SAT Headed for Approval?
Ellsworth American, January 5, 2007

(excerpt) Maine Education Commissioner Susan Gendron may develop a serious case of arm strain from patting herself on the back. To hear Gendron tell it, the likelihood that U.S. Department of Education officials will approve Maine’s use of the SAT as its primary tool for assessing 11th-grade students is nothing short of a glorious achievement for the state. Though it’s not yet a done deal, Gendron announced this week that final approval is expected before the end of the current school year.

Throwing around phrases such as “ground-breaking” and “charting new territory” to describe the use of the SAT as the grade 11 assessment, Gendron said the “approval pending” designation by the feds “validates the work the state is doing with respect to its assessment system.” The lifting of Maine’s “non-approved” status also ends the federal hold placed on a portion of Maine’s Title I administrative funds that otherwise would be used for technical assistance to schools not meeting the federal “No Child Left Behind” standards.

Like many educators around the state, we do not share Gendron’s enthusiasm for the SAT as a tool to measure general student attainment. Nor do we find the fact that the U.S. Department of Education may now reverse its position after first rejecting use of the SAT especially reassuring. Statistics show that one-fourth of Maine juniors have not been taking the SAT and have no intention of pursuing additional years of education at a college or university. Readiness for college, which is what the SAT measures, is not, and should not be, the primary measure by which the adequacy of a student’s high school education is judged.

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