The Big Fear.

• Author: JONES, PETER M.
• Position: SAT and college admission - Includes related article on oddball college applications - Brief Article

The SAT test has always been a nightmare for college-bound teenagers. Now a new book says it's also unfair.

Every year, three little letters send shivers up the spines of college-bound students across the country: SAT.

The test is one of the key measures used by colleges to determine a high schooler's math and verbal skills. More than 2 million teens this year will take the test, which aims to offer an equal, neutral way of comparing the academic ability of students from all different sorts of schools and backgrounds separate from the grades they receive. The better the SAT score, the more selective college one can attend, and thus, in theory, the better job one can ultimately get.

MERIT, NOT MONEY

Fifty years ago, the educators who promoted the SAT believed the system would help establish an educational "meritocracy." Instead of simply taking the wealthiest, best-connected students, as had been the custom, colleges would base their admissions on merit. With the SAT, it wouldn't matter what race you were or how much money you had. If the test showed you had intelligence and competence, you could attend the best schools.

Critics say the reality has proven far different from the ideal. Members of minority groups have long complained that the SAT is not neutral, that its questions are culturally biased. Now a new book goes even further. It says the SAT has done exactly the opposite of what it intended--giving unfair advantage to the rich and hurting the poor.

In The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy, journalist Nicholas Lemann says the SAT favors teens from high-income areas, who can pay for SAT cram courses that improve scores, while students in poor schools are left behind. "A device meant to eliminate an American class system has instead helped create a new one," he says.

Lemann's swipe at the SAT upsets many in the education world. Thomas Ewing, a spokesman for the Educational Testing Service (ETS), which administers the SAT, defends the test as the most logical way to measure math and verbal skills, "which are what young people need to know when they become college freshmen."

BLAME THE SCHOOLS

Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, which contracts with ETS to write and score the tests, is more blunt. "I think [Lemann] is so far off," he told UPFRONT. "The SAT is the most scientific and fairest way to judge students." Besides, he says, the SAT is not meant to be the only measurement used to determine...