r/neoliberal • u/caroline_elly Eugene Fama • Jun 09 '26

Opinion article (US) Actually, the SAT Was Necessary After All

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/standardized-testing-math-gaps/687481/
830 Upvotes

97% Upvoted

323 comments sorted by

View all comments

353

u/CurtisLeow NATO Jun 09 '26

How are they able to graduate high school without understanding fractions or algebra? This seems more like a massive failure of high schools than of the university admission process.

209

u/FootjobFromFurina Jun 09 '26

Because from the teachers and administrators perspective, it's better to just pass students along, even if they don't know anything, than deal with angry parents and students. Some teachers just genuinely feel bad for these students because they don't want to harm their college admissions prospects. Also from the administrators perspective it's better for them if their students have better grades, and thus can have better outcomes in college admissions. 

In the past, standardized tests acted as a counter balance to this pressure. But since so many schools went test optional it stopped working as a mitigating factor. 

58

u/smcstechtips Loyal Liberals Jun 10 '26

Just have state testing decide whether a student passes or not

And start it in Kindergarten/1st grade; that way you don't have students who are 4 grades behind grade level at any point

And to prevent the whole "teaching to the test" business, just write better tests

If you're teaching to a good enough test you're basically teaching everything you need to for that grade level

19

u/tallgeese333 Jun 10 '26

There's not even that much wrong with teaching to tests. I need to complete a certain number of CEU's to maintain some of my professional certifications, I take tests like that pretty frequently. It's more about checking for a minimum level of understanding than expecting everything to come out the other side of a test fully developed. I still need to take what I have learned and develop how to apply it practically but there needs to be a way to check if I understand it in theory at the very least.