The Test and The Art of Thinking (2018) - full transcript

For decades, the SAT & ACT have loomed colossal as a teenage rite of passage for those aspiring to college in the U.S. The experience, and the score, remain indelible for many. Students, academics, and test-taking professionals expose the bias and influence, both cultural and psychological, in this surprising documentary.

- And you may begin.

- The test doesn't measure
what you've learned in school.

- It's totally different from
what you're groomed to know.

- It wasn't that I
was scared of it.

I just knew I wasn't
going to do well.

- You know,
this isn't just about a test

it's about a vision
of American society.

It meant something
as though like this

is the next step in your life.

How are you gonna get there?

I have to kill this test.



I have to kill it.

- There was always
sort of this idea

that it's me against
the Scantron.

You know,
if I can bubble in the right things

then I'll make it in the world.

- There's nothing in this
test, nor in the process,

that you discover that's
gonna change you as a person.

- Mathematics, science,

being able to use
the English language.

These tests don't measure it,

and they don't improve it.

So why do they exist?

- As a character,
who is the SAT?

That's a really good question.



I like that.

I think the SAT is a
really interesting exam,

in fact,
I see it as a work of art.

There's something
really kind of beautiful

about it in its design.

I love the creativity
within the predictability.

And I'm always very excited
when a new test is released,

so I can see how they've
taken, you know,

the sample of concepts that are
normally covered on the exam

and inventing new ways
of asking questions.

The SAT is not a test
of what you know.

It's a test of how you think.

- We call it the big test

because the stakes seem
really, really high.

This is going to
play a large role

in my odds of
getting into college.

That's a lot to think about.

- How did you do on the test?

That is what your mom is
gonna share with my mom

in the vegetable aisle
of the grocery store.

So it's not the process of
learning that's important,

it's how did you do on the test?

- I like the SAT.

I feel like,
I really like that method of thinking

or that's how my brain
works or something

so I mean I'm lucky in that way.

- The SAT test can be very daunting
and, and scary and...

- I think all the
adjectives to describe...

- the SAT, yeah.

It's almost like why
are we taking it?

But I know we should,
but I don't understand.

So it's just a whole
slew of emotions.

- On Sunday,
the one day that you actually have

to relax and do like
what you actually enjoy

you have to then now
go study for the SATs

and take a practice
test and go downtown,

go downtown and
disrupt your day.

It's kind of horrible.

- Hi. - Hey how are you?

Hi, I'm Chris, how are you?

- Hi I'm Stefan.

- Pleasure,
pleasure nice to meet you.

Hi, I'm Chris. - I'm Tania.

Stefan's mom.
- Hey, how's it going?

Yes, please have a seat.

Welcome.

I got this score report
from your parents

and I've done a
lot of work on it.

We're gonna talk about it today.

But before we even
get into all this

I wanna just talk to
you just about you.

Get a sense of who you
are, you know,

what you wanna be doing,
what your goals are.

- The best place I
could possibly go

would be like MIT or one of
those like really big schools.

I didn't do very well
the first SAT I took

and I was really disappointed.

- So that one question wrong
cost you two raw score points.

- But I'm not just gonna
let some stupid test

stand in the way
between me and a college

that would be right for me.

- When it comes down to the
last couple of questions,

if you have it down to two

you wanna choose the
less familiar word.

Because they're
looking for people

to get that question wrong.

Of those two choices,
which choice has words

that are more familiar
to most people?

- What is intelligence?

It's very hard to say.

It's not just verbal
and math intelligence,

but it's interpersonal and
intrapersonal intelligence.

It's artistic intelligence.

It's kinesthetic intelligence.

It's musical intelligence.

- How does memory interact

with judgment and
decision-making?

How does emotion
come in and affect

our cognitive processing?

I mean we are amazingly
complex creatures.

- Rather than intellect
being a single thing,

which IQ tests
purport to measure,

and SAT's are kind of
a souped-up IQ test,

I think people have a number

of different
cognitive abilities.

And you can be, say,
strong with language,

average with math,
low with music or vice versa.

And strength in one intelligence

simply doesn't predict whether

you're gonna be strong in
other kinds of intelligences.

- In conversational
lingua franca

of the world I live
in, everybody believes

there's this thing called IQ

that measures how smart you are.

- The origins of the
SAT are much contested.

There are different
books offering

different interpretations
of the birth of the SAT.

There are some who see its birth

and growth as an equity measure.

Remember, once upon a time,

colleges gave their
own admissions tests

and would only
invite to take them

those students who graduated
from elite high schools.

- Could we enable
what they called then

the diamond-in-the-rough,
to be able to rise

and demonstrate that they have

the capacity to earn admission.

- But there's a whole
other interpretation of it.

Every time Higher
Ed has expanded

there have been some saying,
you're letting in those people?

The hope was that
these tests would show

that, in fact,
immigrants weren't as capable as others.

- The first test was
given at Harvard in '26.

And it's pretty
amazing that you can go

into the National
Archives and see this test

and it's so obscure and
abstract and challenging,

and the vocabulary
is through the roof.

- The person who had
the social vision

was James Bryant Conant,
the President of Harvard.

If you were in
the top 1/10 of 1%

and you have the kind of
mind and the kind of skills

that show up on an SAT,
the system will find you,

you will not spend your life

walking behind a
mule and a plow.

You will go to a fancy
college on scholarship.

That's done.

That's a check mark.

- Our system of public
education in the United States

is one of the unique
features of the free society

we have developed
on this continent.

We may speak of it as uniquely
democratic in its nature.

- What should we study to
get ready for this test?

- Well, George,
this really isn't

the kind of a test
that you can study for.

- The people who
brought you the SAT

didn't have a commercial
bone in their body.

So they weren't like
a plot to make money.

It was much more
interesting story

of a sort of crackpot
utopian scheme.

But as has become obvious,

it's easy to take
these kinds of ideas

and put them in a business
or economic setting.

- More than 100 years ago,

the College Board
began with an idea

that American
democracy was at risk

because privilege rather than
merit might rule our country.

And they developed the first
set of shared admissions exam.

- Is it possible
to design a test

that somehow drills
down into your brain,

gets into your DNA
and tells someone else

this is what you got in you?

- Here's what this
comes down to.

Ready? - Yeah.

- It comes down to this.

Do you trust your instincts?

Do you trust the strategies?

Because if you do,
the answer's obvious.

- Um.

- The College Board often
with the SAT tried to

at least give the impression
that they were measuring

some sort of essence
of intelligence.

