与SAT考试的爱恨交织

There is little love for the sat. How little, you ask? When a massive cheating scandal erupted this fall, fewer people rushed to defend the test than those to defend Penn State officials for allegedly covering up the sexual abuse of children. But as unpopular as the iconic SAT may be — among students and many educational activists alike — it’s actually pretty good at what it’s designed to do, which is to serve as a common measure across the hodgepodge of academic standards, grading systems and norms being used by America’s sprawling 25,000 high schools.

人们对SAT的感情所剩无几，如果要问到了哪种地步？当今秋（注：2011年）大规模爆出作弊丑闻时，出面为其辩白的人甚至比为掩盖娈童案真相的宾州政府辩白的人还要少。然而，如此不受欢迎又脸谱化的SAT（很多学生和教育活动家都这样认为），事实上，很好的履行着自己的目标，即作为一个可以平衡好学术要求、打分系统和相关规范的常规测试。

Unlike many of the tests that the education world loves to argue about, the SAT is an optional test; students choose to take it if they want to attend schools that require it for admission. So SAT angst is limited to the college-bound. (The test is administered by the New York-based nonprofit College Board, which is also in charge of high school Advanced Placement tests.) And although its only true fans are the intellectually insecure, the SAT, which used to be an acronym for Scholastic Aptitude Test, doesn’t show how smart or savvy students are or how successful, happy, or impactful they’re likely to be in life. But on average, it does fairly accurate gauge on how well students will do in their first year of college. That’s something admissions officials want to know. And that’s why good scores can boost an applicant’s chances of getting in and low scores can torpedo them.

与其他的那些在教育界中备受争议的考试不同，SAT并不强制学生参与;学生选择参加SAT是因为他们要申请的那些需要SAT成绩的大学。所以，只有那些志在接受高等教育的学生才会为之苦恼。（SAT由一家在纽约的名叫college Board的非盈利组织管理，这家组织也管理着Advanced Placement考试(AP))。而且尽管它唯一的拥趸是智力上缺乏安全感的那类人，SAT(英文“学术能力测试”的缩写）也无法显示出他们就有多聪明，或者他们可能在生活中是多么的成功，快乐和有影响力。不过，总的来说，它确实基本上准确的预测测学生们大学第一年的成绩。而对于大学招生官员来说这就足够了。因此分数越高对学生就越有利，反之亦然。

The SAT was front-page news this fall when 20 students were arrested in a New York suburb for cheating on it. The scandal was sensational but straightforward: high-scoring students used fake IDs to take the test for other students. One enterprising young man allegedly offered his customers a pay-by-installment plan and also factored their financial situations into his rates. Some locals indicated that the cheating was an open secret in these communities.

这个秋天的头版头条当属SAT的作弊丑闻，有20名纽约市郊的学生因此被捕。它既骇人听闻又直截了当：几名成绩佼好的学生伪造了相关证件为别的学生替考，其中一名胆大的年轻人还涉嫌提供给那些资金不足的“客户”一个“按揭贷款”计划。一些当地居民称，这种作弊现象在该地区并不是什么秘密。

Although the brazenness on display in Long Island’s Nassau County may be somewhat unusual, cheating on the SAT is not. The head of test security for the College Board recently told the New York Times that during the 2010-11 academic year, the nonprofit conducted “about 9,600 investigations of SAT testing irregularities, including fire alarms going off during testing and reports of test taker impersonation.” That averages out to be slightly more than one investigation per SAT test center that year. And surely no one thinks the ACT — the SAT counterpart that is used more widely for colleges in the Midwest and West — is immune from cheating either. In fact, prosecutors say ACT cheating may have occurred on Long Island as well.

发生于长岛纳苏郡的该项作弊事件或许有些耸人听闻，但SAT考场上的作弊行为却是司空见惯。College Board负责考试监管的责任人在接受《纽约时报》采访时说，在2010-11学年度中，他们查到了“约9600项SAT考场不规范行为，其中包括在考试时故意弄响火警警报器和替考。”也就是说，该年度几乎每个SAT考场就会有超过一起不规范行为。当然也没人认为ACT(American College Test，美国大学测试;类似于SAT的一项考试，广泛应用于美国中西部和西部地区高校)就没有作弊现象，事实上，在长岛也存在ACT考试作弊行为。

Most people in education are willing to tolerate these problems — and the tyranny of the SAT — because it’s a useful tool. Originally intended to help eliminate bias against various socioeconomic groups, today the SAT functions largely to address grading bias. It’s a barometer to help admissions officials make sense of the country’s diverse educational landscape, from the highly regarded and perhaps grade-grubbing private schools to the rigorous and not so rigorous public schools.

