Why aren't high school class grades enough? If we want predictive measures then why not make the preparation for college the actual measure instead of tacking it on at the end as another exam. I can see it being useful for people who don't go through the traditional path and need to prove that they have the equivalent knowledge of a typical American high schooler but otherwise I really think there is no value in these tests.
There are 24,000 high schools in the US (not even considering international students) with wildly varying grading standards. You have one applicant from Podunk City High School, valedictorian with a 4.0. Is that ... good? How does it compare to the thousands of other kids with 4.0s you have applying?
I'm completely sympathetic to the idea that grades should be a better predictor of performance than one day of testing, but in practice the grades have a lot of flaws too.
> There are 24,000 high schools in the US (not even considering international students) with wildly varying grading standards. You have one applicant from Podunk City High School, valedictorian with a 4.0. Is that ... good? How does it compare to the thousands of other kids with 4.0s you have applying?
Some other places in the world admit based on the Z-score for each subject, with the average and standard deviation being specific to each school. While the university might not know how one would compare to other students based on an equivalent test, they'd at least know that a particular student is in the top decile for their school in a given subject.
I don't know if it's good or bad. I don't think grades mean much either other than a feedback/signal for the student. Using them as measuring sticks for admission into exclusive clubs seems pretty broken. We should be lowering the barriers to education and the exclusive clubs that elite educational institutions demarcate.
I want more people that study calculus and higher level mathematics because it is a standard part of their education and not because it is a requirement on some test. I don't care what grade they get on their exams because if I end up working with them I'm not gonna care about the grade but the fact that they learned how to think rigorously (or at least were given the opportunity to do so without having to waste effort and energy on playing status games).
Because there's nothing even remotely standardized about high school education. A kid growing up in Seattle learns about evolution, while a kid growing up in small-town Oklahoma learns that Jesus rode a dinosaur to work. Cultural differences aside, a student who graduated #1 in a class of 50 probably enjoyed a fraction of the learning opportunities available to a child who graduated #12 of 500 at a larger school.
These are the problems that standardized tests were supposed to solve. Eliminate the tests, fine, but you'd better have an adequate replacement for them in mind.
I'm not arguing for their elimination. I'm sharing anecdotal evidence that they weren't useful for me and probably people like me who got an adequate education and had access to a local community college and a library.
Re: uneven distribution of education. This is the fundamental problem and standardized tests don't actually address the root cause. We really shouldn't be confused about what skills and concepts people need to learn up until high school and the rigor with which they need to learn them. Addressing this confusion is a hard problem so post high school standardized tests end up being the band aid. We can keep the tests and work to address the underlying root causes for uneven educational outcomes. Test preparation industry is essentially a form of tax on something that we should have democratized by now.
