[carnation]

Okay, here's the deal about standardized testing and a couple of years ago, Time Magazine quoted me on it. Grade inflation in high schools is rampant, largely because schools are afraid of being sued. We who teach at colleges are not stupid and when we see all these applications on which the kids have a 4.0 but a 700 on the SAT, we pretty much know how and why that happened.

Not to mention, an A in some systems isn't equal to an A in others. An A in the city system in this town is far superior to an A in the county system, which uses dumbed-down books and offers tons of extra credit points for bringing cans in to the can-a-thon. We know a high school teacher who offered 10 points extra on the final to any student who would bring her 3 Hallmark ornaments (she collects them).

Colleges must have some way to hold their applicants to a common standard and until someone comes up with a better way, we must use standardized testing.