In reply to: Since the scandal broke, posted by BeijingIrish
...and kept seeing "Portillos".
College entry is based on your grades in 6 core classes. Your grades in year 11 and year 12 in those classes determine your "Overall Position" or OP for short.
Kids do take standardized tests, but the standardized test scores are aggregated across the entire school and used as a basis for normalizing each schools grades. For example, if you average a B in year 11 and year 12 Physics, but your school has a higher aggregate performance on the standardized test than the rest of the country, your grade would be raised to a B+ or an A- to account for the difficulty of the school. The final OP is a formula based on your position in your class and your school's position relative to other schools in Australia.
The system tries to combine the best of both worlds. It realizes that day-to-day performance against your peers is a better metric, but also realizes that being average in a very talented peer group also has merit over being the highest performer in an average peer group.
and nobody here games the system. its based on marks. I cannot speak for private schools, but in the public system, nobody gives kids higher marks so they can go to university. that would be unreasonable and unfair - two things we are definitely not.
If all universities set a minimum standard for grades and test scores below which students need not apply, in a system where we have decided that admission into elite universities is of utmost importance, then I think we would see students carrying even more stress than they are now (and their stress loads can be quite high), taking classes that they know they will get an A in, regardless of whether they are interested or not (I can remember a story when we lived in the US of a kid who took Mandarin I his senior year to preserve status as valedictorian, despite the fact that it was his native language). And the kids who can afford private tutors would have a spectacular advantage over kids that can't. Again, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer because the system would be set up that way.
We have technology now that would allow students and teachers to create narrative achievement reports and work with students to create electronic portfolios of work that admissions boards could evaluate. Kids might be more willing to dig into a subject that they are really interested in rather than getting their A and moving on to something else. It's a lot more work for the office than sifting through 80,000 Common Apps, but it could give kids a chance to thrive that might get weeded out by a minimum GPA or test score.
submitting portfolios, is already in place. For example, students pursuing the Arts usually have to submit portfolios as well as audition in person. The Iovine & Young Academy at USC, while still requiring grades and ACT/SAT scores, also requires everything you list long with personal interviews.
It's way too easy to eliminate bright students who may not shine on paper and can contribute much in the classroom.
Schools can look at class rank, unweighted GPAs and difficulty of schedule to roll back whatever GPA the student reports. Elite schools analyze class rank, scores on AP/IB tests and SAT/ACT to help offset grade inflation.
Schools who inflate their grades do it at a disservice to their own kids, IMO.
I'd be fine ditching grades, but the SAT is highly correlated to intelligence. Sure some folks benefit from prep courses, and most would be wise to at least grab a vocab workbook. But it is STANDARDIZED, which is the important part.
I'd take the smartest kids (realizing there will be some duds) than the best bullshitter on CVs, "Portfolios of Work" and "Personal Statements". I'm sure the dolt with an 800 SAT who's dad went to Stanford would love to put together some statements and work product with dear old dad and make sure the college doesn't see his grades or SAT score.
Standardized tests are the most valuable resource because of there very name
There is a cottage industry among crazy parents in the northeast (and presumably elsewhere) to generate an IEP for your kid before he/she enters high school so that he/she gets extra time to take the SAT or ACT. While I believe that there are some kids who have legitimate reasons for additional time, there are too many others who are getting extra time, or no time limit at all, with a trumped-up "condition". How is this still considered a standardized test?
I don't have a lot of evidence either way, but I'd be surprised is extra time mattered that much for the SAT, especially at the high end. Mostly just based on my experience years ago and my oldest kids recently. The ACT is more rushed, maybe matters more than than the SAT.
About college, I can confirm that extra time forms are common, and that it isn't that hard to design tests for which they aren't a big advantage.
Those kids will get extra time on their work projects too.
My wife works at a school in the UC system. If memory serves me correct, more than 40% of students at her university "qualify" for special-testing circumstances.
So you can see the actual piece of work that the student did, or you can just see the grade at the top. Mom and dad would have a tough time putting together a piece of work that I sent to a university as part of a kid's portfolio--they do all of our assessments in class.
SATs may correlate to IQ tests, but there is also good evidence that they also correlate to wealth--rich kids do better than poor kids, in part because of actual physiological differences in the brain that occur because the kids from lower-income families don't have the same opportunities to develop their temporal and occipital lobes, and they are often subjected to more stress. So our system is making the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, because inequitable access to a good education makes it so.
that's not correlated with wealth.
There are statistically significant achievement differences among the races on the sAT and ACT. If the SAT is actually a measure of intelligence, then these differences should not exist.
I'm very sure that someone who scores a 1600 on the SAT is very smart. I'm not sure that someone who scored a 1000 on the SAT isn't smart.
and race is a confounding variable? I ask because I don't know.
If it is mostly economic, then I would posit that it is because children of more wealthy parents get more guidance and prep (both academic and test taking).
Not sure why in the case of race.
That is, they capture race but not other socio-economic information from the test-takers.
I suppose my point is, on a truly standardized test (if such a thing exists), there ought not be differences by race, sex, or socio-economic class.
However, it's hard to picture any test, however fashioned, whose outcome is unaffected by parental encouragement, school quality, nutrition, and other factors that are likely to be correlated with the variables which you mention.
The SAT and ACT test intelligence, but also test academic achievement, and academic achievement is correlated to a certain extent with social circumstances of upbringing.
Because while your criticism is valid, I think that both the US and Canada have a strong leg up on equity and letting kids be kids and teens try interesting things versus deciding at age 10 whether you're "professional material" or not.
How many kids that want to attend premier universities in the USA are living anything close to normal, healthy lives? My somewhat informed guess is that it is not nearly as many as it should be.
The German system may identify "professional material" early for your taste, but eWill's rejoinder could very easily be that our system places way too much emphasis on getting into the "right university" often at the expense of the teenager involved.
I’m not defending any system. I’m briefly explaining why I think the US system and mine would be better off if we got rid of grades. There is a lot of research that supports that idea (and some that doesn’t). It’s complicated, but I think in the long run we would be better off if we destigmatized non-college career paths and made college admissions more work for the admissions officers (and the high school teachers. It’s easy to write a test and throw a number at the top. Good feedback is more work).
Sorry.