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Scores, Good Company
Many analysts say there often is a disconnect between good
lives and good scores.
by Jay Mathews, Washington Post, June 23, 2004
For more articles like this
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The Rev. Bob
Edgar remembers his SAT score all too well -- 730 out of a
possible 1600. He also remembers what his high school counselor
told him: "You are not going to get into college, and if you do
get in, you're going to flunk out."
"That was helpful," said Edgar, indulging in sarcasm because the
prediction proved to be so untrue. After graduating from
Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pa., and becoming a prominent
Methodist minister, he served six terms in Congress and now is
general secretary of the National Council of Churches.
As millions of teenagers agonize over the latest round of SAT
and ACT results, some former test takers are speaking out about
what their low scores meant -- and did not mean -- to them. "I
am convinced I never would have received my doctorate if I had
taken the results of standardized tests too seriously," the late
Minnesota Sen. Paul D. Wellstone (D) had written in an article
published in 2000. His SAT score reportedly was below 900.
Many analysts say there often is a disconnect between good lives
and good scores. "People forget that these tests are supposed to
predict which high school students are going to be successful as
college freshmen," said Brian Stecher, a senior social scientist
with RAND Corp. in Santa Monica, Calif. "They are not supposed
to identify individuals with a strong will to succeed or
otherwise seek out individuals who will do wonderful things in
their lives."
According to the College Board and ACT Inc., owners of the two
primary college-entrance tests, last year at least 2 million
American high-schoolers got SAT scores below 1200 or ACT scores
below 26, usually putting them out of the running for admission
to the most selective colleges. At least 1.2 million of the
total 2.6 million test-takers scored below 1000 on the SAT, or
below 22 on the ACT.
But history suggests that those students are in good company. A
survey of 1,371 millionaires by Thomas J. Stanley, author of
"The Millionaire Mind," found that many had SAT scores below
1200, and they averaged 1190. Many of them were told by high
school teachers that they were mediocre students but had
engaging personalities, Stanley said.
That was the message Edgar got in school in Springfield
Township, Pa. "I majored in football, wrestling and track," he
said in a recent interview. He was a leader of youth groups and
a 138-pound fullback on the football team, but he got C's in
classes.
Lycoming College took him, Edgar said, only because it had
promised to accept any student studying for the ministry. By his
second year of college, he had so impressed the local Methodist
leaders that they gave him a small church to run, the start of a
long career in his church and in politics.
Wellstone attended Yorktown High School in Arlington. He went on
to become a political science professor at Minnesota's Carleton
College and served 12 years in the Senate. He died in a plane
crash while campaigning in 2002. A spokesman for Wellstone
Action, a St. Paul, Minn.-based group dedicated to his ideas,
said he often spoke about his miserable record on standardized
tests.
Some educators said that, unlike Edgar's counselor, they are
very careful when speaking to a student who has just gotten a
low score. "I tell them that the SAT is not a test of
intelligence and is not the be-all and end-all," said Robin
Roth, a career center specialist at Annandale High School. "I
also tell them that I don't know of a single job interview where
I was asked what my SAT scores were." Roth said the emotional
trauma of a low SAT score is such that, at age 53, she is still
embarrassed to say she scored about 950.
Jim Parent, retiring this year as principal of the Calvert
Career Center in the county's public schools, said his SAT score
was so low that his teachers refused to tell him the figure.
"James, I don't think you should even consider college," he
recalls a priest at his Catholic high school telling him. "Your
best bet is to go directly into the workforce when, and if, you
get a diploma." Instead, Parent earned a doctorate in education
and worked 42 years in public schools, including 25 years as a
principal.
Bob Schaeffer, public education director of FairTest, the
National Center for Fair & Open Testing, said, "No test can
measure the skills that matter most in life: creativity,
perseverance, collaboration, vision, self-discipline and the
like."
Many educators anticipate even more focus on the SAT next year
as an essay section is introduced, increasing the length of the
timed test from three to nearly four hours and raising the
highest possible score from 1600 to 2400. The lowest score
anyone can get on the new SAT will rise from 400 to 600.
The two major-party presidential candidates in 2000 had
above-average SAT scores: 1206 for George W. Bush and 1355 for
Al Gore. Many public officials decline to reveal their scores.
Former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley (D), a Princeton
University graduate and Rhodes Scholar, declined to comment on
widespread reports during the 2000 primary election season that
his verbal score on the SAT was 485. Verbal and math scores,
each with a possible high of 800, are combined to get the
overall SAT score. Because of a scoring readjustment, SAT scores
before 1995 were somewhat lower for the same number of right
answers.
Novelist Amy Tan is reported to have scored below 1200. Actress
Drea de Matteo, who gained stardom through her role in "The
Sopranos," said she did much worse than that: 800 for the entire
test. She told Playboy magazine that she filled in the spaces on
the math section without looking at the questions -- just to
make a diagram -- and thinks she must have gotten several of
them right. "If I didn't, that means I got a perfect 800 on my
English section," she told the magazine.
Edgar said he does not bear emotional scars from his early
testing failures, but he urges school counselors to be more
encouraging than his was. "We need to give young people hope and
stop classifying them because they didn't make the grade in
their high school years," he said. "We do too much in our
society of telling young people they are going to be failures
because they can't take tests."
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