Some of the testing experts
talk about a thing called G,

which is some sort of an entity

that exists mysteriously
in individuals.

- There's the general
mental factor G,

which is that thing which the
IQ test is designed to study.

And so you talk
about a good IQ test

having a high G-Loading.

Something that the College
Board has never published

is the G-Loading of the SAT.

- What is G, is it ability?

No.

Is G reasoning ability?

No, not really.

Is G reasoning ability
in academic context?

Maybe.

And the real answer,

'cause I've pushed very
hard to get that answer,

'cause I used to have to
defend the test is, G is G.

- I'm basically trying to
teach them not to think.

I'm trying to remove all
thinking from the process

and make it frankly unemotional.

We have a task.

The task is a score.

Let's say it's 2100,
let's say it's 1800, whatever it is.

Our job is to figure out within
the landscape of the test

where we're gonna
find those points.

- The SAT really
goes against a lot

of what I think a lot
of people stand for,

yet, it's this huge thing.

It's like, what'd you get?

What'd you get, you know?

Even like the parents who are,

like my hippie friend
parents were all like,

what did you get on this?
You know, what'd they get?

It's got this power.

And it means something,
and it's kind of disgusting

but at the same
time, as a parent,

I'm like, you know, what'd he get?
What'd he get?

You know?

- Before World War II,

American higher
education as a whole

wasn't aspiring to educate
everyone who deserves to come in.

- I confer on you
the first degree

in Arts or in
Science and admit you

to the fellowship
of educated men.

- Hallelujah.

- The G.I. Bill transformed
American higher education.

All of a sudden enrollment
boomed everywhere.

- University's being called upon

to educate previously
unimagined numbers of students.

- California post-Second
World War period,

the SAT became a
national reality.

The point was that
Berkeley wanted to show

that it was a public Ivy.

And a way to show that it was

was to use the same
admissions test

that those other
institutions were using.

- The unstated selling
pitch for the SAT

to a typical big American
state university was,

if you want to be
more like Harvard,

order the SAT for your students.

- Alright,
thanks for coming everybody.

As most of you know,
I'm Akil Bello,

test prep veteran
going on my 25th year.

Thanks for joining me.

We're gonna have a
fun-filled conversation

about the impact of the SAT

and what it means for
all of our students.

- We have these strategies.

We give them finite steps to say

this is exactly
how you tackle this

in a way that you
would have never

come up with on your own.

- The reading on any of
these standardized tests,

from ACT, SAT,
LSAT has nothing to do with school.

In school you read a
novel, you discuss

the motivations
of the character.

There is, like,
parents are always like

should I make my child
read five books this summer

to get their reading,
and I go, no.

Why don't you both read an
article from Time Magazine

and then you quiz the kid
about what they just read.

- They score less well
than they expected to.

And if you demystify
it and say to them,

look, this isn't because
of some flaw in you.

This isn't because you're not
as smart as you think you are.

This is because this test
is a strange instrument

that you've never
dealt with before

and the claim to
authority behind this test

is deeply problematic.

- I mean the SAT and the ACT,

they depend on the very
top schools using the test.

But then,
those top schools have these

really fine-tuned hierarchies
against each other

that are based on 20 points.

This school has an average score

that's one question out
of, you know,

a hundred higher than the other.

- A lot of the pressure
that comes on these students

is that without this
type of advanced

preparation and ability,
you will not live the good life.

That's in the end
what drives it.

It's why we can all charge
what we're able to charge.

- Compare and contrast.

Identify the point.

Identify supporting evidence.

I mean these are formal skills.

Formal skills are not education.

They are things that you can do

if you have the education.

But they're not
actually a substitute

for the education itself,

and they shouldn't be
mistaken for education itself.

- When you look at
the test long enough

it's almost like you're
not, I don't know,

you kind of like
distance yourself

from the actual
material on the test

and start looking
in terms of pattern.

Where it becomes less of,
I know all this from school

and now I'm going to apply

these concepts to this question.

It becomes more of,
I've seen this question before

I know this pattern,

I can figure out what
they want me to say.

- It's very tricky.

Each question, just,
you have to really think about,

are they tricking me
or are they asking me

something that's objective?

- I've said in a classroom,
this is not algebra class.

I am not teaching you algebra.

Because I know on a
multiple-choice test

I can actually get
them around nearly

all the algebra on the test.

And if I were a schoolteacher,
I wouldn't do that.

- I don't cover subject matter.

I just get them to
learn how to look

at a problem a different way.

It's not a math test.

It's not a reading test.

It's a get-the-answer test.

- My tutor one day
just looked at me

and, she's like, honestly,
like this is the correct way

to solve this problem.

But you can always just
substitute one for every variable

and then solve the equation.

It's like, horrible math.

But as soon as I
started doing that

my time for math
questions went way down.

- Yes,
I'm curious what your response would be

to groups like FairTest
that say the SAT

isn't necessarily a good
predictor of college success.

- The SAT is about as
good a predictor...

My feeling about
standardized tests,

such as the SAT and the ACT,

are that they're valuable.

As a scientist I couldn't
believe elsewise.

I believe that they add
information, they add validity.

But I also realize that
they don't measure as truly

as we, as measurement professionals,
would like them to do.

- I think we've created
a generation of students

that are used to taking
tests and being measured

by their performance on tests.

- What does it
encourage kids to do?

What does it encourage
kids to learn?

What does it encourage
schools to teach?

- I want you to be able
to look at this problem,

do it the easiest, simplest,

most accurate way,
quickly and move on.

I don't care about your
scope of knowledge.

I care that you know enough
to select the correct answer

in the easiest,
quickest way possible.

- One of the troubling
aspects to the test

and it's troubling
for test makers,

ACT and SAT people talk
about this all the time,

is that essentially in order
to be efficient with the test,

we essentially have to
set out to trick people.

Number one, we speed the
test, we make you do it fast.

And then when we
ask you a question,

we give you a
variety of answers,

many of which are partly true.

We want you to pick the one

that's more true
than the others.

So under stress in a
time-constrained environment,

we're trying to trick you.

- Someone who says
the SAT is valuable

because it has tricks
and traps in it

and you have to learn
to deal with that,

is saying, in effect,
what we really want

is a straight-up IQ test.

- I always had a feeling that

you know, being good at the
SAT was like a video game.

And you know my son,
he loved video games

and he used to play World
of Warcraft and Halo,

and he'd be shooting
or doing whatever

he was doing on a video game.

But out of the
corner of the eye,

he'd always have to
watch for who was coming

out of, you know,
this end or that end.

