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The best teacher I had in high school was Mr. Presowitz—my chemistry teacher.
Mr. Presowitz had a very unorthodox testing method. He didn’t like big tests. He liked quizzes—ten-minute tests with five to eight questions. And he gave a lot of them. And they were never announced. On one double-period chemistry day, I had to endure three quizzes. One at the beginning of the first chemistry class, then one at the beginning AND end of the second chemistry class. It was brutal. And his quizzes were never easy. And they were always cumulative in nature. You were expected to know everything that was taught since day one.
I worked my ass off for this chemistry class. I paid attention in class, took meticulous notes, and did my homework every night. And, yet, despite all that effort, I only passed a handful of quizzes throughout the year. On most quizzes, I would only get half the questions right.
The good news is that no one failed Mr. Presowitz’s class. He knew his course was rigorous and his testing philosophy was unconventional. So he graded on a curve. I got a 70 every quarter and a 70 for the year.* The brighter students got an 80 or 85 for the year. I don’t think anyone got a 90 or above for the year.
* Quick aside: My high school used number grades on a scale from 0 to 100. Below 65 was considered an F. Sixty-five to 69 was a D. Seventy to 79 was a C. Eighty to 89 was a B. And 90 and above was an A.
New York State has something called the Regents exam. These are statewide standardized tests given at the end of the year for the core high school subjects (English, physics, biology, chemistry, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, etc.). I believe you had to pass five of them to get a “Regents” high school diploma—a diploma that was allegedly more prestigious than a regular, non-Regents diploma. And the reason why I’m telling you this is because I took the Regents exam for chemistry at the conclusion of 10th grade. My score? Eighty-nine—a solid B-plus.
Now a question: Which was the more accurate assessment of my competency in high school chemistry?
My quizzes that said I was a moron?
My quarterly grades that said I was a barely-passing student?
Or my Regents exam score that said—at least to the grand poobahs of New York’s education bureaucracy—that I had a solid grasp of high school chemistry?
Call me nuts, but I think the Regents exam score was the truest gauge of my high school chemistry ability. And I say this confidently because it perfectly reflects the correlation I saw between my effort and my results in my long history of engagement with American education—especially during high school and college. Whenever I applied myself, save for one particular high school class, I did well. I got an A or a B. Whenever I slacked off, I did poorly. I got a C or a D. And, as already pointed out, I worked my ass off in this chemistry class. The odds that my Regents exam score was a fluke, and somehow managed to make a complete mockery of my time-honored effort-in/results-out pattern, is highly unlikely. My grade for chemistry was the real fluke.
And this is why standardized tests are so valuable. High school grades don’t always correlate with achievement. Some teachers are more demanding than others. Some schools are more challenging than others. Honor students in one school might be total frauds. Mediocre students in another school might be part of the cognitive elite when they’re compared to their peers on a national basis. Standardized tests are a way to control for the differences in rigor and integrity (hello grade inflation and outright fraud) found in our country’s K-12 schools. High GPAs can mask core academic deficiencies. High SAT scores can’t. Perhaps that’s why two selective colleges that dropped their standardized test requirements (MIT and Purdue University) have decided to reinstate them.
Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. Don’t believe the woke propaganda that standardized tests are racist and a tool of white—and yellow—supremacy. Any high school student who has a solid command of algebra, geometry, and trigonometry and is well-read will score high on the SAT—regardless of his or her household income or his or her color or ethnicity. And don’t believe the woke propaganda that high school GPAs are a better predictor of college success than standardized tests. Anyone—regardless of his or her high school GPA—can be “successful” in college when your typical college has no shortage of soft courses and soft majors. But evenly populate a no-nonsense college calculus class with above-1400-SAT scoring “A” high school students and below-1000-SAT scoring “A” high school students and you’ll quickly realize that the SAT is a far better predictor of success than high school grades.
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