SAT阅读推荐之‘与SAT考试的爱恨交织’

The pressure on students, along with concerns that the test is unfair for some racial and ethnic groups, are reasons many advocates and even some colleges want to do away with the SAT. The anti-standardized testing organization Fair Test maintains a list of SAT-optional schools. At first glance, it seems impressive that about 850 colleges signed up. But many of the schools are not selective. Many are small religious schools or vocational or for-profit ones. Others are still using the SAT test in some way, just not as a formulaic criterion for admissions. Some admissions experts say that the whole SAT-optional movement is more of a marketing scam by colleges than a serious effort to evaluate applicants differently.

SAT给考生的压力，以及它对一些种族和民族的不公平，都是倡导者甚至是一些大学对其不满的原因。一个名为FairTest的反标准考试组织列出了一份可参考SAT的学校名单，让人印象深刻的是，在列的学校有将近850所之多。其中有许多学校并不具备可选性。很多是小的宗教性质学校、职业技术学校或者营利性学校，还有一些想利用SAT干些别的事情，而不仅仅将它正式的录取标准。一些招生方面的专家称，整个SAT考试可选运动更像是高校策划的市场化的骗局，而并非在努力探索一种不同的考生评估系统。

More than anything else, the cheating shows how marginal the efforts to marginalize the SAT are. Students cheat because the test matters. A lot of smaller schools like Bates College in Maine can ditch the test and still work through manageable numbers of applicants. About 5,100 students applied to Bates last year, not an easy workload for admissions officials but not insane. More than 28,000 applied to the University of Illinois, which, like other big schools, needs a tool like the SAT. And if you look at the college landscape in this country, many more students apply to and attend schools like Illinois than ones like Bates.

值得注意的是，SAT作弊丑闻揭示了这个企图使SAT边缘化的运动本身是多么的小众化。学生之所以会在考试时作弊，是因为这个考试至关重要。很多规模较小的学校，如缅因州贝茨学院，这些学校就可以摒弃SAT考试，并且可以有效的评估学生申请规模还不是那么可怕的申请资料。去年贝茨学院大约有5 100位考生申请入学，对于招生老师来说，这是不小的工作量，但也不至于手忙脚乱。而对于那些规模较大的学校来说，如伊利诺斯大学（去年有超过28 000位考生申请入学），它们需要一种像SAT这样的衡量工具。并且，就全国范围的大学申请情况来看，更多的学生倾向于申请像伊利诺斯大学这样的学校，而非贝茨学院。

One possible threat to the SAT’s dominance is the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Armed with federal dollars, two groups of states are working to develop new assessments that are designed to show whether kids are learning the new Common Core standards, which 45 states and the District of Columbia have agreed to adopt. These tests are supposed to measure high school achievement and post-secondary readiness and, if successfully implemented on a widespread basis — and that’s a big if — could one day supplant the SAT.

对于SAT来说，共同课程标准计划( the Common Core State Standards Initiative)很可能是其地位的威胁。在联邦政府的资助下，各州分为2个小组，致力于研发新的评估系统以判断孩子们是否应采用新的共同课程标准，而且已经有45个州和哥伦比亚特区接受了该标准。这些测试旨在评估高中和中学以上学校的教学成果，如果该计划在广泛地区成功推行（这是个宏伟的目标），那它有朝一日也许会替代SAT。

But in the meantime, the best we can do is trying to stop the cheating on the SAT because in the land of the blind, the one-bubble test is king. The College Board has retained former FBI director Louis Freeh to evaluate its test security. Penn State is also using Freeh, who may be on his way to developing a lucrative post-FBI career cleaning up educational messes. He certainly has his work cut out for him.

但与此同时，我们所能做的就是竭尽全力地去阻止SAT中的作弊现象，因为在我们这个雾里看花的国度，唯一浮出水面的考试必然是王道。College Board已经聘请前任联邦调查局局长Louis Freeh来负责监管考场安全。Freeh同时也在宾州任职，或许他还能借清理教育界的机会重振当年在FBI的雄风，这职位由他担任再合适不过了。