"A child's learning is the function more of the characteristics of his classmates than those of the teacher." James Coleman, 1972

Monday, August 22, 2016

High school grades vs. the SAT (grades win)


Sent to the Boston Globe, August 22, 2016

"Colleges cutting ties with the SAT" (August 22) is supported by research. In a study published in 2007, UC Berkeley scholars Saul Geiser and Maria Veronica Saltelices found that adding SAT scores to high school students' grades in college prep courses did not provide much more information than grades alone. In 2009, William Bowen, former President of Princeton University, Matthew Chingos, Senior Fellow of the Urban Institute, and Michael McPherson, President of the Spencer Foundation, reached similar conclusions in their book Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Universities.
In other words, it appears that teacher evaluation of students does a better job of evaluating students than standardized testing does: The repeated judgments of professionals who are with students every day is more valid that a test created by distant strangers.

Stephen Krashen
Professor Emeritus
University of Southern California


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