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heresy outright
By audhill | August 4, 2007
Here’s a hypothesis. If degree granting was not such a lucrative business and if people didn’t want a fair shake, SAT scores would still be as high as they were in the 1950s. Prior to the early 60s, most people did not go to college. Only 26% of the American public over the age of 75 ever attended. By the late 1990s, however a full 60% of Americans had at least a year of college, and roughly 90% of teens expected to attend. ( Teen Profile, pg 4)
As more and more people entered the work force with college degrees, the value of a high school diploma decreased, and the pressure to create entry for more people increased. A plus B equals C. More people attending college meant more endowment for universities, which meant more reason to create new majors to accommodate demand, giving rise to credentialism (defined here as the constant raising of the bar for basic employment, fueled by the belief that a formal education is the best training for the job market.), creating even more demand and competition for elite placement, resulting in high stakes testing, focus on the impact of scores on opportunity and focus on the impact of education on scores.
Educational equity, which hasn’t always been a popular concern in America, suddenly took center stage. Previously, a do gooder here or there might be concerned by the poor quality of a low income school, but for the most part, when those who were expected to go to college were few, those who were not expected to go to college didn’t. But, as the college degree became associated with the minimum level of education for social mobility, the parents of working class children began expecting that their child, too, would to go to college. It has been hypothesized that the decline in SAT scores is the result of a broader base of test takers. If more people taking the test come from less advantaged backgrounds, it stands to reason that the test scores would decline. While this is demonstrably true, scores have declined for high performers as well as low performers, therefore other considerations have to be factored in. (Tomorrow sometime soon: when bad decisions come from a good place)
Topics: reasoned |