Like you had to be
doing your thing,

but aware of everything coming
from the different angles.

And that is how the SAT is.

- Here is the ultimate question

of your readiness for college.

Does England have a 4th of July?

Five seconds,
answer the question.

You just said no.

You've just failed.

- The two answers
are almost the same.

Then the student will
swear they're the same.

And I always tell the kids,
when you're seeing two choices

what's your percentage
of being right?

And they all tell me 50%.

And I say, no.

10%.

If you're seeing two answers,
the test maker's already won.

- A lot of times I
would always choose

the second-best answer.

And I would go to
the back of the book,

and they were like
this answer was good,

but this one below it, B,
was better than D because,

and then they would explain it.

And then I'd be like, wow,
this is a really bad explanation

but I guess that's how
they want me to think.

- So who was President
of the United States

when Pearl Harbor was bombed?

Now let's say you
had four choices.

The person who says Franklin
Delano Roosevelt has it right.

Someone who puts Franklin
Delano Roosevelt Junior

might say taking the
test, maybe he was junior,

maybe this is a trick?

You know, I don't, you
know, the person knows

it was FDR and needs to
be rewarded for that.

But you know,
it's a small difference.

The person who says Harry
Truman has the right World War,

is off by one president
and by a few years.

That's much more knowledge

than we have of the
Peloponnesian War.

The person who says
George Washington is lost,

there's no doubt about that,

and more has to be
done to get that person

to figure out the
sequence of history.

But the other three
answers do not allow

in a zero-sum game,
for the approximation of knowledge.

And that's a crime,
in a teaching environment.

- Millions of high
school students

will be tossing
and turning tonight

thinking about
tomorrow's SAT test.

But one young test-taker
says he's cracked the code,

figured out a simple
step to game the system

and get a higher score.

- It was just sort of one
of those urban legends

or rumors that goes around that,

oh, the longer essays
get the higher scores.

And so I decided to
see if that was true.

- Milo says
that out of 115 samples,

longer essays almost always
garnered higher scores.

- The surprising part was
how significant it was.

The chance of this
result coming up randomly

and not being the result of

an actual significant
correlation, was

I think it was 10
to the negative 18.

- Turns
out there is some

very grown-up support
for Milo's conclusion.

- I did what any good
MIT nerd would do,

which is I counted
the number of words.

- Tonight, how to ace the SATs.

An MIT study found that longer
essays got better scores

regardless of any
errors they contained.

So remember, facts don't matter.

Just lots and lots of words.

- Grammar essay.

So here's the essay.

Let me find the example.

All right, this is so silly.

When I went crazy,
when I went big,

I got a perfect score on the
essay, I got a 12.

One example of a man
who embraced the wisdom

of his elders was
Barack Hussein Obama,

famed revolutionary
of the Basque Region.

Young Obama unified
the Basque populous,

seeking to overthrow
the tyranny of Franco,

nationalist,
totalitarian demagogue.

Obama, during his six
months he spent in jail

after this first failed coup
attempt, came in contact

with a seasoned revolutionary,
Winston Churchill.

With Churchill's
support, young Obama

was able to unify the masses,

instigate a popular revolution,

and liberate the Basque
nation from Franco's control.

So that was a perfect 12.

That was a perfect score.

And yeah,
my vocabulary was strong.

My sentence structure
was complex.

But my examples were insane.

But that was perfection because

you're not measured
on your facts.

- There was a phenomenal moment

where he was on a
hard vocab problem.

And it was really
interesting watching him.

He was struggling.

It took him like two minutes

which is like an
eternity, right,

to figure out what to do.

30 seconds left.

Because he was sort of
swinging back and forth

between trusting his instincts
and trusting the strategies.

And it was like a defining
moment, in many ways,

at least for me,
'cause I was like, huh.

The way he handles this
moment is gonna tell me

a lot about how he thinks
about what we're doing,

about how he trusts
me as a guide,

and also himself as to
what's the right move for him

given the context
of where he is.

And you know to his credit
he trusted the strategy

and got the question right.

- Alright guys.

Ladies and gentleman.

My name is Kory McBride.

I like to tell people I'm
Harlem-born, Harlem-bred,

and when I die I'll
be Harlem-dead.

You all are pretty
decent students.

You know, a B plus or more.

What was your first reactions
when you saw your scores?

Inquiring minds wanna know.

- When I took the SAT
I walked in like, yo,

and came out like, yo,
this thing was easy.

It was like taking
an easy math test.

I got back that score I was
like, yo, what happened?

- My parents always say that,

like they want me to do
better than they did.

Because they didn't
get to go to college,

my mom didn't get
to finish college.

- Because my parents
like, they came here,

it's like, I have to

go from zero to a
hundred real quick.

- Real quick.

- Yeah,
like that's what I have to do.

- They're investing
in your future

but I don't know if I'm
that good of an investment.

I'm not perfect,
like I can't bring home

perfect score after perfect
score after perfect score.

So like I wanna be able
to like pay them back

and make sure that they,
well they, it's just my mom.

But to make sure that she
has a good life in the future

and that I can help
her and support her

like how she supported me.

- One of the first things
that colleges look at

are the numbers.

They may not know the student.

They may never see the student.

But what they do
see are the numbers.

- My older cousin,
he's like a lawyer now.

People look at him
completely differently

because he's this black kid from
like, Florida

who went to Miami University.

And they look at him
completely different.

So like just knowing that,

being like somebody who's black,

comes from a
low-income community,

it's a huge thing
to go to college.

- Well in
this day and age,

a high school diploma's
not gonna get you that far.

- I don't want to put
my parents through

the stress of
finding me a tutor.

People from our background,

you will never spend
money on a test prep.

But you will go
get yourself a book

you'll read that book
and then that's it.

- The questions may have
been a little confusing,

I've had students say
like, I'm not sure

exactly what they're
asking me for.

Or isn't there a simpler way
that they can ask the question?

- I didn't want my
mom to pay for a tutor

'cause, I mean, I don't,
can we afford that?

- If someone wants to invest in
you, let them invest.

- Some people
prepare for the SAT

since they're,
like, I don't know

since they're like
five years old.

Exactly, like fresh out the womb

they already have a study guide.

They have this,

they have a tutor
already in their crib.

Like,
they already have everything.

- I don't wanna be in this
crippling student debt.

I don't wanna have
to be on my deathbed

having to write out this
check for this college.

- Some people they're studying

for the SAT since sixth grade.

And like, after they take
it, it's not gonna help them.

Like, what are they gonna do

with learning all the
strategies and all that?

