Is it "unfair" to get a test-prep tutor or enroll in an expensive course?

I once had a parent call to explore the idea of getting an SAT coach for his daughter.  He told me about her, but then he said he was worried about whether or not getting her a coach represented an unfair advantage.  I pointed out that since she was at an expensive private school, her application would be read as if she had a coach whether she did or not.  (I did not point out how funny it was that he was worried about unequal access to test coaching, but not about unequal access to the private school she was in.  They also lived in one of the neighborhoods filled with mcmansions.) I guess my argument did not carry the day, because I didn't end up working with his daughter.

So is there an inequity involved in spending money to get your child ready for a college entrance exam?  And if there is, how much should you worry about that?  Would the world be a better place if everyone boycotted the tutors, the Princeton Review, the books, and online courses?  This came up on Quora, and this was my reply:

Here is something to keep in mind about "SAT coaching": It is a really big umbrella. When we read or hear about it in the media it sounds like the rich kids are buying special secrets that you only get to have if you have enough money. I assure you that I have never given anyone a test-taking tip that isn't available "out there" for everyone. As one fellow tutor always says, "There is no special sauce." Hiring an SAT coach might be like hiring a personal trainer. Most people could do it on their own, but hiring someone streamlines the process. People with more money than time tend to do this for all aspects of their lives including SAT preparation.

When parents call me to coach their kids for a college entrance exam they always say, "He/she is a very good student, but he/she doesn't test well." They will allow that the student might need just a little review, but they will anxiously inquire as to whether I teach the testing tips. And I say, "Umm...sure." And I do. For five minutes. And then we spend the rest of the ten hours on the algebra he never learned, or the grammar she completely missed because they moved at just the wrong time. You see, there is a lot of cachet in going to an SAT tutor every week. There is no cachet at all in going to an I-never-learned-grammar tutor every week.

Is it fair that the rich kid who never learned grammar gets a tutor to fill in that hole before he has to take his college entrance exam, while the poor kid who never learned grammar doesn't? Of course not. However, it would be silly to say that no one gets to learn grammar until everyone can. Or that no one can know algebra well until everyone does. Surely the more educated people we have the better off we are.

So, in answer to your question: If you need a coach, and you can afford one, get a coach. Be a more educated person. If you are worried about the inequities of this world - and really, if you were to rank all of the inequities in the world, unequal access to SAT tutors wouldn't make the top ten - then use your increased knowledge to do good.

A less-biased look at Northeastern University's "meteoric" rise in the U.S. News and World Report ranking.

College rankings have taken a big PR hit in the last year.  Some of it is deserved.  However, as has become the norm in American public discourse, people eager to jump on the “bash the latest unpopular thing” bandwagon have demonstrated a remarkable lack of critical thinking skills.  This is especially sad when the topic is higher education – an institution that should be dedicated to encouraging critical thinking.

An article recently published in Boston Magazine by Max Kutner purports to be about how Northeastern University, located in Boston, managed to rise in the rankings of the U.S. News and World Report by “gaming” the system.  Before going on, it might be useful to note that “gaming the system” is typically defined to mean manipulating the rules in such a way as to gain an advantage.  It is generally understood that the entity “gaming the system” is not breaking the rules.  Rather, the entity is typically following the letter of the rules but not the intent.  Breaking the rules would be subject to disciplinary action of some kind.  “Gaming the system” generally is not.  Despite that, it is also generally understood that “gaming the system” is an unscrupulous act designed to obtain an advantage unfairly.

The article opens with a description of the state of Northeastern University in the early 1990’s.  Their situation was dire:  the school was under-enrolled and under-funded.  There was a real danger that if they could not turn things around, they might have to close their doors.  Enter one Dr. Richard Freeland who is charged by the author with making “gaming the U.S. News ….part of the university’s DNA.”

Here is a list of the things the university did under Freeland’s administration that resulted in a rise in the school’s ranking from 162 to 98:

•       Reduce class sizes
•        Begin accepting the Common Application, which made it easier for students to apply
•        Constructed new dormitories because studies showed that student who lived on campus were more likely to graduate
•        Do some PR to boost the school’s image
•        Report the number of students each year differently to reflect the number of students on campus instead of including co-op students

Wow.  How nefarious of them.  The author emphasizes that Dr. Freeland kept his eyes on the rankings throughout the improvement process.  What he fails to acknowledge is that, while the college rankings are far from perfect, they do include some measures that legitimately affect the quality of education.  Smaller class sizes are not only linked to better learning outcomes, they are also a measure that potential students and their parents find interesting.  Surely no one thinks that making the application process more convenient and accessible is a bad thing.  And if graduation rates needed to be raised (and it seems they did) then building dormitories sounds more like “data-based decision-making” than “gaming the system.”  Oddly, the author carefully avoids telling us how much the graduation rate rose, but rise it must have – the subsequent increase in ranking could not have been obtained otherwise.  On what planet is that a bad thing?

