Thread: The cult of testing has now taken aim at letters of recommendation, essays, and extra-curriculars. And it sounds a lot like "But her emails" in an attempt to deflect criticism away from the real issue, which is tests and their (lack of) worth.

So, here are all the issues they've gone through in an attempt to make the tests relevant to college admissions:

1) More information is better
2) The tests help find superstars in weak schools
3) The tests are fair because everyone takes the same test
4) Grade inflation

5) Essays are biased
6) Letters of recommendation are biased.

On these last two, they're right. I even wrote about the last on in WaPo.

But those last two aren't intended to find academic ability in a student's application. They're supposed to find texture, interestingness, and match of a student to the college.

Because GPA+ curriculum does all the academic stuff.

Read that last line again.

The vast majority of universities accept the majority of applications they receive. They don't really need tests, they don't need essays, and they don't need letters of recommendation.

So, why do they require them?

Simple. They want to look like the schools up the food chain who do. That's why UC Berkeley, the crown jewel of the California education system, started requiring the SAT: They wanted to be taken seriously and mentioned with Harvard.

And if you had to take a vocabulary and analogies test to get into Harvard, you should have to do so at UCB, or so they thought.

Same in the Midwest: All the Big 10 public institutions required the ACT; thus, so did Venard, and Westmar, and Parsons College.

No one added tests because they "needed" them. They started requiring tests because they wanted something from them. Unfortunately, Harvard had a 300-year headstart in building its reputation.

Richard Atkinson, an expert on educational measurement and the former president of the UC System, saw the sham of the tests and called it. He wanted to abolish the SAT for admission to the UC System.

He claimed publicly that the College Board rounded up people to write op-eds to support the SAT and stir up fear about "educational standards" and "fairness."

They've been doing it again. A lot of people have a lot invested in these tests: Financial, economic, and political.

When you see this BS masquerading as legitimate education policy, call them on it.

Oh, and #EMTalk