- The person who
actually wrote the SAT

was a psychometrician
named Carl Brigham.

He was an important member
of the Eugenics movement.

In fairness to Brigham,

everybody in his sort of class

believed in Eugenics in that
moment in American history.

- He did something that's very
rare in the academic field.

He published a
series of articles

that repudiated almost
all of his previous work.

The Educational Testing Service

named their library after him.

But he was smart enough,
and a good enough scientist

and a good enough
academic to see

the horrors of what
he had helped create.

- This is sort of like SAT
Crack, right?

I only show to people at
the right moment, okay?

Usually later in a program.

But I think it's
actually apropos here.

Because if you're
someone who's coming

to the end of a section

and you're trying to
get a question right

and you don't have a
minute and a half to do it,

I'm gonna show you something
that works reliably.

Although you have to be very
careful when you use it.

Black Magic.

This is a tool to help you
eliminate answer choices

based on visual patterns
okay, in the numbers.

And the reason why it
can be very powerful

is because the test-makers

try to kind of camouflage
the right answers.

Sometimes you can break
the code and get it right

without even looking
at the question itself.

So here's the first rule.

Look for

patterns of three

and eliminate the oddballs.

Choose the choice
closest to the middle.

So here we go.

We got 1/108, 1/54, 1/27,

1/18, 1/16.

- I think they're
all, except for 1/16

they're all multiples of nine.

- That means
that E would be out.

- 27 is not a...

- Even number
so this is out for you.

Alright?

What's another
obvious difference?

- Well 108 is...

- Three digits.
- Greater than a hundred.

Yeah, or it has three
digits, yeah.

- It has three digits
and everything else has two.

So guess what,
that's out as well.

So now it's down to B and D.

Okay.

So what I see here is I've got
zero, five, two, one and one.

I've got two one's

and I have three non-one's.

- Oh, okay.

So the answer would be B?

- 54.

- That's like, really strange

that that sort of strategies actually
work, like that's,

huh.

- Look at your face.

It works a lot more than you
probably imagine it does.

We use this when we encounter
something on the exam,

we don't know what to
do, we're unsure,

we really can't find
a way into the problem

and we know we have
to get this point.

- One morning he
came in and he said,

I was taking the SAT last night.

And I said, huh?

- We had a meeting
back in Washington

where the College Board
made a presentation

to this Committee on testing.

I felt that there was
too much of an emphasis

on the concept of
innate intelligence.

- Then he said,
"What the hell are these analogies?"

And so I said,
"Well the analogies assess

"a person's deep understanding
of the English language."

And he looked at me and he
said, "What kind of,

"what theory of
cognitive development

"justifies that bullshit?"

- I mean a scale that
goes out to 1600 points

to measure your ability,
it's just ludicrous.

We don't have that
level of precision.

- When you're dealing
with people in public life

or are participating
in public life,

their motives can
be very complicated.

- There was my granddaughter,

and she was in sixth
grade at the time,

and on her desk was a pile
of books on verbal analogies.

And when I asked her,
"What's this all about?"

And she said,
"I'm preparing for the SAT."

And I thought, God,
in sixth grade,

this is what she's doing.

- The fact that it came from him

made such a difference.

For him to make the case

that people should get
away from that old,

you know, truly incorrect,
empirically incorrect approach

to standardized tests.

- His thinking on this is
very clear and unerring.

- Well we still don't have
a good enough understanding

of the nature of the mind,

how it evolves, how it operates,

how it's different from
one person to another.

- He had a yellow pad
that he would keep

in his desk drawer and he would

just start writing
down little sentences.

And then he would revise,
elaborating, reformulating

and he kept doing that over
and over and over again.

- Richard Atkinson,
then the president

of the University of
California System,

and with a Ph.D.
in measurement science,

he's a cognitive scientist,

stood up before the American
Council on Education

and said,
"The University of California

"is gonna drop the SAT."

- I concluded what many
others have concluded,

that America's
overemphasis on the SAT

is compromising our
educational system.

- Finally tonight, the debate

over scholastic aptitude tests.

- The world of
testing college applicants

was rocked by an
announcement from

the President of the
University of California.

- Contending that
standardized college tests

have distorted the
way young people learn

and worsened
educational inequities.

- Dr. Atkinson says it
doesn't test anything,

that's just not true.

- In 1996,
it dropped the name altogether

and said that the
SAT was the SAT

and that the initials no
longer stood for anything.

Rather than resolving
the problem,

this rhetorical sleight-of-hand
served to underscore

the mystery of what the
SAT is supposed to measure.

- What is this test?

What is it testing?

How are we using it?

- The central question
he was raising was

how should we define
merit in a democracy?

- The response by
defenders of the SAT

is, don't shoot the messenger.

In many ways, we're caught up in

the educational equivalent
of a nuclear arms race.

- His speech sent ripples
throughout the community

that are still going, in fact.

People reference that
speech and the process

that led up to that
speech constantly.

- I had not met
Atkinson at that point

and I read about the speech

and I thought,
wow, this is great.

- No one is spared,
not teachers, not parents,

not admissions officers,
not university presidents.

- Wouldn't the SAT
give you a baseline?

- All of us knew
how smart he was.

This is a man who
thought about it

and really understood
what we did.

He understood test-making and
he'd come to this conclusion.

That was more sobering,

because it was a judgment.

It was a judgment on the
rest of us who understood.

And I think we all felt it.

- The College Board
was surreptitiously

trying to scuttle
Dick's initiative,

hoping that he
would retire soon.

This is the College
Board's basic strategy

they just wait people out.

- It was the case that a number

of admissions officers
were recruited

by the College Board

to write Op Eds and the like,

attacking the position that
was taken in that speech.

But I think that's the
nature of the world

and I should have
anticipated that.

I didn't quite anticipate that.

- I first started teaching SAT,

1993 'cause I had a second
child and I needed a second job.

And then I found out that
the emperor had no clothes,

and I said, oh,
we didn't know that a few years ago.

This is kinda interesting.

SAT's gonna go
away in a few years

'cause everybody's
gonna figure out

the emperor has no clothes.

What was amazing to me,
and it amazes me to this day,

is that they did find out
the emperor had no clothes,

and instead of saying,
oh gosh, the guy's naked,

oh how embarrassing, they
said, hey, let's test more.

I have never understood
it and I never will.

I think it's over my head.

- And it all feeds
into the supremacy

of the US News rankings right,

which affect college behavior

in such appalling ways.

Right? Where colleges
have to constantly worry

about their US News ranking.

