Spears and arrows

Hey, I’m the news editor for the 2002-2003 Colonnade. My job, and my column, is bringing readers the news. Whether my editorials cover international, national, and local news, it will be information that I feel is important to our readers. This week, how dumb is Georgia, or 2002 Georgia SAT scores.

So almost everyone has heard by now that Georgia ranked 50th in SAT scores in America. Yes, that means we came in last place. Since the results were announced, Georgia has taken grief about our scores from the nation and has been on the receiving end of many jokes and editorial cartoons, but do we really deserve it. I mean, how fair is the Georgia Scholastic Aptitude Test?

What the Georgia SAT’s don’t take into consideration is that not everyone has the ability to excel on state tests. Students with learning disabilities, language difficulties, and an overall inability to comprehend standardized test are all required to take the same exam. Ethnicity of students is also not a factor in the Georgia SAT scoring process and many think that it should be.

How fair are the SAT’s to international students? Approximately 13,000 immigrants enter Georgia every year, and we currently have roughly 100 international students at our University. Many of these students came from other countries straight to Georgia College & State University.
But what about those students who went to Georgia high schools and had to complete the SAT’s before getting into college.

Students who have only been in our country for a few years and who just recently made English their second language have to take the same test as students who have lived in Georgia (for that matter, the U.S.) their entire life? Many international students are hindered by their scores and are unable to go to the college of their choice.

To make matters worse, the College Board, the body in charge of the SAT’s, just announced plans to dramatically change the format of the SAT. The test that most of you took consisted of two sections, a verbal and a math portion. However, starting in 2005, the test will consist of three different sections. The verbal exam will now be labeled the SAT Critical Reading Exam. This section will no longer include analogies; but short-reading passages will be added to the already existing long passages. The SAT Math Exam will be expanded to cover element from Algebra II. This change ensures that three years of high school math will be covered by the exam. The third section will be entitled the SAT Writing Exam. This section will include multiple-choice grammar questions and a written essay.

The Writing Exam will be worth 800 points. That means the total possible score one can receive has risen to 2400. How is that going to affect international student’s scores or the scores for the state of Georgia in general? The legislature puts so much emphasis on post-high school education that students are taught that there is no life after high school, if not college life. By creating the illusion that test scores are that important, Georgia is limiting the future of its current high school students, especially their flourishing international community.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 6 2002. Filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry