Opinion: Do we still need the SAT?

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That’s a queston the Times editorial board asked two years ago. Now it’s a question that mainstream college organizations increasingly ask as well.

A prestigious panel, pulled together last year by the National Association of College Admissions Counseling and led by the admissions dean at Harvard, reports this week that the importance of the SAT has been inflated and that grades and the so-called SAT II, or subject tests, are a better indicator of how well students will do in colleges.

Hard to figure out how that fits with the recent recommendation of the University of California’s admissions panel, which advised keeping the SAT and getting rid of the SAT II as an admissions requirement. UC now requires two of the subject tests.

The SAT has become as much an industry as a supposed test of kids’ reasoning and writing skills. The trend these days is to put more emphasis on grades, but we’re already suffering hideous grade inflation, and without a national check on what those grades mean, it’s easy to imagine ambitious high schools handing out A’s like so much academic candy.

What’s a college admissions officer to do?