And so they can't accept
lower standardized test scores

because it will
drop their ranking.

- Try being the
director of admissions

at an Ivy League or
equivalent school

and in one year you were
more holistic about it

or you weren't watching
those scores really closely

and now your average
score of the admitted kids

went below three of
your competitor schools.

See what happens.

- But they would never
take their eyes off it.

- It's an American
conceit that speed

and profundity are
the same thing.

That someone who is facile and
quick is necessarily better.

- Maybe I'm giving the
test-maker too much credit,

but I'm assuming that their goal

is to get them to
look at the question

and go,
what are they talking about?

- I asked my mom, like,
who the heck is this guy?

And she was like, oh,
it's the SAT tutor.

- He was an unlikely SAT
tutor-looking person.

No one gave me his resume.

I have no idea if he attended
college, nor would I care.

- Doesn't have an office,
doesn't have a card.

Doesn't advertise.

- You can just tell he
has something about him

that he can impart to my child,

who will hopefully do
better on these tests.

- I don't think I ever
asked Greg a question about

what prepares you for this job?

What success have you had?

- Do you guys play sports?

- We ride horses. - Yeah.

- I sort of try to relate
everything to a sport.

- Okay.

- Because if you think
school then you're gonna.

I want you to think how you
learn how to ride a horse.

- He always says that
you're overthinking.

You're overthinking.

- He's like, no,
you can't think like that.

Yes or no, right now.

- How come I've had four tutors

and no one's ever
taught me that?

- 'Cause I have
never learned how to do it

by going to a class.

I learned how to
do it by dealing

with a bunch of idiot kids.

- Well with Greg I think he's,

I would say he's
basically a genius.

- I'm pretty sure he actually
is a certified genius.

- When it comes to questions

he dumbs it down for, like,
even the stupid people.

- That's all I do.

Get them to think that they
know what they're doing.

- The entire test is
just a game to him.

- You get five right,
you hit your goal.

Five easy questions.

But you get 'em right,
you hit your goal.

So you're happy.

Which gives off a
chemical in the brain

that cause it to go
better and faster.

Video gamers know
this like crazy.

Then you play level two.

Next five.

Boom.

Puts your brain into a higher
gear to get the next five.

Now you're king.

You hit your... you're at 640.

You got 550 before.

Wow.

- If I like have any kind of
hesitation, just skip.

- Ta-da. - Okay.

- Listen to the doubt.
- Okay.

- My job is to regulate
the amount of fear.

I'm evaluating them.

Not the test.

Not anything else.

I'm evaluating what I think
they can and can't do.

Show me 300.

Put your, move your...

- Oh, I just realized that's
the degree of the uh...

- Now keep going.

- Okay.

- I get them to start going back

to when they were three,
four, five years old

when they learned by curiosity.

If it's not fun,
it's not memorable.

Yes!

I've gotta start seeing
the glint of something.

Okay?

And then that's
when I tell them,

because especially
with like four hours.

That's all it is.

Join the dark side
for four hours.

'Cause you don't have
to do this all the time,

you just have to do this,
if you want all of this stuff,

this test is in the way.

- I've worked on the skills

and I've been doing practice.

It's just not really seeming
to make a huge difference.

I've been in Honors math
since I was in like 7th grade.

And my score goes
down 80 points?

How is that even possible?

I just don't get it.

Greg always tries to
get me to go fast.

He's like, you're too
slow, you're too slow,

you need to move on,
but I don't want to move on

until I've proven to myself
that I know the answer's right.

I have a lot of friends
that are in the same boat.

I know I'm not the
smartest kid in my class.

It's just a fact,
I'm okay with that.

- We've got it.

You're seeing the 2015 rankings
first on CBS This Morning.

Brian Kelly is editor of
US News & World Report.

Listen,
a lot of people are ranking

the colleges and universities
but after 30 years

I'm thinking you all
are the Gold Standard.

- Well thank you,
I'm gonna agree with you on that.

A lot of people wanna
get in the rankings game.

The NY Times came out
with a new ranking today.

- We rank up here because
we only take students

with SATs this high.

- We survey
all these colleges,

and we ask them 700 questions.

We have 2500 data points.

- It is a cycle.

There are a number
of stakeholders.

And no one can actually justify
it from first principles.

But we seem to be trapped in it

and no one knows
how to get us out.

- Small things matter

when you get into
the top of the pack.

- Even people who say they don't
care, somehow care.

I mean we're rewarded for it.

We're rewarded for a
certain number of statistics

that we can trot out to our
bosses or to the public.

How many applications?

How many kids do you turn down?

And anyone who says,
oh, but that's not

a real measure of
what we want to do,

or what we're doing here,
you're just told you're naive.

- I do really well in school.

I just don't do really
well on the test.

Like he's super good at it.

I don't particularly think
he's smarter than me.

- But she
has been better...

She has better grades than me.

I knew I couldn't have
better grades in our class.

And so I had to go for
the best test score.

- Yeah, it's basically a skill.

And I don't really have it.

- I once had an Op
Ed in the NY Times.

And I argued in the Op-ed

that tests like the
SAT should be untimed.

And I said you know
there are very few jobs

in which you really
need to do things timed,

like maybe a surgeon
or an airplane pilot,

and there would be
plenty of hoops for that.

But if it takes somebody longer

to do the SAT,
what's the problem?

- I'm going through
this with my daughter

trying to find the
right path for her.

She's very smart.

She can do very
well on this test

until you put a clock on her

and then she falls
apart from the pressure.

- One of the hardest
questions to answer

about some of the tests
is the gender differences.

And it's something that has
not been answered I think,

to the sufficient satisfaction

of anyone in research
or measurement.

- It wasn't that
I couldn't do it.

I can't say that I failed

because I didn't get
a terrible score.

It's just that I wasn't getting

what was expected of
me, I guess.

'Cause if you look at my grades,

and you look at other things

that can measure your intellect,

it wasn't matching that number
that you get on the SAT.

And I think that
because it's the test,

you assume it has to.

Because it has to
match everything else

that you are capable of.

And if it doesn't then you know,

you're either not
capable of those things,

or the test has to be wrong.

And you have to pick
which one is it?

- How does an admissions officer

looking at that very good
score, the 750 math SAT score,

how do they know whether the kid

took that cold going
in the first time,

or after a hundred dollar
course in their high school

or 1,200 from Kaplan or $50,000

because their parents
hired a tutor.

What does it mean, that 750?

Is it a good score 'cause
somebody's really bright

or 'cause somebody's
really well trained?

