Kern-Rugile: Don't judge teens only by SAT

When the news broke in late September that six Great Neck High School North students allegedly paid up to $2,500 to 19-year-old Samuel Eshaghoff to take their SATs for them, parents and educators, along with students who earned their grades the hard way, were understandably angry. As Nassau District Attorney Kathleen Rice told CNN, "Honest kids should not be bumped out of college slots by kids who have cheated."

No argument there. While the pressure is perhaps more intense than ever on high schoolers to get high SAT scores -- which will presumably lead to acceptance into better colleges and subsequently better chances for successful employment -- that doesn't excuse cheating.

The blame game has been in full swing: Some cite lax test security as the major culprit; others maintain that the economy plays a role, with students fearing bleak job prospects without an Ivy League degree; and some point the finger at the students' parents, concluding they must have known what their kids were doing. After all, how many teens have easy access to $2,500?

Certainly there's plenty of blame to go around. What's missing from discussions about this growing scandal -- the D.A.'s office is expected to arrest more students soon -- is a re-evaluation of our education system's obsessive reliance on standardized tests, which don't begin to measure the ingenuity, creativity and breadth of thinking that make a student soar.

Jill Tiefenthaler, president of Colorado College in Colorado Springs, maintains that standardized testing such as the SATs have only "marginal predictive value" in assessing a student's future performance in college.

"Mounting evidence suggests that the SAT is a less reliable indicator of college success than we once thought," said Tiefenthaler, who holds a PhD in economics. "[That] -- coupled with a possible testing bias against women and groups who are marked by ethnic and socioeconomic diversity, and recent SAT scoring errors and cheating scandals -- are prompting many leaders to ask if it's time to reconsider the reliance on standardized tests in the [college] admissions process."

Matthew Whelan, an enrollment and retention official at Stony Brook University, agrees that there's minimal predictive value in SAT scores. "[They] help predict first-year performance, but then it falls off," said Whelan. "We place far more emphasis on a student's high school performance in a rigorous curriculum, along with characteristics such as aspiration, motivation and creative ability."

A similar process is used at Hofstra University, according to Jessica Eads, vice president of enrollment management. "We use a very holistic process," Eads said. "SAT scores factor in, but we look at community service, leadership record, scientific research, and a host of other information to make our decisions."

That should ease the concerns of my friends with high-school-aged teens, many of whom express frustration that economic and class issues play a large role in who does best on the SATs. As one Glen Cove mother of three told me, "Wealthy children have private tutors and expensive SAT preparation sessions; children with fewer resources are at a huge disadvantage. It's totally unbalanced."

Looking at the entirety of a student's talents, values and creativity is a smart lesson plan to follow. In fact 865 colleges -- about 12 percent of them -- no longer use SAT scores in their admissions decisions. "When a college learns about students through personal interviews, reflective essays, letters of recommendation, and a thorough examination of high school curriculum and grades," Tiefenthaler says, "it is likely to draw better conclusions about intellectual ability and curiosity than by simply relying on the results of a test administered one Saturday morning."Jenna Kern-Rugile lives in East Northport.