These days, the SAT is harming education

Bravo to Dr. Joanne Creighton, president of Mount Holyoke College, for her March 17 Op-ed piece "Out With the SAT." As a high school principal I am astonished at the huge weight given the SAT by admissions offices to a test that measures everything but character, drive, vision, creativity, social skills, compassion and justice.

I am dismayed by the degeneration of the SAT into a booming money-making machine. The SAT was supposed to be an egalitarian examination. Theoretically a gifted math student in a one-room schoolhouse with with limited math offerings could evenly compete with a student who attended a school with thousands of students and multiple math courses. The SAT was supposed to level the playing field and give everyone a fair chance.

Today we have a huge cottage industry, encouraged by the owners of the SAT, devoted to providing students with tutorial help to improve their scores. Very often, success on the SAT is now due not to aptitude but rather to the ability of parents to pay for specialized coaching. Once again, the poor are penalized.

The SAT is the embodiment of the dangerous view that the only thing that counts in education is high test scores. Getting rid of it is a step in the right direction to returning to the age-old view, beginning with Plato, that education is really about the formation of character and the encouragement of the student to discover the Good, the True and the Beautiful.

Brother Michel Bettigole, OSF

Principal

Cardinal Gibbons High School

Raleigh