- You think about those people

whose brain work differently.

As an example the girl
who comes out and says,

my brain doesn't
work like this Dad.

I can't think like this.

- And it's crazy
that this SAT score

means so much to people.

So it's like,
but what about the other side of me?

Am I just a number?

- When I was brought
in 13 years ago

to the school that I'm
at, our school was lacking

in terms of how they
were scoring on the SAT.

And since I've been
there, you know,

we have added test prep.

I've put an emphasis to
families that you need to do it.

If you can't afford it,
we'll find a way to help you do it.

The idea of taking
practice SAT's,

we do it all the
time as a community.

And I think as a result,
our scores have done better

and as a result our college
admissions has done better.

Like it or not,
that's what's going on.

- I do see that this
test itself takes skill.

So it's all about
speed and strategy.

So it's not like
there's no value to it.

Like, it does show something.

But nothing about me.

- ACT, old SAT,

old old SAT, new SAT.

In my opinion,
no good English teacher

would analyze a text
that is in alignment

with the way any of those
tests ask questions in reading.

- At the end of the day

the single greatest
indictment of this test

or any of these tests is
now and always has been

that every single one of us at
this table can raise a score.

- Yep, absolutely.
- In six weeks

I can raise a score.

If this test taught
anything meaningful

that would not be the case.

- Right.

- A lot of these
parents come to me

and it's like,
how do I get my kid into the Ivy League?

It's not only about
like, yes, you know,

these tests are game-able.

We can get your kid's scores up.

It's about questioning
whether or not

you should be part of that
particular system at all.

- You can defend the test

as it gives us a clean number,

we like that.

It seems to be a national,
and in that sense

more objective standard,

we like that.

It seems to provide for
opportunity, and we like that.

Although these are narratives
that Americans embrace

it's just on every single
point, it's a myth.

On every single
point it's not true.

- So me for the SAT

I went up about 250 points.

- It was like 200 points
higher than my first time.

- Like, 400 points.

- I think about 150 total
across the whole test.

- Princeton Review
opened the doors

to the test prep
industry by saying,

we're gonna teach you magic.

Right,
that was the marketing pitch.

We're gonna teach you magic.

Until that point it
was still perceived

to be an aptitude test

much like an IQ test

that you couldn't
actually learn.

You either had it or you didn't.

And Princeton Review
opened the flood gate to

anybody can do this test
with the right understanding.

- I remember when John Katzman

kind of introduced us
to the Princeton Review.

And we thought of
course, he was evil

because he was destroying

the myth we had

that we had this instrument

that could level
the playing field

and tell us something
about a person's mind

rather than background or

the luck of the teachers he had

or the parents he had.

And he was telling us,
oh no, this is a game.

We can, we've figured this out.

- It's incredible to me.

Like I figured as soon as people

really start understanding this

we'll go on and
get rid of the SAT

and start doing something
that makes more sense.

And here it's as
popular as ever,

actually more popular

in terms of the number
of students taking it.

- We didn't wanna believe him.

It sounded cynical.

But it was proved to be right.

- I don't know any
people personally

that had tutors for the SAT

but I've seen
videos about the SAT

and seen the tutors
and what they do

and I know its very expensive.

- Families that will spend

thousands of
dollars in SAT prep,

it's just discouraging
that the money's going

to this organization,
but they're making

all of our educational
institutions,

they're shifting
them to that way

to where you feel compelled
to put this money into it

and invest in it.

- I mean,
the College Board at one time said

the test is so good,
you can't prep for it.

Then when private organizations
showed that you could,

the College Board got into
the business of prepping kids.

- Once the College Board
got our email addresses

it was like, bam.

- Yeah the SAT.

Like pre-prep thing
in like 10th grade.

And I just got spammed by
like, everyone.

- Getting a high
score on this one test

literally changed
my life forever.

- Imagine getting admitted
to the nation's top schools.

- The key is, is using a great
SAT and ACT prep program.

- The Kaplan Method
will help you tackle

all types of
sentence construction

- Packed full of insider
strategies and essential tips.

- There has now been a
proliferation in this field

where you have
thousands of shops.

You can buy off the rack a
book, and a business card

or a flyer, you're good to
go, you're a tutor.

There's no accreditation,
there's no anything.

It's simply,
I scored well on this test

and can I undercut the
pricing of the bigger shops.

- Commercialization of college
admissions is increasing.

We have four one billion
dollar industries.

They are the enrollment
management consultant industry:

high-priced consultants
that schools hire

to help them position themselves

in U.S.
News & World Report rankings.

And then you have
the billion-dollar

how to beat the system industry
of guidebooks, et cetera.

Then you have the billion-dollar
test prep industry.

Then you have the
billion-dollar consultants

for kids industry
to help them get

into those
most-selective colleges.

- Please
welcome to the stage

our Founder, President and
CEO, Mr. Steven Ma.

- What does a SAT tell
a school about you?

Whether you're a
good student or not?

No, it doesn't tell
people about that.

If you take SAT on Monday
and you take SAT on Tuesday

you might have a
very different score.

Your score might
fluctuate 100 points.

But Monday and Tuesday

it doesn't make you
a different person.

Just 'cause your score
fluctuates 100 point

it doesn't make you a
different person right?

I was a very lousy student
when I was in high school.

I repeated pre-algebra twice.

Our teacher call me,
in front of the whole class,

the stupidest student
he has ever met.

I didn't budge,
I didn't complain.

I thought that's who I was.

I accepted it.

I accepted the identity
that I wasn't smart.

I accepted identity
I was a loser.

When I was in tenth
grade I met a teacher,

her name is Mrs. Allen.

But she's the person
that single-handedly

transformed my life.

And she just show
me all the respect

she complimented me
in front of the class.

And to reciprocate
that affection,

I tried to do all her homework.

I tried to perfect all
her homework and grades

and I got my first A.

Now think back,
when I was in ninth grade

I was called the
stupidest student

a teacher had ever met.

And when I was in eleventh grade

I was called the genius
of math and physics.

What has changed?

I hadn't changed.

I'm still me, right?

Steven Ma hasn't changed.

He hasn't eaten magic pill.

What has change is his
identity, is his horizon.

Someone has made him believe
that he could do more.

And that is magical.

If not without, if not with Mrs.
Allen,

I didn't know what
I was gonna be.

- One of the main themes

that I wanted to focus on today

is what are some strategies

for dealing with
obnoxious problems.

- My mom like forced
me to go to Think Tank.

It's four hours a day,
four times a week.

But my score has been going up.

