The SAT? It tests our credulity

I went to bed early Sunday night and got a good, sound sleep.

Monday morning, I ate a bowl of “Smart Start” cereal and downed a mug of strong coffee. I turned off the phone, put the dog outside and sat down at my kitchen table with two sharpened pencils. I set the timer on my oven for one hour.

Then I cracked open a sample SAT subject exam.

It’s the sort of test that almost 300,000 high school students take every spring to shore up their applications to elite universities, which require these additional achievement tests. Now it seems to be headed for the chopping block at the University of California because of concerns that the test is of little use in admissions decisions in this era of standardized-testing frenzy.

I’ve always figured the subject tests were a better measure of college readiness than scores on the basic SAT -- which say more about family income than whether a student has what it takes to succeed. But the subject tests always seem to take a back seat.

I wanted to see how I would do, so I got a sample literature exam -- one of 17 subject choices -- from the Princeton Review, which runs test prep courses for high school students. The test had seven passages to analyze, and 60 multiple-choice questions to answer.

It started like this:

“Maman-Nainaine said that when the figs were ripe Babette might go to visit her cousins down on the Bayou-Lafourche where the sugar cane grows. Not that the ripening of figs had the least thing to do with it, but that is the way Maman-Nainaine was.”

OK. In the news biz, that’s an “anecdotal lede;” a way to draw your reader in. But this went on for 43 lines.

I read the passage twice, trying to find the answers to questions about the symbolism of ripening figs and what motivated Maman-Nainaine and Babette to disagree.

Then I blew through the rest of the exam, deciphering a poetic ode to a man’s dead wife, a British farce that relied on references to Galatea and Pygmalion, a fable about God and a blade of grass . . .

I filled in my last bubble and checked the timer. I’d finished with 14 minutes left on the clock. I rechecked a couple questions I felt uncertain about, then faxed the test to Princeton’s Encino office. Harvard, here I come, I thought.

Thirty minutes later my score arrived online. I’d gotten 42 questions right. And 18 wrong.

--

Taking the test was my editor’s bright idea. (Note to self: Run next time my editor says, “Wouldn’t it be fun . . .”) We’d both been intrigued by Times reporter Larry Gordon’s Sunday story about the debate over the tests at UC.

I got a little worried when I couldn’t answer any of the three sample questions that ran with his story. But they were from exams in subjects I’d hated: math, history and biology.

I aced the Advanced Placement English exam in high school and intended to be an English teacher. I have a bookcase in every room in my house and have spent 30 years as a professional writer. How hard could a literature test be, especially one aimed at high school students?

But there’s something about the label “SAT” that gets test-takers hyperventilating. When I opened the booklet, my heart started racing. The words began to blur. I took off my glasses. There were run-on sentences with no punctuation. I read them aloud, trying different intonations. I tried crossing off the answers I knew were wrong. But the choices all seemed like trick questions.

“They’re intended to fool the average student,” acknowledged Robert Franek, a Princeton Review vice president.

“Students are feeling the weight of the testing frenzy and the importance of every exam they take. Whether it’s a brain-teaser type or choose-the-obvious answer, students sometimes get confused and make silly mistakes.”

And so do journalists, apparently. Looking back over the questions I got wrong, some answers seemed so obvious it was embarrassing. Others questions were so tricky, they were just plain cruel.

--

Franek said my 18 mistakes shouldn’t threaten my professional standing. “The SAT,” he said, “simply tests how well you take the SAT.”

In other words, you don’t better your literature score by reading more; just enroll in a prep class and take the test a few times and your numbers are bound to rise.

According to my online research, my 640 score -- on a scale of 800 -- is about 50 points better than the average among last year’s college-going students.

But I’m not sure what to make of that.

I’ve haven’t studied Greek mythology in 30 years; am I supposed to remember who Alcestis was? Would I be rejected by UCLA because I didn’t realize the author writing about his lifeguard job was actually using the sea to represent God? How could I blow the literary passages, but get all the questions about poetry right?

That’s why I’ve always been suspicious of standardized testing. We’re basing college admissions decisions on a test peppered with trick questions, and pretending it’s a measure of intelligence. I wish the UC system would go further and turn its back on the whole SAT industry.

I’ve been a professional writer for 30 years, helped three kids ace their English courses, and I read every night before I go to bed. Yet I land somewhere near the middle of the Facebook crowd.

I’m grateful my 11th-grade daughter -- about to take her own admission exams -- doesn’t think my middling score makes me a lesser role model or mother. “You did your best,” she assured me, trying to stifle a smile. “That’s all that matters.”

In a few months, I’ll probably be the one using that line.

--

[email protected]