TESTING
S.A.T.s Under Fire
With the snows of winter comes a traumatic experience for 1,400,000 of the nation's preparatory and high school students: they must suffer through the three-hour Scholastic Aptitude Tests. Much of the agony stems from the exaggerated belief of many students that their S.A.T. scores will determine whether they get into the college of their choice—or even any college at all. For the most part, the pain is pointless. A number of educators now contends that the tests are an imprecise indicator of future success—and colleges are relying on them less and less in picking their freshman classes.
One of the most outspoken critics of the S.A.T.s is Social Critic Martin L. Gross, a lecturer at Manhattan's New School for Social Research, who began his crusade against testing in 1962 with a book called The Brain Watchers. He calls S.A.T.s "the nail in the coffin of American intellectualism," since their emphasis on "certainty and right answers" makes test-taking ability "the criterion for college performance, and measures it badly." Gross and other critics deplore the pressure on students to score well on the tests. Many schools prep their students on the kind of vocabulary and mathematical skills tested by the exams; high school principals, as well as college publicists, tend to brag about high-average S.A.T. scores as badges of success.*
No Guarantee. Doubts about the S.A.T.s are shared by many university admissions officers. Yale's Admissions Dean R. Inslee Clark Jr. is not impressed by "multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank tests" as indices of a student's capability. The test scores, agrees Amherst Admissions Dean Eugene Wilson, "do not guarantee the presence of those human qualities and intellectual abilities we value most." Yale's Clark, as well as many Negro educators, feels that the tests' subtle orientation toward white middle-class values loads them against Negroes and other culturally deprived youths.
Actually, no one is more aware of the limitations of the S.A.T.s than the Educational Testing Service of Princeton, N.J., which produces and administers the tests, along with achievement exams in such specific fields as history and French, for the 782 colleges and universities that belong to the College Entrance Examination Board. Officials of E.T.S. continually warn colleges that the two S.A.T. exams are blunt rather than surgical instruments, and should not be used as the main standard in selecting students. Even E.T.S. officials rate high school grades as a better indication of how a student will perform in college.
At the same time, the E.T.S. examiners insist that their tests do serve a valid academic function. Since grading standards vary enormously among the nation's 24,000 secondary schools, the S.A.T.s at the very least provide admissions officers with a national common denominator in helping judge the thousands of applications they get every year. A high scorer from a small, little-known school is thus given greater consideration than he might have received from his class record alone. By the same token, the underachiever —the bright youth with poor high school grades—is often spotlighted by the tests, given a second chance to prove himself.
More like a prep school than the average public high, Boston Latin has a number of programs not found anywhere else in the city system. There are eight advanced courses—equivalent to freshman-level work in college—in subjects ranging from chemistry to German. Boston Latin has also preserved much of its proud classical past. There are six classes in Greek, including a tough honors course conducted by ex-Fulbright Scholar Joseph Desmond. Nearly everyone takes five years of Latin , and one of the top academic prizes is for the ancient, neglected art of public declamation.
Every March, 2,500 boys from Boston grammar schools are chosen to take Latin's entrance tests; only the top 550 or so are picked, and 20% of them now come from poor backgrounds. O'Leary makes no apologies for the "middleclass values" his school seeks to give them. "That's what made America," he says. "The Protestant-ethic. You can't improve upon it." Coat and tie are mandatory dress , and at least three hours' homework is required every night. Not surprisingly, the attrition rate is steep: 60% of those who enter fail to graduate.
Frills & Eyewash. Not all educators agree with O'Leary's aims or his drillmaster methods. "Education has to be a two-way street," says one critic, "and I doubt that it is at Boston Latin." Others complain that Boston Latin's curriculum is hopelessly outdated and irrelevant, and that its methodology and discipline are straight from the 17th century. O'Leary, in turn, chides some of the more permissive, student-oriented schools in the suburbs for teaching "eye-wash," "frills" and "too many purposeless programs."
With a staff and curriculum of his choosing and the highest admission standards in the city, O'Leary's main concern now is capital. Despite its glittering reputation, Boston Latin receives no more money per student than any other city school. The headmaster's proposed solution: a private endowment of $4,000,000 to supplement city funds. To achieve that would cap the career of a supremely confident and happy man. "I am one of those rare people who have achieved their life ambition," says O'Leary. "There is nothing I would rather have as my epitaph than 'Headmaster of Boston Latin School.' "
*Some representative mean scores of this year's freshmen on the verbal half of the exam: Bryn Mawr, 703; Vassar, 659; Princeton, 655; Johns Hopkins, 640. If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
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