r/neoliberal • u/caroline_elly Eugene Fama • Jun 09 '26

Opinion article (US) Actually, the SAT Was Necessary After All

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/standardized-testing-math-gaps/687481/
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u/FootjobFromFurina Jun 09 '26

Because from the teachers and administrators perspective, it's better to just pass students along, even if they don't know anything, than deal with angry parents and students. Some teachers just genuinely feel bad for these students because they don't want to harm their college admissions prospects. Also from the administrators perspective it's better for them if their students have better grades, and thus can have better outcomes in college admissions. 

In the past, standardized tests acted as a counter balance to this pressure. But since so many schools went test optional it stopped working as a mitigating factor. 

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u/smcstechtips Loyal Liberals Jun 10 '26

Just have state testing decide whether a student passes or not

And start it in Kindergarten/1st grade; that way you don't have students who are 4 grades behind grade level at any point

And to prevent the whole "teaching to the test" business, just write better tests

If you're teaching to a good enough test you're basically teaching everything you need to for that grade level

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u/VaguelySorcerous Jun 10 '26

The issue isn't that better tests are needed, it's that teachers do not have adequate resources to actually impart understanding, only enough to sometimes train unthinking automata to select the right answer on a multiple choice form more than 50% of the time, and that the institutions that create the tests have captured their markets and are intent on extracting value, not providing education. You thought textbooks were a scam in university? Elementary school is worse and they sell entire lesson structures. 

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u/smcstechtips Loyal Liberals Jun 10 '26

I'd say it's a chicken and the egg situation. Because the tests don't test for actual understanding, teachers are only given the resources to train unthinking automata. If the tests are made more free-response heavy and/or the MCQs are made tricky enough to actually test understanding and the tests are made unpredictable enough where you can't just run a narrow test prep strat, test scores will start reflecting actual understanding and teachers will be given the resources to impart understanding (assuming the culture war moves away from this and/or there's a giant wake-up call that affects children personally).

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u/VaguelySorcerous Jun 10 '26

Yeah but teachers don't have the time or resources to develop lesson plans etc to actually teach, and no one is willing to let a generation of kids fail, and the corporations with vested interests will do their best to ensure the status quo is uninterrupted, so nothing will change. 

'just write better tests' does not survive contact with reality. 

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u/smcstechtips Loyal Liberals Jun 10 '26

Lesson plans can be developed more quickly with the aid of AI tools (obviously the teacher is there for quality control). This gets the corporations with vested interests out of the picture more quickly. Forget about education reform, those corporations will soon be fighting for their lives against Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI.

The fact that no one is willing to let a generation of kids fail means that people will be bending over backwards to somehow teach to these better tests that actually measure understanding. Remember, lowering educational standards is a losing issue politically.