Charles Murray explains why spatial ability will likely not be tested on the SAT or ACT (more than it already is with simple geometry questions):
http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/07/ho...tify-more-of-our-most-talented-students/How political correctness will kill an easy way to identify more of our most talented students
by Charles Murray
July 16, 2013, 4:02 pm
The United States’ economy desperately needs all the scientific, engineering, and IT geniuses it can find. One
of the most important functions that the SAT can serve is to identify young Americans with that kind of
intellectual potential.
For many years, the scholarly literature has indicated that we have been missing a lot of that talent because
one of its key components, spatial ability, is not identified by the verbal component of the SAT and only
partially identified by the math component. The current best guess is that we’re failing to identify about half
of students within the top one percent of spatial ability. That estimate comes from an important new study by
scholars at Vanderbilt University about to be published in Psychological Science and already summarized in
the New York Times.
The good news is that IQ tests have accurately measured spatial ability for decades and the items to do so
could easily be incorporated into the SAT. The bad news is that it’s extremely unlikely that the College Board,
which administers the SAT, will have the nerve to do so. Why? Because the largest gender differences and
the largest ethnic differences are found in the subtests that measure spatial skills. Here’s the dilemma facing
the top brass at the College Board: if they add a spatial component to go with their math and verbal
components, they will indeed identify lots of extremely talented students whose potential is underestimated
by the existing components of the SAT. But that spatial component will also show larger gender and ethnic
differences than the other components (if you’re curious, the big winners from such a revision of the SAT
would be Asians and males). What do you suppose the chances are that the College Board will be willing to
take the heat for such a result? If you want to make a bet, I’ll take zero and you can have everything else.
