An Extraordinarily Bad Idea

This is one of the worst ideas I've heard about in years. Adding essays to the SAT will be expensive, unreliable in terms of fairness and accuracy, and egregious in that it's a rare school that won't demand some sort of essay of an applicant anyway, and one that is more indicative of a student's work since it won't be dashed off without rewriting or time to seriously consider the issues at hand. Grading won't be anything like objective or evenhanded:

To guide scorers, the team has already approved a sample set of answers to a question about the benefits and drawbacks of secrecy. The "prompt," as an essay question is called in education parlance, consists of two quotations, one justifying secrecy as an indispensable part of human life, the other attacking it. Students are then asked to develop a point of view on secrecy, with examples to support their argument.

An essay that does little more than restate the question gets a 1. An essay that compares humans to squirrels -- if a squirrel told other squirrels about its food store, it would die, therefore secrecy is necessary for survival -- merits a 5. Brian A. Bremen, an English professor at the University of Texas at Austin, notes that the writer provides only one real example. Nevertheless, he says, the writer displays "a clear chain of thought" and should be rewarded, "despite his Republican tendencies."

What a surprise, a UT prof biased against conservatism. I don't think essays in the SAT will help anyone in any way. Then again, I'm still unhappy that kids can use calculators for the SAT. In fact, I think everyone should stay up all night before the SAT and nap between the times they finish each section and the end of that section's time period, like I did. It's character building, or something.

From Pejman, via Tyler Cowen.