PSYCH ∙ Ms. Wiley ∙ Intelligence & the SAT, D ___
Name:
Developmental and Educational Psychologists are consumed with questions of
intelligence, memory, thought and language. Developmental Psychologists who are
interested in education focus on how people learn, how the ability to problem-solve
develops, how language develops, etc. Educational Psychologists use research from
Developmental Psychologists to develop instructional models and methods for districts
and states. Though some have actually helped to create standardized tests like the SAT,
others critique standardized tests across the board. This document will help begin our
discussion on intelligence and the work of psychologists interested in intelligence and
education.
1.
How would you define intelligence? Can intelligence be measured? If so, how so? If not, why not?
2.
Are people born intelligent or does the environment "make" them intelligent? Is intelligence fixed or malleable? Do you
think there is any way to increase your intelligence? If so, what sort of things might you do?
3.
Do you think school helps to unlock/increase our intelligence? Why or why not? If not, what should/could schools do to
better increase student intelligence?
4.
What does a high score on the SATs signal to you? Why do people care so much about their SAT scores?
Developmental Psychologist Howard Gardner came up with the Theory of Multiple Intelligences in 1983. Gardner's theory
included Bodily-kinesthetic (bodily movement and psychology); Interpersonal (interaction with others); Verbal-linguistic (words,
spoken or written); Logical-mathematical (logic, abstractions, reasoning, and numbers); Intrapersonal (introspective and selfreflective capacities); Visual-spatial (vision and spatial judgment); Musical (rhythm, music, and hearing) and Naturalistic (nature
and relating information to one's natural surroundings). Other "intelligences" Gardner wrote about include spiritual and moral
intelligence.
5.
If tested in each category of Gardner’s model, which do you think you would excel in and which would you struggle in?
6.
Are all intelligences (as discussed by Gardner) created equal [in our society]? Why or why not? Should they?
7.
Does the SAT test for Gardner’s intelligences? Should they? Explain.
College President: SAT is Part Hoax, Part Fraud, Time, 2014
The president of Bard College (Leon Botstein) says recent changes to the SAT are motivated by the competition that College Board has
experienced with its arch rival, the ACT, rather than any serious soul searching.
The changes recently announced by the College Board to its SAT college entrance exam bring to mind the familiar phrase “too
little, too late.” The alleged improvements are motivated not by any serious soul searching about the SAT but by the competition
the College Board has experienced from its arch rival, the ACT, the other major purveyor of standardized college entrance exams.
But the problems that plague the SAT also plague the ACT. The SAT needs to be abandoned and replaced. The SAT has a status as
a reliable measure of college readiness it does not deserve. The College Board has successfully marketed its exams to parents,
students, colleges and universities as arbiters of educational standards. The nation actually needs fewer such exam schemes;
they damage the high school curriculum and terrify both students and parents.
The blunt fact is that the SAT has never been a good predictor of academic achievement in college. High school grades adjusted
to account for the curriculum and academic programs in the high school from which a student graduates are. The essential
mechanism of the SAT, the multiple choice test question, is a bizarre relic of long outdated twentieth century social scientific
assumptions and strategies. As every adult recognizes, knowing something or how to do something in real life is never defined by
being able to choose a “right” answer from a set of possible answers (some of them intentionally misleading) put forward by
faceless test designers who are rarely eminent experts. No scientist, engineer, writer, psychologist, artist, or physician—and
certainly no scholar, and therefore no serious university faculty member—pursues his or her vocation by getting right answers
from a set of prescribed alternatives that trivialize complexity and ambiguity.
And why do we remain addicted to the College Board’s near monopoly on tests? Why do they have an undue influence on
college placement? These tests actually violate the basic justification for tests. First, despite the changes, these tests remain
divorced from what is taught in high school and what ought to be taught in high school. Second, the test taker never really finds
out whether he or she got any answer right or wrong and why. No baseball coach would train a team by accumulating an
aggregate comparative numerical score of errors and well executed plays by each player, rating them, and then send them the
results weeks later. When an error is committed it is immediately noted; the reasons are explained and the coach, at a moment
in time close to the event, seeks to train the player how not to do it again.
