you do poorly on the SAT or ACT, you will be better at the other. I know you said you were focusing in on the SAT in this episode, but this is something I have always wondered. When I took the SAT I had average scores (makes sense, from what you said--I am a middle class, hispanic/white woman) so my teachers encouraged me to try the ACT instead...they said that each test focuses on two different things, so it was likely I would do better with a second go. And they were right??? I had a pretty flippin' good ACT score.
Would you guys be willing to do a part two of this episode and talk about the ACT?
I love The Stanely Parable background in the beginning. Cute reference ;D
I feel it is also important to note that because the SAT's, ACT, use multiple choice questions, the tests also check the "Test Taking" skill and ability. For those who are unfamiliar with this, it normally starts off with going through the test, and answering the questions that you know you have the answer for. After that is complete, you go back to the questions that you skipped and try reducing the options, and then picking answers that have a higher chance of being correct.
An example of this would be:
A question on the test has four possible answers: A,B,C, and D. Through reduction, you know that B is incorrect. Which leaves A,C, and D. If D is "All of the Above." It would include B, and is therefore incorrect as well. Which leaves you with A and C. Seems like a 50/50 chance of getting it right, until you realize in most multiple choice tests, standardized tests included, answers near the center of the tests have a higher likely hood of being correct. So you choose C. That is unless you feel there have been too many answer recently that have been B or C. In that case, go with A. If the test doesn't have a trend of giving each question a "D: None of the Above", "D: All of the Above", or something similar, there is a higher chance of that answer being correct when it does show up. The primary reason this technique works, is many tests score unanswered questions the same as wrong answers, so there is no penalty for not guessing. Even tests that don't score incorrect and missing answers the same benefit from this technique, because many times, you can reduce a questions's possible options to a degree where you feel safe guessing. I acknowledge that this in itself is a worthy skill, but I doubt they are testing for it in the Language section.
As someone growing up with a severe anxiety disorder, my ability to learn can be very unpredictable. I can honestly range from being completely fine with school to being unable to get out of bed in the morning due to unending panic attacks; and that has been one of my largest problems. I know that these tests are completely mandatory at my school and I am put in an environment that is basically asking for anxiety and I can barely do an addition problem when in the midst of a panic attack. I can't help but feel I am set up for failure before I even take the test knowing all this and the school system thinks they are setting up a level playing field when they are giving me a test that was created to treat every student the same way; which is in a way giving children without disorders and advantage.
I'm a sophomore right now preparing to take the PSAT, ACT, and SAT. The tests really only seem to be measuring certain qualities and facts I don't care about outside studying to get a good score.
I believe if there wasn't a test but something like a 1v1 interview with no predetermined questions handed out by says teachers or counselors would be a good fix. People can't spend money to get ahead, takes enormous stress off of students to do well, can be a much better indicator what traits people actually look for, etc.
Really love those opening sketches.
I mean when I took SAT prep, it was really just a class teaching about how to take the test. Finding out a lot of things like "If you don't know, DONT GUESS". I mean my whole school career up to that point with multiple choice quizzes was "guess, you've got a 25% chance of being right!" That was told to me for YEARS by teachers. And then the SAT comes 'round and unless you take a class, you have no idea that guessing will take points off, while leaving it blank just doesn't add points. Guessing is outright detrimental to your score and I never would have known had I not had an opportunity to take the classes I did.
I took the SAT 4 times, studying more each successive time to get the best score I could get. Between my first PSAT, then SAT, and second SAT 2 years later I had exactly the same score each time. The third time I took it I made 200 points better simply because I decided to focus less on getting each question right and more on answering more questions quicker and guessing on hard or in depth questions. I studied the hardest for my fourth try and made the exact same score again. My 1810 means nothing. As a student who graduated with highest honors from my university among others who made 2100s and failed to finish school because of a few hard classes, I can say that the SAT was a much better identifier of those who had more experience with testing under pressure. I'm a teacher now and I've told countless students that if they want to get better at the SAT or ACT the just need to take timed practice tests, as many as possible, and stop studying individual topics or questions. It has made scores go up for every student I have told to do so. The test is just a test. Those who are more comfortable with the test will do better.