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.