Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

{raises hand}

Um-- I'm a person who believes that those values don't reflect a real ability gap. (Referring to Bostonian's post above)

With that said, however, such measures are profoundly stupid from my perspective as a taxpayer because they are ineffective.

Ill-prepared students do NOT graduate from college. If they do, they graduate with degrees that leave them relatively ill-prepared for the workplace.

Ergo, I do not want my tax dollars subsidizing college education (a somewhat scarce resource) for anyone that isn't LIKELY to make good use of that subsidization. It's a subtle distinction, but rather like the difference between "investment" and "gambling."



It's too little too late when we're talking about high school students who are demonstrably 2-6 years BEHIND their well-prepared peers. Even a reasonably bright student is going to have difficulty cramming 8 years of study into the next four, yet we seem to be operating under the delusion that remediation can, in point of fact, "bring them up to where they should be" once they are ENROLLED in college.

That's not a racial issue, but it is a question of "advantage/disadvantage" that also happens to break along SES and racial lines.

I'm frankly indignant that the only "solution" to this pervasive problem seems to be to hit the accelerator on the train, now that we've noticed that the brakes have failed and we're running out of track. Rather crazy to think this is going anywhere good, IMO.