What purpose is served by putting young people through an ordeal from which they learn nothing? Is the SAT a reasonable
representation of the ideals and benefits of learning? No, it makes a mockery of them. Given the possibilities explicit in modern
technology, a college entrance examination could be developed in which the test takers in real time could be told immediately if
they got the right or wrong answer and guided to a program that might help them understand why they got a question right or
wrong. Such a test would be like a chess match, where the clock stops after a move is made. And although the pressure of time—
the need to excel under pressure—applies legitimately to pilots, generals and surgeons, is it really so important? Why not give
students the time to think, research, and learn as they answer serious questions whose answers demand careful thought and
knowledge? Those are the skills that are rewarded in college, and in life.
What is needed is not minor so called improvements to the SAT, but an entirely new generation of testing instruments that
utilize modern technology not only to measure the performance of our students but also teach them.
That being said, the new changes to the SAT are harmless. No one will be asked arcane ugly words that have no use. No one will
be penalized for guessing, which is a relief since intelligent guessing is a vital life skill that needs encouragement. (It is also nice to
see that the College Board has chosen to emulate Bard’s new alternative essay entrance exam that has students read important
historic texts and write on them.) The changes to the math section are welcome since they turn that part of the SAT more to
fundamental areas of quantitative reasoning.
These modest reforms will do little to stem the rising tide against the College Board and its SAT. There is more and more
resistance to pressuring students and parents into paying money to take a senseless exam that claims to be objective when in
fact the only persistent statistical result from the SAT is the correlation between high income and high test scores. The richer one
is, the better one does on the SAT. Nothing that is now proposed by the College Board breaks the fundamental role the SAT plays
in perpetuating economic and therefore educational inequality.
The justification behind the SAT has been that it is an objective instrument of ability to succeed in college, when it is not. But the
truth is less principled. The SAT is used by selective institutions to help them sort applicants and justify dismissing many from
consideration. SAT scores also have become an integral part of another money-making racket—college rankings. The victim in
this unholy alliance between the College Board (a profit-making business masquerading as a not-for-profit educational institution
serving the public good) and our elite institutions of higher education are students and our nation’s educational standards.
The commonsensical truth is that the only legitimate test is one where a question is put forward and an answer required with no
options or hints. The one major reform in the new SAT seems to be the dropping of a required essay. This is ironic because the
one thing colleges need to know in their admissions process is how well a student can think, construct an argument, and
persuade. Asking a student to sit down and write essays in an examination setting might be an excellent way to discover an
applicant’s command of language and thought. This one potentially useful piece of evidence has been made optional.
The SAT will continue in its revised form to face challenges. It is part hoax and part fraud, albeit a profitable one. The College
Board, however, is not entirely to blame. David Coleman is to be admired for trying to rescue an outdated, sinking ship. The real
responsibility for our sorry state of affairs regarding college entrance examinations rests with our colleges and universities
themselves. The elite institutions have willingly supported an alliance with the College Board to make their own lives easier, and
we Americans seem to have accepted this owing to our misplaced love affair with standardized testing and rankings as the
proper means to ensure educational excellence.
The time has come for colleges and universities to join together with the most innovative software designers to fundamentally
reinvent a college entrance examination system. We need to come up with one that puts applicants through a rigorous but
enlightening process showing what they can and cannot do, and what they know and do not know, all in an effort to reverse the
unacceptable low standard of learning among high school graduates we now tolerate and to inspire prospective college students
about the joy of serious learning.
8.
Make a list of all of the reasons why the SAT should be “abandoned and replaced” (according to Botstein):
9.
What is your reaction to Botstein’s article?
10. Imagine that you are an Educational Psychologist who has been hired by the state of Pennsylvania to create a new statewide test. The state legislature believes that the Keystone Exams have failed to reflect what students know and can do.
Discuss what testing recommendations you would make so that PA can accurately assess the learning of its students. What
evidence would you have to provide to garner support for your plan? How could that evidence be collected?