"too little, too late," SAT.

The College Board recently announced changes to its SAT college entrance exam. Leon Botstein, the president of a selective liberal-arts college, wrote a commentary in Time Magazine about it.
In the article, he states that "the SAT is part hoax and part fraud. It needs to be abandoned and replaced."

An article from CNN outlines these changes. The test change the maximum score from 2400 back to 1600, which no longer includes the essay. It will also stop penalizing for wrong answers. 

The president of The College Board claims that the new test turn away from the focus on tricks and trying to eliminate answer choices, and instead shift towards requiring students to justify their answers.

So what's the problem with these tests?

Leon Botstein claims that high school grades are much better at predicting a students performance in college than the SAT. He labels the SAT as a "bizzare" and "outdated" method, because knowing how to do something in real life isn't defined by the ability to choose the correct answer from a set of options, that may or may not be intentionally misleading. 

He also adds that the new changes will not save the test from it's uselessness. The exam claims that it is objective, but the most statistical pattern that stands out the most is the correlation between high income and high test scores. "The richer one is, the better one does on the SAT." 

I can think of a couple things that might explain this. First, higher income families have access to tutors that can help train students to spot the "tricks" that Botstein referenced. They might also be more expectant to attend college, so they will put more effort into the test. 

Colleges also help keep the College Board's monopoly on testing by using the test to benefit their ranking. Colleges can boost their scores by admitting students with high scores on the test. Botstein says that the victim of this relationship are the students, and "our nation's educational standards."

The test taking requirements currently in place are not realistic ones. I think it would be much more beneficial to find out students academic capability based on real world scenarios. While I attended a private tutor to prepare for the ACT (a similar test), I was shocked by the amount of "tricks" there were for taking the test. For example, questions that begin with a certain phrase are most often answered by "D) none of these." Students that might have the equal or greater intelligence than I do might answer this question wrong because they couldn't pay someone to tell them that. 

I have never taken the SAT, so I can't speak about the test itself. If you have, can you compare it to the ACT, and describe what type of questions were asked? How would you change it to make it less objective?

Koenigsegg coming to America

Koenigsegg is a Swedish super-car company founded by brilliant engineer Christian von Koenigsegg. They are most famous for the production of the Agera R, one of the greatest technical marvels of the automotive industry in the past decade.

Up until now, they could not be purchased in the US, but according to Road and Track, they will be finally brought to the states and sold from "Manhattan Motor Cars" dealerships.

The United States is the worlds biggest super-car market, so why are we just getting this vehicle now?
Well, the car costs 1.5 millions dollars. Koenigsegg has stated in the past that they believe that Americans
"just can't afford this car." Almost insulting isn't it?

After the 2008 financial crisis and the introduction of stricter regulations in the United States, they shifted their focus to European and Asian markets.

It's weird hearing that the U.S. is "too poor" for a product. We're #1!
Right?

Upping the Minimum Wage

A Connecticut newspaper reports that the state has voted to increase the minimum wage in their state from $8.70 to $10.10 per hour by January 2017. That will be the highest minimum wage in the country; Washington is currently the highest with $9.32. 

“I am proud that Connecticut is once again a leader on an issue of national importance. Increasing the minimum wage is not just good for workers, it’s also good for business,” said Governor Malloy, a first-term Democrat facing re-election.

The white house stated that Connecticut is setting an example for other states that will hopefully follow. 

Because the minimum wage has taken so long to be changed, there is obviously reasons that support both sides of the argument. This story interests me personally because I work for minimum wage during the summer as a lifeguard. A change in Illinois's legislation could be extremely beneficial to me. However, I can see how it could be detrimental to the Wilmette park district, instead of the benefit to business that Governor Malloy anticipates. We have 32 lifeguards at the beach that make between 8-9 dollars an hour. Increasing our pay on an already tight budget would have effects on how many guards they can hire, how many hours we can work, the upkeep of the beach, training, ect. However, my situation is different than others because I don't live on the income from this job, like many people unfortunately do. An increase in minimum wage is necessary for them because $8.25 is not enough to live off of. 

Kindergarten teacher: too many tests

Washington Post reports that Susan Sluyter, who has taught as a kindergarten teacher for the past 20 years, resigned from her job due to the school system ramping up the academic pressure on her and her students.

In her resignation letter to Cambridge Public Schools, she cited that "her job required her to focus too much on teaching to standardized tests rather than to the needs of her students."

School officials have stated that they agree the tests may take time away from other learning, but they are a necessary step in studying learning patterns of the children.

How necessary are these tests? I was very surprised they have started giving them to kindergartners. I think this shows a very big flaw in our education system. We rely on a formulated equation that figures out what children need to learn, instead of the people that were trained to educate them. 

How do these tests benefit students learning? Can the teachers be better at diagnosing issues than the tests?

Louisiana restricts usage of welfare money

Fox News reports that Louisiana has approved legislation to ban the use of federal welfare money in lingerie shops, tattoo parlors, nail salons and jewelry stores. The welfare program was enacted to assist low-income families in acquiring food, clothing, and shelter. They are in the process of creating more restrictions on the debit cards to prevent them from being used on items that aren't considered "necessities."  

In my opinion, these laws are completely just and necessary. If they are in a position that warrants assistance from taxpayers, they most definitely should not be spending it on frivolous things. One might argue that people have the right to spend their money where they want and the government shouldn't intervene, but they have already invited them to intervene when they applied for welfare. 

However, this intervention could possibly lead to more controversial things. There are other things in the lives of low income families that could be restricted, such as the right to have children.

Do you think these welfare laws will lead to further restrictions? Do you disagree with them completely?