That article does a great job of looking at the SAT’s liberal critics, but I was disappointed to see that it failed to mention that libertarian Charles Murray is too an enemy of the SAT — on the simple grounds that other tests (specifically, the SAT II subject tests) do a better job of predicting college performance.

The article glosses over that:

The consensus is that SAT scores do a fairly good job of predicting what kind of grades the student will get in his freshman year — one measure of “success in college.” If you consider both his SAT scores and his high school grade point average, you have an even better predictor of how well he’ll do in his first year. These findings alone are enough to establish SAT scores as a useful piece of information for admissions officers trying to figure out if an applicant is well suited to their college.

All of which is true. But colleges shouldn’t use “a useful piece of information”; they should use the most powerful combination of pieces of information. There’s a good case that such a combination does not include the SAT.

You can read other posts I’ve done about the SAT here.