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Friday, September 8, 2006
The Counselor’s SAT Dilemma
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Is it really Friday? I guess so, since I got to read my favorite newspaper column, “Am I Right? by Jordy Ray Purlky Jr. The B Movie King.” Wow, this week went by fast.
Can you handle one more post about the SATs? Here’s an op-ed about how unfair the SAT is in the way that it opens the gates for talk about “Georgia’s stupid kids.”
Rick A. Breault, an education professor at Kennesaw State University, writes:
“Its intended function was to help determine a student’s aptitude for and possibility of succeeding in college. It was to be taken by high school students who were seriously considering college. And for many years, that was a small percentage of all high school students. Therefore, when a large portion of the high school population is strongly encouraged or even required to take the test and it is consequently used as a measure of what they have learned, the test has been used improperly and is no longer valid.
Now, with the push to get all students into college — whether or not they want to do so or have the ability, but simply as job training and credentialing — using the SAT as a measure of real learning is almost like using liquid measure to determine the distance between two places.”
So many questions here… The one I’m most interested in is whether counselors have an obligation to steer kids toward the SAT or away from the SAT? I’ve heard from many who say they are doing the right thing in getting most of their kids signed up, and other schools are cheating by discouraging kids from taking the SAT. I’m wondering, though, is it really wrong to be honest with a student about his or her post-secondary options?
