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Talk:Counterexamples to an Old Earth (view source)
Revision as of 19:39, June 20, 2011
, 19:39, June 20, 2011→Another observation
::::: The most plausible explanation for the declining SAT scores is the also the most straightforward: people are getting dumber.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 18:12, 19 June 2011 (EDT)
::::: The most plausible explanation for the declining SAT scores is the also the most straightforward: people are getting dumber.--[[User:Aschlafly|Andy Schlafly]] 18:12, 19 June 2011 (EDT)
::Actually, Aschlafly, the majority of colleges and scholars (I don't know about the NCAA) are beginning to realize the inefficiency of standardized testing as a measure of scholastic achievement, and most colleges today are placing less and less emphasis on test scores in regards to admission. Many colleges - off of my head I can name Bates, Bowdoin, Connecticut, and Mount Holyoke - no longer require any standardized testing scores at all. And while those certainly aren't Ivy Leagues, they're not community colleges either.
::Furthermore, year after year the College Board's own statistics depict a virtually linear correlation between things like SAT scores and family income or race. In fact, more than half of the difference in SAT scores can be explained purely on the basis of parents' level of education.
::And consider this: Since 1984, College Board studies of the SAT have shown that only about 12 to 16 percent of the variance in freshman grades could be predicted by SAT scores, which suggests that even in regards to something as subjective as grades, the SAT is a worthless measuring tool. In the 1980s a review in the American Education Research Journal concluded that test scores from high school and college accounted for less than 3 percent of variance in job performance and income, and that such scores had absolutely no predictive power whatsoever over who eventually earned more Ph.D.s or M.D.'s.
::I cannot find the article at this moment, but in a 1996 issue of the Harvard Educational Review, it was reported that participation rates accounted for an incredible 85% of variance in test scores from state to state. Eighty-five percent. That's incredibly significant. So in regards to Point II, yes, a massive amount of score variance can be accounted for by differences in the test taking body.
::Finally, let's look at the idea of standardized testing in general. In a study published in the Journal of Educational Psychology, students were classified as "actively" engaged in learning if they asked questions of themselves while they read and tried to connect what they were doing to past learning; and they were classified as "superficially" engaged if they just copied down answers, guessed a lot, and skipped hard sections. It turns out that high test scores - including scores on the SAT - were more likely to be found by students who exhibited the superficial approach, rather than the engaged approach.
::Let's face the facts: Standardized testing has never been an effective measure of intelligence. One's ability to spit back facts and answer scholastically useless questions within a time limit is not a measure of intelligence. So to claim that test scores dropping (a fact which hasn't actually been backed up by citations yet) is a measure of a dropping human intelligence is just ridiculous. That would be like saying the Earth is getting warmer by measuring the temperature on the moon. (Something I swear some scientists actually try to do, but whatever). It's not an accurate measuring system. It never has been. I suggest again the removal of the SAT point. [[User:Jpope1487|Jpope1487]] 15:39, 20 June 2011 (EDT)
== Sources ==
== Sources ==