I’ve seen a lot of press recently about the revivial of the SAT, in both big national papers and smaller, narrower market publications. There is a lot to hash out in the discussion of the value of these tests, but let’s get one thing out of the way: Statistics don’t prove much in this debate, and they certainly don’t change minds. For every College Board sponsored study that shows the SAT is predictive of something important, and even for the ones that are not connected to College Board’s cadre of True Believers, there are just as many that show it’s far less valuable than most people think. 

I work at a permanently test-optional institution, and I work in a region of the country where no standardized test is required at any public institution, so I only care about this–and am only writing this–because so many people ask me to comment on the topic. I thought we had gotten past it, but recent developments in the press suggest otherwise.

So I’m going to offer a list of things I think you need to believe if you want to put some faith in the SAT.

• You have to believe that a single test, created by people who may have never taught a high school class, is a good instrument to use across almost 40,000 high schools, millions of students, and tens of thousands of teachers.
• You have to believe that a billion dollar corporation that creates the test cares about much beyond its bottom line and increasing market share. And you have to believe that a private company, accountable to absolutely no one, should be driving the content in American high schools so that students can do well on its tests. You also have to like circular arguments.
• You have to believe that every student who takes the test has had the same opportunity to prepare for it; and by preparation, I mean both the same academic and instructional opportunities and the same chance to study and learn the mechanics of the overhead in the test itself.
• You have to believe that college opportunity should be awarded to those who have had the most opportunity up to that point.
• You have to believe that admissions officers are adequately trained to understand the nuances and differences in scores, and to have a basic understanding of things like Standard Error of Measurement, which would keep someone from thinking a score of 680, for instance, is better than a score of 670.
• You have to believe that people who have benefitted from high scores will suddenly be able to put one of their life’s greatest accomplishments in proper context and not engage in rent-seeking behavior.
• You have to believe that “intelligence” or “academic ability” (themselves not clearly defined terms) vary directly with things like income, ethnicity, parental attainment, and gender.
• You have to believe that the benefit of identifying a few outliers (the diamonds in the rough) outweighs the massive costs in instructional time, student mental health, and actual cash expense for both prepping for, and taking, the test.
• You have to believe that grade inflation (if it even exists) is worse than test inflation, which does. Or you have to somehow believe that those two things shouldn’t vary in the same way.
• You have to believe that the American secondary education system exists mostly as a sorter for Ivy League admissions offices or the labor market.
• You have to believe that choosing one “right” or “best” answer from those given is an important and critical skill in life, and that most of the challenges people will face as college students and adults will fall neatly into this format.
• You have to believe that most admissions offices need a tool to make fine and very granular distinctions between large quantities of exceptionally well-qualified students.

I don’t think I believe any of them. How about you?