Editorial Blog #5

My article for this week is on the SAT posted online on the USAtoday.com editorials section. The new policy on the SAT now is that they do not have to send all their scores to applied colleges, you only have to send your best, which poses an advantage for current SAT and future SAT student takers compared to years before. The new policy of the SAT by CollegeBoard is called “Score Choice”. Score Choice though has a bias to benefit more well-off families because it involves retaking the SAT multiple times, which means paying fees again. College Board waive the $45 SAT fee twice for students in need, but that doesn't necessarily solve the problem. Although the board gave high school seniors 221,962 fee waivers last year, that total doesn't count an additional 170,000 test takers from households that earn less than $60,000 a year.

The writer of the article thinks that rather than define the SAT in a scramble for customers and repeat business, College Board ought to redouble its efforts to measure academic potential, using proven gauges of academic success such as the standardized essay-writing portion and tests on advanced-level subjects.

After reading this article I agree with the writer’s opinion on certain aspects. I do think that College Board should focus less on business status and work more towards their original attempt in gauging academic success with the SAT. However in our state of the economy, it’s probably tough for families to pay for their sons’ and daughters’ test fees in the first place, and they need a new way to start up business. I being a student also think this “Score Choice” is a good idea because I had to send in all of my test scores for my colleges even with my bad ones, this helps students a lot more in the application process because they won’t judge them on bad scores even if they did really well on one. Although if you think about it, all students have this benefit so it makes it harder on the application choice if all students send all their better scores, so this actually might make the application process for colleges harder on students.

Editorial Blog #4

President Obama recently confirmed this idea and the U.S. is at the moment considering it, but as the writer says, there comes both promise and peril in this action. The positive outcome of this would be the U.S. could somehow replicate the successful results of the agreements with Sunni leaders in Iraq that snapped their alliance with al-Qaeda, dramatically reduced violence and advanced political stability. The negative setbacks that might happen is that we could provoke the Taliban more, because Pakistan’s government has made deals with the Taliban which caused a way for the Taliban to attack Afghanistan more often. Right not the most likely appealing strategy is to work with the lower-level ranked Taliban, but we and our allies are unaware on how many such people of that exist, and people who will work to cooperate with us. The Taliban in general is focused on establishing Islamic domination, unlike the Sunnis who yearn to re-establish the political power they had under Saddam Hussein's secular government.

As for the writer, he/she believes that U.S. and NATO need to keep up with the military pressure in Afghanistan for now so that it will eventually lead to talks with the Taliban and extremists like a key to open a door. Also the writer believes that the best thing for now might be to leave the negotiations with Afghani leaders for now.

I definitely agree with the writer on this point, it’s definitely too soon to start to act on this idea. Using the U.S. and NATO military power we can use it as a foothold over the Taliban to sort of force them into coming into terms and agreements with us and our allies, one step must lead into another and something cannot be solved by jumping a step or relying on one idea.