The one item in the list that sounds like it might be shady is the last bullet point in the list.  Northeastern changed their reporting methods.  Dr. Freeland realized that the metric being used by U.S. News hurt schools with strong co-op programs.  Northeastern counted significantly more students each year than were actually on campus, which made it look like the school was spending a lot less per student.  He took his case to the U.S. News statisticians who declined to change their metric, but who explained what they were doing with the numbers and why.  As a result, Northeastern stopped including co-op students who weren’t on campus in their numbers.  Is that dishonest?  I don’t think so.  I think it makes for a more accurate picture of their situation.

The article includes a list of schools caught flat-out lying on the numbers they report to U.S. News.  While the author acknowledges that this does not fall under the category of “gaming the system,” he does offer this as evidence that the rankings are irretrievably broken – an accusation the magazine denies.  Including them tends to – intentionally or otherwise – give the impression that the measures Northeastern has taken are as dishonest as these examples.

Not until the last few paragraphs do we find any evidence of actual “gaming,” and these were introduced after Freeland retired in 2006.  Northeastern stopped requiring foreign students to submit SAT scores.  Foreign students, for whom English is often a second language, can have lower SAT scores.  Not to require scores from foreign students may be a bit shady, although it has recently come to my attention that taking the test represents a true hardship for many foreign students by requiring an overnight trip to a distant city.  Some might consider dropping the requirement an effort to be more understanding.  Then in 2007, the school began a program whereby students could begin at NU in the spring – thus excluding their data from the reporting.  The author states that these excluded test scores and GPA’s are “lower” but offers no evidence for this statement.  They certainly could be, and if they aren’t, one wonders why NU would begin the program.

As a final jab, the author points out that the measures taken to improve educational quality at NU – and quality has undeniably been improved by increasing retention and graduation rates, if nothing else – has cost money, making the school more expensive.  This is undoubtedly true, but it’s an odd accusation to make.  Typically the complaint is that we don’t spend enough on education, or that when we do spend more, we don’t see an improvement in results.  Here is an example of a school that spent more – and it paid off.  The alternative was to close their doors.  Does anyone wish to argue that they should have chosen that as the more honorable course of action?  The price increase does, indeed, make Northeastern one of the more expensive options out there, but price is one of the factors every family should weigh in making decisions about where to send a student to school.

In over 30 paragraphs of writing, the author only mentions 2 possibly unscrupulous methods Northeastern may have used to improve their ranking.  He mentions several instances in which the school used metrics in the ranking to guide decisions that led to improved outcomes.  At one point the author quotes Lloyd Thacker as saying, “Have rankings contributed to anything beneficial in education?  There’s no evidence.  There’s lots of evidence to the contrary.”  As a refutation of that statement, I would point to Northeastern University.

Cheating on the college entrance exams

My kid went off to a prestigious college. He came home for Christmas break convinced that he was one of the few people on the planet who didn’t cheat on his college entrance exams. Apparently, everyone there had a story about his cousin’s boyfriend’s sister who cheated on the exam by doing fill-in-the-cheating-method-here. Some of the stories sounded rather unlikely to me, but the news at the time was all about that kid in ….New York was it? …who made a gazillion dollars impersonating other students and taking their exams for them.

In May of 2013 I took the SAT II Math Level 2 exam and I assure you, none of the cheating techniques would have worked. That’s not to say they never work, but the cheating techniques I hear about all depend upon having a dishonest or incompetent proctor. How prevalent is that? I don’t know. I do know that if your testing strategy depends entirely on having a bad proctor, you are likely to run into trouble.

I was recently asked to review a book entitled SAT SNEAK ATTACK: How Computer Geniuses Hack, Beat and Cheat America's Most Feared Exam by Peter Wayner. At 33 pages, it would make a better magazine or newspaper article than it does a book. The gist of it is this: 1. Poor pay causes the proctors to do a bad job. (There are no statistics on the percent of proctors doing a bad job, but since they are all paid poorly I suppose we are supposed to assume that they all are therefore doing a bad job.) 2. Because the proctors are not paying attention you can hide helpful information in your calculator, such as a dictionary. (Having your calculator out at all during the verbal sections is forbidden, so this requires a very inattentive proctor.) 3. You can also hide a program that helps solve math problems, although, based on the description, it sounded to me like this particular help would only be useful for students who would otherwise score very low in the math section. 4. Large numbers of students are cheating using this method. (Again, no actual statistics. This is based on anecdotes from college students.) 5. The author personally alerted the ETS to this egregious problem and they metaphorically rolled their eyes. 6. This means that the math help program is apparently “legal” and any test-taker would be stupid not to avail himself of this advantage.

The SAT was designed in such a way that you do not need a calculator AT ALL. You are allowed to use a calculator because too many high school students think they can’t do math without one, and because they aren’t really testing you on arithmetic anyway. The top test-takers know that using your calculator as little as possible will actually help you go faster in the math section. Spending time and money downloading some program that will solve triangles for you is pretty silly. The triangles on the SAT can nearly always be solved in your head. In the time it would take to practice using the program, you could just practice the math in the first place. But I guess then you wouldn’t have a fun anecdote about how you cheated the SAT.