ANSWERING SAT QUESTIONS

With state lawmakers now expressing their concerns about the state’s switch from the Maine Educational Assessment to the Scholastic Aptitude Test for 11th- graders, the commissioner of education should slow down and reconsider this rushed and misguided decision.

Sen. Michael Brennan, a former long-time member of the Legislature’s Education Committee, has introduced legislation to delay the switch to allow for more study. Rep. Tom Saviello submitted a bill that would require legislative approval for such a change, something that is not required but that the Education Department should support to allow broader public discussion of the pros and cons of the test change. Both bills would be considered after lawmakers return to Augusta in January.

In the meantime, Commissioner Susan Gendron should put the switch on hold to answer the many questions that have been raised since she announced her intention to replace the MEA with the SAT for high school juniors, in part to boost college attendance.

Like many educators, Sen. Brennan and Rep. Saviello are concerned that the MEA and SAT serve different purposes. They are not convinced that the SAT, a test which is meant to measure aptitude and therefore predict the takers success in college, can accomplish the same thing as the MEA, which is supposed to measure what a student has learned.

After hearing about Maine’s plan, the National Association for College Admission Counseling wrote a letter to Commissioner Gendron warning that her plan was a misuse of the SAT. “Though it has changed since its origin, it is not now, nor has it ever been, intended to measure performance in high school curriculum. … The College Board has repeatedly indicated that its use has only been validated as an admission entrance exam,” the group wrote.

Even as an admissions test, its validity has long been questioned. This is the reason some schools have stopped requiring SAT scores as part of their admissions package. Bates College in Lewiston made SAT scores optional in 1984. A study of the academic performance of classes that entered the college between 1985 and 1989 found little correlation between SAT scores and academic performance. Those who did not submit SAT scores averaged 160 points lower than those who did. Yet, the freshman grade point average of non-submitters was only five one-hundredth of a point lower than those who submitted test scores. Non-submitters were much less likely to be dismissed from the college for academic reasons.

The University of California system, the nation’s largest user of the SAT, found similar results. In 2001, the system’s president, Richard Atkinson, asked the Academic Senate of the University of California to drop the SAT requirement in favor of tests that assess what students actually learn in school rather than what he called “ill-defined notions of aptitude.” In June 2002, the College Board announced that beginning in 2005 it would add a written essay and more rigorous mathematics section to the test.

Rep. Saviello, who submitted a bill last session to abolish the MEA, is no fan of that test, but worries that the SAT is the wrong replacement. He wants the department to investigate whether the Iowa Tests of Basic Skills or another exam that Maine students routinely take would be a better fit.

Both lawmakers, as well as educators across the state, have raised important questions about this proposal. It is now up to the Education Department to take the time to answer them.