This is ridiculous.

I thought it was well known and accepted that to influence the outcome of a “test” all you do is change the questions.

The infamous “IQ” test is, or was when I was in school, completely discredited as a reliable indicator of intelligence. There are Inuit people who’ve never been to a school in their lives who perhaps couldn’t answer a single question on the standard IQ test. Does this mean they’re all vegetables? Not bloodly likely. They have as much intelligence RELATED TO THEIR CULTURE AND ENVIRONMENT as anyone else on this planet.

If the revised emphasis on math and “reading skills” (I hope they mean “literacy skills” - almost anyone can be taught to “read” - it’s COMPREHENDING what’s read that’s important) has resulted in a “poor showing,” I suggest that perhaps the wrong questions were being asked in previous years.

The kind of exams imposed in America are more of a stress test than an academic one. And everyone knows about the “bell curve"… for political and funding reasons virtually all “scores” of a group are scaled to fit so the vast majority of testees fall into a cluster around the median or norm or average NO MATTER WHAT QUESTIONS ARE ASKED.

GIGO - garbage in, garbage out. It applies as well to people as to computer databases. Feed kids on a diet of stupid “music” (al la Brittany Spears and hip-hop), violence filled videos, moronic TV sitcoms, junk food and little meaningful discipline… and you’ve got GARBAGE.

These academics who diddle with the SAT and “evaluate” it’s scores are just playing a shell game to justify their existence and secure their jobs and high salaries.