The straw man in the standardized testing debate
Frank Bruni wrote a column in yesterday’s The New York Times, in which he expounded on the virtues of college admission committees’ decisions to look past marginal test scores in a handful of underprivileged applicants in order to diversify their classes.
Depending on your perspective, what Bruni describes can either be construed as a noble undertaking or the symptom of a corrupt system that unfairly disadvantages hardworking, middle-class applicants, but I’m actually not concerned with that particular debate here.
Rather, my issue with Bruni’s column is that it perpetuates a common straw man argument in the debate over college admissions — namely, that test scores have traditionally been the be-all end-all of the admissions game, and that only now are a handful of intrepid admissions officers are willing to look past less-than-stellar scores and consider other aspects of a student’s application. (more…)