In September, the New York Times wrote a short article about the SAT report on the scores of the class of 2012, stating that there was a ‘slight’ dip in the critical reading score. Sure this was only 1 point, but if you read on, you’ll see that only 43% of all high school seniors are ready for college. A generation ago, roughly 60% were ready for college, so what’s happening? Are the standards too high or are we getting dumber?
As I’ve said before, the only thing that standardized tests do in the end is reinforce memorization. So the College Board’s remedy of having students take more honors and AP courses would make sense, because the more you can get yourself to cram as much knowledge as possible, the better you can do at taking a test. But if the percentage is any indicator to the health of our education system, it’s slowly dying. The College Board’s cure for the sickness really only aims to treat the symptoms instead of the cause of the problem, the one thing that our education system is solely geared towards.
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