Whenever I see these sorts of tweets, first, I want to know what we're talking about with the word "rigor." Is it the rigor of passing an exam after delivering sandwiches for Jimmy John's until 3am? Because that's the kind of challenge students I'm familiar with face.
This debate about the utility of the SAT/ACT for admissions decisions is tedious because it's the same debate over and over, a debate which misses the fact that the vast majority of students attend schools where their test score is largely irrelevant to the admission decision.
But because we put so much weight on selectivity as a metric for "quality" the most selective schools get the vast majority of resources and attention. They are not representative. CUNY is a far more important driver of economic opportunity than the Ivy League.
For those who want to be better informed on the ramifications of standardized admissions tests, I recommend following @jennthetutor and @akilbello as people who work directly with students and understand the institutional operations of schools.
The idea that making the SAT optional or eliminating it is going to somehow erase our ability to identify worthy and talented students assumes that there is a scarcity of these kinds of students and a primary job of the system is to identify them at the time of admission.
I just can't get on board with that attitude. Students aren't defined by a single test on a single day, a test with many known biases. The work of education is to help the students develop. This is what we claim anyway. The SAT is a barrier to that goal.
Oh, and after recently re-taking the SAT, I can pledge that what's covered in the writing and language test covers is an absolute waste of time next the actual demands that students writers will experience in college. educationalendeavors.substack.com/p/taking-the-s…
I don't know about the relationship between the math SAT and college math these days, but the fact that I've forgotten (or never learned huge swaths of) so much of what's tested hasn't seemed to hold me back. educationalendeavors.substack.com/p/taking-the-m…
I'm consistently amazed at the faith folks who scored well on the SAT/ACT have in its predictive power. I did pretty good on it, which is why I knew it didn't mean much because as a student, in terms of student-like behavior, I was well-below average.
The college admission process primarily rewarded my socio-economic advantages and I knew it. I was a precocious and omnivorous reader because my mom owned a bookstore. This paid off big time on the SAT vocabulary stuff, which made me look like a candidate for elite college.
I had a near perfect score on the PSAT verbal which turned into a National Merit honor and a flood of brochures from selective schools. They knew nothing else about me like the fact that I almost never did homework because it was boring.
From my zip code those selective colleges turned on by my PSAT score probably knew that my parents could afford the tuition, though. It just felt fraudulent the whole time because I knew me and that I wasn't a candidate for those schools.

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More from @biblioracle

1 Dec
Always psyched when a debate about the 5PE breaks out on here because it's an opportunity to air out the folklore around writing instruction and hopefully move towards a deeper understanding of the kinds of things students must experience to learn to think and write well.
As I say in my book on why we need to kill the 5PE, the problems are largely structural. There's good reasons to teach the 5PE. THAT's the problem. We need to eliminate the incentives for teaching the 5PE so students can engage with writing as it actually works.
There is a bonkers sale @JHUPress right now, including Why They Can't Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necsessities. Take advantage! jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/why-they…
Read 10 tweets
1 Dec
Students don’t learn organization from doing five paragraph essays. It’s a myth. I promise you didn’t learn organization from doing 5PEs. I’d be happy to send you a copy of my book for free. jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/title/why-they…
There’s a far better way to help students to learn to think critically and write well. It’s all laid out as a curriculum in this book. amazon.com/Writers-Practi…
Here’s testimony from students who are using the writer’s practice. plthomasedd.medium.com/fyw-students-r…
Read 4 tweets
8 Nov
Ahhhh..ha...ha...ha...ha... the backpedaling begins.
Gordon Gee knows a thing or two about fundraising, and that's what that announcement for the IDWU was about. If he doesn't want to be subjected to this problem over and over again, he best back away completely.
It's actually interesting to consider who is not part of the IDWU announcement launch. Heying, but no Weinsteins? Where's Yascha Mounk? TCW? How did they decide on the invite list?
Read 5 tweets
8 Nov
Someone in my DMs expressed fair concerns about amplifying the nascent IDWU (University of Austin) with all the mocking and criticism, and I take that concern seriously, but in this case, I don't think it's a worry. Because...
1. It's going to be amplified a lot anyway. This isn't surfacing a fringe thing and putting it into the mainstream. 2. If it is going to be a real thing, it may as well be under scrutiny from the get go. They say they have funding and are collecting $'s. Let's air it out.
3. If the money being donated was instead going to go toward something like working against climate change, better to flush it down the tube with a phantom university run by malcontents and grifters. And...
Read 4 tweets
8 Nov
This entire FAQ reads like wishcasting, barely above the level of scratching out a plan for a new university on a napkin. uaustin.org/faq
The whole finances section is just like...huh? It seems like they're thinking that eschewing public money will save them administrative burdens and administrative costs, but is this not pure fantasyland?
I mean, I hope those libertarian think tank pockets are bottomless because turning your back on any federal money sounds like tough financial sledding.
Read 5 tweets
8 Nov
Please please please, I'm begging all cancel culture warriors to join the others at IDWU (also known as the University of Austin). Sink lots of money into this. I'm sure it will be well spent. uaustin.org
What's the over/under on the number of students enrolled in the residential liberal arts college by 2024? I'll take the under.
In all seriousness, WTF?
Read 6 tweets

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