New SAT: can it expect to change curriculum? Should it?

[Quack]

http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101031027/story.html

From Time magazine:

True, students have always had to brush up on vocabulary and take practice tests before the SAT, but now the College Entrance Examination Board, which owns the test, is developing the “New SAT,” an exhaustive revision largely intended to mold the U.S. secondary-school system to its liking.

It appears that in many schools (including a few I have attended), the curriculum is being adapted to fit what the SAT measures.

In short, the dreaded SAT could actually help produce a national curriculum, a sweeping education reform enacted without the passage of a single law.

The new test will include a writing portion and will dump analogies. The opponents are apparently arguing that the test would then create a gender bias because males typically score lower on writing that females. Also, it is labor- and cost-intensive to grade all those essays by hand until a consensus on the proper grade is reached. There is also concern about the Racial Bias:

“There’s a danger that making it too curriculum-dependent will actually increase overall score gaps for some minority groups,” says Rebecca Zwick, a former chair of the College Board’s own SAT Committee. “Because we have such huge disparities in the quality of schooling in the country, kids who go to crummy schools may be disadvantaged.”

Should the writers of the SAT wield this power and effectively mold the curriculum to whatever it deems worthy?
If so, what would the changes mean for the quality of education in the U.S. if the testmakers decided to up the ante?

[CrankyAsAnOldMan]

I’m not convinced (yet, I haven’t read the article) that high schools will all jump on the wagon.

First of all, not all high school students have college aspirations, and there are high schools at which the majority of their students fit into the category. Why change curriculum to teach to a test that doesn’t matter?

Second, in the Midwest (and West?) many students take the ACT instead of the SAT. Most colleges will accept either. Why would a midwestern high school change its curriculum to prepare students for a test that no one is taking?

As I understand it, the College Board is taking the writing portion of the SAT pretty seriously. It will be labor-intensive to grade, but they’re going ahead with it. Now, if that forces high schools (some of them, at least) to further emphasize writing skills, I’d applaud. That’s not about teaching specific content.