- One of the ways that
the SAT is tricky is that

it tricks students

to study in very
inefficient manners.

- I've paid so much
for this tutoring.

I've also like,
put so much time into it

that if it doesn't
work out this fall

then it's kind of like this
summer just goes to waste.

- The SAT, to do well on
it, you need to,

I think it's all about
drilling yourself.

- I have like 20
different practice tests.

It's just doing the same
exercises over and over and over.

- Not everyone can take it

not everyone can
do well on the SAT.

One person might not
have those certain skills

but have another set of skills
that are equally valuable.

Albert Einstein,
he once said that

everyone is born a genius.

But if you judge a fish on
its ability to climb a tree

it will spend the rest of its
life thinking it's stupid.

- It is
sort of a mad rush

to get access to these
elite institutions.

There is a sense

the economy is not
generating the jobs,

the incomes, the prosperity,
the well-being, for everyone.

It is not at all the
case that a rising tide

is lifting all boats.

- I'm from the outer banks,
so we're a fishing village

and my dad's a fisherman

and my brother has
followed in his footsteps.

But the fishing
industry is dying.

- My parents,
they're both high school graduates.

And so when they graduated
high school in our community

it was fine for them because
there were furniture factories

and there were places to work.

But now I look at my community

and there are no
furniture factories,

there are no places
to get a stable job.

- Well certainly the
college application rat race

has been fueled
by the perception

that there are fewer good jobs.

That the lucrative
jobs are concentrated

in the finance sector.

Whether or not that's
good for the economy

it's certainly a
perception of many people.

- The bond rating
agencies tend to use SAT

and ACT scores to rate an
institution's fiscal health.

The president, the business
officers, the trustees.

Anybody that has a stake
in the fiscal health

of that organization now is
all of a sudden concerned

about the SAT and ACT
scores for some reason.

- This contest of ideas,

two very good ideas,

has been at the
center of the dialogue

in Western nations
since the 1700's.

The idea of democracy,
which was on the rise.

The idea that people were
equal, in some sense,

and nobody could figure
out in what sense

except in some obvious ways,

equal before the law
was the first of it.

And then the other idea that
was very powerful at the time

and has been ever since,
is the idea of capitalism,

the idea of markets.

It makes people
inherently unequal

and capitalism can't
work without inequality.

- I was using my SAT scores to
base where I should apply to

and I'm 50 to 100
points away from that

there's no point in me applying.

- If my SAT score didn't fit that
range, I just nixed it.

- Those test scores
represent ranges.

And to simply say,
the student doesn't have this score,

they're not admitted,
that's a misuse of the test.

- 1984,
Bates made standardized testing

optional for admissions.

Every five years doing
a periodic report

on how the policy was working.

One thing we've learned in
our various research studies

is that these are not
standardized tests.

- It was scary.

You know the test is
huge in this country.

And many of our alumni,
many of our faculty

doubted that we would
be able to do it,

doubted that we
would still be able

to attract top echelon students.

- For a place that
loves numbers,

the WPI faculty
were remarkably open

to making admissions decisions

without the benefit
of test scores.

We would be the first
nationally ranked science

and engineering school with
a test optional policy.

- If a institution's gonna
decide to go test score optional,

then they're deciding to
look at students differently.

The students that
submit test scores,

the students that don't
submit test scores.

That part I don't get.

I mean, the test is useful for
the students that submit it,

but not so useful for
the students that don't?

I don't see that.

- What I like about having
a test optional policy

is that then the
conversation changes.

- If you feel the
standardized test

is a good representation of you

and you want to submit it,

go ahead and do that.

- About one out of
every three students

who takes that admissions
test will have a discrepancy

between their previous grades
and that admissions test.

And they will feel that
the test is not fair,

that it's not a true
indicator of their ability.

They may be right.

- A large new study is
challenging the value

of these well-known
standardized tests.

It found that test
scores did not correlate

with how well a
student did in college.

We turn to its lead
author, William Hiss.

- Would we open up our
applicant pools more?

Would we see larger
numbers of students

who would succeed if
in one way or another

we de-emphasized the testing?

- Even large public institutions

dealing with many
thousands of applications,

institutions that are not
well-endowed can do this.

- We now have twice
as many women applying

and twice as many
underrepresented minority students

as was the case before we
adopted a test optional policy.

- So those scores
are false negatives.

Human intelligence is
simply more complex,

more fluid, more rich than
these tests can capture.

- I wasn't even going
to apply to Wake

because I thought it was
too far out of my league.

So they saw something,
and I don't know how, but they did.

And they gave me
confidence by accepting me

and when I came in I was
able to do great things.

- Maybe I would have
never even applied.

Maybe I would've said, you know,

this school is too high for me.

But it wasn't.

- We are finding
students without the use

of standardized testing
that are going to be

successful in our community.

- High scores on the SAT
meant scholarship money

and I knew that I came from
a single-parent household

and I know financial aid
doesn't always cover everything.

So finances were a big thing

when it came for me
getting into college.

So the SAT, the higher the score

the more money you can get
from different schools.

- No school says,
if you get this SAT score

we're gonna do this.

It's all just what we watch.

We watch the friends of ours
who get the high SAT scores

get offered all this money.

It's just from observation.

I don't think it's like,

I think it's much more
secretive in that way.

- If he gets his
SATs up another,

you know,
his math up another 50 points

does that mean he's
gonna save $5,000 a year?

That's going to be worth $20,000

over the course of an education?

I mean, what's the formula?

- It became an obstacle.

The test became a gatekeeper.

And it was doing, in
effect, the very opposite

of what it had been
intended to do.

- What it correlates to

is your parents' income level,

as opposed to your
IQ or your ability

to get good grades in college,

or even your ability to get
good grades in high school.

- And it's all very passive.

You don't need to be a racist

or class-based to
make it happen.

It happens all by itself now.

- There he is!

Stefan Blair, how are you, sir?

- I'm good how are you?

- Good, welcome.

- If a person's going
to spend 10 hours a week

preparing for the SAT,
I'd rather have that person

trying something really daring:

dance, acting,

science,

to explore areas
where the possibility

of high achievement is low,

but the possibility of
personal growth is very high.

- Wonder,
being amazed by something,

being curious about something,

having a question.

- If Harvard University,

and Columbia
University, and Yale,

and Princeton, said no,

this would come to an end.

- What's stopping them?

Since the Harvard
admissions office

and the Stanford
admissions office

and the Duke admissions
office knows this to be true,

why don't they drop the SAT?

