Wake can't see the Forest for the trees...

It is a ritual that most anyone under the age of 60 or so, who aspires to go to college, can appreciate - the spring rite of SAT and ACT college entrance exams.

These tests are usually the source of some angst. After all, your ability to get into a good university or college depends in part on how well you do on these exams.

And why is that?

It's pretty simple: the managers of ACT and SAT spend a lot of time and money to set up tests that they believe will adequately measure a high schooler's knowledge base. Everything is designed to represent the type of education a student will get from Maine to Hawaii.

Except that some people think the tests are unfair and biased. Well... they are. EVERY test is in some way unfair and biased. No matter who you are and what you are, you will bring personal biases to very part of your daily existence. It's part of being human.

But critics of these tests (and by extension all standardized tests) harp about "cultural bias." Boo hoo. Get over it.

I'll over-simplify here, but since educrats love to over-complicate things, it will even out. Here's why cultural bias is a load of manure:

1. The root causes of the American Revolutionary War are the same no matter if the student who must write an essay about those causes is Anglo, Asian, Native American or whatever.

2. The value of "pi" is no respecter of a test-taker's religious convictions.

3. The implications of plutonium vs. uranium nuclear weapons are not changed if the student who's asked to explain them is from Rochester, MN; Rochester, NY, or is the great-grandson of "Rochester" from the old Jack Benny program.

In other words, facts are facts. Do you hear that, Wake Forest University?

Wake Forest is dropping the SAT and ACT admission requirements in favor of other performance measures when considering admission. That's their right, of course, but their reasoning is typical educrat fuzzy thinking.

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1086264.html

Universities need to spend more time teaching their students and expecting high standards (there's that dreaded word: STANDARDS) rather than wasting tears on how the little darlings might have their feelings hurt by taking the SAT or ACT.

'Cause let me tell ya: When those darlings hit the job market, their employers are going to expect high standards of them. The real world has no pity. The academic world is just pitiful.