I’m normally a John McWhorter fan, but I think he has it wrong when he supports the SATs. He concedes that the test doesn’t predict college grades very well relative to other measures, but claims that especially on verbal skills, the test encourages high schools to teach better.

This may well be true. The problem is, that’s not the point of a college-admissions test. The point is to pick the students who will do well in college, and every failure in this regard denies a student the chance to attend. It’s wrong for a college to use an inferior selection mechanism just because it thinks doing so will provide high schools with an incentive to use superior teaching methods. This argument holds up much better as a defense of high-school standardized tests.

I wrote more about why I oppose the SAT here.