The

conspiratorial side of me says

they like the SAT
having this role.

- E, five, six, eight, seven, B,

eight, A, nine, B.

Alright this is terrific.

In the 20-question
section in the first 10

we want 10 correct.

You got 10 correct.

Now the back end we're
looking for nine,

I believe, per our targets.

Dude, Happy Mother's Day!

20 out of 20!

- Wow. - Incredible!

- Yeah, wow. - This is amazing!

- That's really weird.

- Why is it so weird?

- 'Cause I like haven't done,

performed that well before.

- Well here's the thing.

We've been talking about
what you need to do, right,

in order to maximize
your scores.

- Yeah.
- You need consistent focus

through the easy's and medium's,

using strategy, you know,
moreso than content right?

760.

- That's good yeah.
- It's quite good!

Excellent, I love it.

- The first step we take today

in redesigning the SAT
is complete openness.

No longer will the SAT only
have disconnected problems

or tricky situations that
students won't likely see again.

It is time to admit
that the SAT and ACT

have become far too disconnected

from the work of
our high schools.

- So my question is,
if the old test is so bad

don't you owe the
country an apology?

You tested irrelevant words.

You tested math
that didn't matter.

All of these phrases
that they're using

about what the old test did,

then how do we trust
you with the new test?

- We recently announced
that students' SAT scores

in this country
reveal that only 43%

of US students are
ready for college.

- When we talk about
the number of students

who are unlikely to
be college successful

you've gotta take those
numbers with a grain of salt.

Policy-makers or folks
who hope to sell tests

or get the ear of policy-makers

will make unfortunate
statements,

will not listen to
the folks in research

who try to educate them and try
to contextualize the scores.

- We need to get
rid of completely,

the sense of mystery and
dismantle the advantages

that people perceive in
using costly test preparation

to find out the
secrets of the SAT.

- These exact same claims
were made 10 years ago

that we're hearing today.

The same two core techniques

that we've been using
for math for 30 years...

- Still applicable
to what was taught in 1981.

- In fact, I would say
that they are more useful

than they were on this test.

- This is the second edition
of the official SAT guide,

the one that is for the
test that is going away.

And right on the back of the
book, "The SAT is a logic test"

is the myth and then it says the
reality, and I quote

"The SAT does not test
logic, abilities, or IQ.

"It tests your skills in reading,
writing, and mathematics,

"the same subjects you're
learning in high school."

- That's part of what's so
comical about this claim

that we're doing this because
both the SAT and the ACT

are so disconnected from
what's going on in schools

the way they test grammar now,

ACT should be suing for
copyright infringement.

It is the exact same test.

- No penalty for wrong answers.

- This is the most
blatant gambit

for market share, flat out.

They threw in the towel and
said we can't compete with that.

- Does it
benefit students?

- Again, it benefits those
kids who are well coached

and can use process
of elimination.

With four answer choices
and no guessing penalty,

completely screws up their
data and their ability

to identify a good
functioning question.

- What if five years from now

the people who are
primarily anxious

about the SAT are the teachers?

- Right. - Like public schools

in New York,
most of them and I presume elsewhere,

kids are spending three
months on test prep.

- What worries me
about it this time

is that if in the
past they've said,

we're gonna change
the test so it looks

more like the high
school curriculum.

My worry now is that
what they're gonna do

is change the high
school curriculum

so it looks more like the test.

And to me that's a disaster.

Nobody should have
to go to SAT class

in the middle of
their school day.

- With
the stroke of a pen

the President put America on
a new education policy path

called the Every Student
Succeeds Act or ESSA.

- When the new federal
education law was signed

there was a provision in
it that caught my eye.

I noticed that ESSA
encouraged something

that the previous federal law
didn't make any mention of.

Which is that at the high school
level, if you're a state

you can consider using
a college entrance exam,

like the SAT or the ACT,
for your high school level test

for federal
accountability purposes.

That was new.

- The SAT is a tool.

It's not a system.

Any test is a tool embedded
in a larger vision.

- For all we've said,
this remains a test,

a high stakes one and there
will be anxiety, there must be.

- It's spreading,
it's infiltrating all things.

There were always
questions about

the usefulness, validity,
fairness of the SAT.

Now we're going to increase
its reach and its impact.

- It distracts from the
basic purposes of schooling.

It's no help to teachers.

There's no diagnostic power
in the SAT or the ACT.

- And so now it's not
just the SAT and the PSAT,

it's PSAT-11, PSAT-10, PSAT-9.

- If states come to recognize

and students and teachers
come to recognize,

that the SAT or the ACT
will be the ultimate measure

of how well they're
perceived to do,

wouldn't it be reasonable
to shape a curriculum

that reflects
what's on the test,

and a lot of people will see
that as teaching to the test.

- A schoolteacher's job
is not to take the SAT.

A test prep person's
job is entirely the SAT.

- I hadn't thought about
this, but you're right it is,

we finally made it into
the K-12 market apparently.

And not the way it
was meant to be.

- There was a time when
we convinced ourselves

that they were
really meaningful.

There was a time when
we convinced ourselves

that they were uncoachable,
that the tests were uncoachable.

And as those things are
kinda blown outta the water

we never stopped
holding on to them.

Still haven't.

- You can blame the test
if you don't do well

or you can blame
yourself or your tutor,

or your parents,
or whatever you want to blame.

But at the end of the day
it's just those problems

and those weird
tricky questions.

It's not a measure of
what a person can do.

And I think that nobody
wants to admit that

because that's what
it's supposed to be for.

It's not supposed to
be, here's a game

that we are sending out to
everyone to get into college

because no one would take it.

- How much integrity
is associated with the test?

I just don't know.

I would hope that
something that has

as big of an impact on
kids and their behavior

and their sense of
self-worth, et cetera,

would have more
educational value

than the test seems to have.

- You know the SAT
doesn't stand for anything.

It blows my mind, like this
fact, like it stands for nothing

and everybody thinks it
stands for something.

Like that's a deep
cultural problem.

Yet the public perception
is heard over and over again

that it is measuring aptitude.

So that goes to show what
a corrosive influence

it has on people's
understanding of intelligence.

It can't even make its
own limitations visible,

like that's how powerful
it is as a ritual.

- You know maybe that's exactly

the kind of talent
America really wants.

The people who can do that
exam, you know.

It's not what I value most.

It's not what I teach.

But what if that's exactly what

makes this country what it is.

Figuring that stuff out,

being cagey rather
than thoughtful.

Maybe it does a
good job of that.

Maybe it's given us
exactly what we want.

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