教育界中的绝大多数人士对于以上问题——及SAT的横行——予以宽容，因为它是一个好用的工具。它的初衷是为了消除不同社会经济团体间的偏见，如今它起码(largely address 不好翻译啊)能解决一下卷面分数上的偏见。它就像是一块晴雨表，帮助大学招生老师从各种教育情况。不管是从那些受重视、不打分数的私立学校，还是那些不宽不严的公立学校。

Taken over an almost four-hour period, the SAT today is a three-part test on a 2400-point scale. (So take note if you’re over 30: bragging about your 1400 or 1500 doesn’t sound so impressive now that the 1600-point scale is considered ancient history.) Many affluent kids use various SAT preparation programs — a legal way to bump your scores — and others will try whatever they think they can get away with to gain an edge.

如今，SAT考试一共要持续4个小时之久，分为3个科目，总分2 400分。（30岁以上的读者注意了：考个1400分或者1500一点儿也不稀奇，因为总分1600分制已经成为了历史）很多家境富裕的考生会参加各种SAT考前培训，这是一种合法的提高成绩的方法，而其他的考生也会为了成绩想尽一切办法。

The pressure on students, along with concerns that the test is unfair for some racial and ethnic groups, are reasons many advocates and even some colleges want to do away with the SAT. The anti-standardized testing organization Fair Test maintains a list of SAT-optional schools. At first glance, it seems impressive that about 850 colleges signed up. But many of the schools are not selective. Many are small religious schools or vocational or for-profit ones. Others are still using the SAT test in some way, just not as a formulaic criterion for admissions. Some admissions experts say that the whole SAT-optional movement is more of a marketing scam by colleges than a serious effort to evaluate applicants differently.

SAT给考生的压力，以及它对一些种族和民族的不公平，都是倡导者甚至是一些大学对其不满的原因。一个名为FairTest的反标准考试组织列出了一份可参考SAT的学校名单，让人印象深刻的是，在列的学校有将近850所之多。其中有许多学校并不具备可选性。很多是小的宗教性质学校、职业技术学校或者营利性学校，还有一些想利用SAT干些别的事情，而不仅仅将它正式的录取标准。一些招生方面的专家称，整个SAT考试可选运动更像是高校策划的市场化的骗局，而并非在努力探索一种不同的考生评估系统。

More than anything else, the cheating shows how marginal the efforts to marginalize the SAT are. Students cheat because the test matters. A lot of smaller schools like Bates College in Maine can ditch the test and still work through manageable numbers of applicants. About 5,100 students applied to Bates last year, not an easy workload for admissions officials but not insane. More than 28,000 applied to the University of Illinois, which, like other big schools, needs a tool like the SAT. And if you look at the college landscape in this country, many more students apply to and attend schools like Illinois than ones like Bates.

值得注意的是，SAT作弊丑闻揭示了这个企图使SAT边缘化的运动本身是多么的小众化。学生之所以会在考试时作弊，是因为这个考试至关重要。很多规模较小的学校，如缅因州贝茨学院，这些学校就可以摒弃SAT考试，并且可以有效的评估学生申请规模还不是那么可怕的申请资料。去年贝茨学院大约有5 100位考生申请入学，对于招生老师来说，这是不小的工作量，但也不至于手忙脚乱。而对于那些规模较大的学校来说，如伊利诺斯大学（去年有超过28 000位考生申请入学），它们需要一种像SAT这样的衡量工具。并且，就全国范围的大学申请情况来看，更多的学生倾向于申请像伊利诺斯大学这样的学校，而非贝茨学院。

One possible threat to the SAT’s dominance is the Common Core State Standards Initiative. Armed with federal dollars, two groups of states are working to develop new assessments that are designed to show whether kids are learning the new Common Core standards, which 45 states and the District of Columbia have agreed to adopt. These tests are supposed to measure high school achievement and post-secondary readiness and, if successfully implemented on a widespread basis — and that’s a big if — could one day supplant the SAT.

对于SAT来说，共同课程标准计划( the Common Core State Standards Initiative)很可能是其地位的威胁。在联邦政府的资助下，各州分为2个小组，致力于研发新的评估系统以判断孩子们是否应采用新的共同课程标准，而且已经有45个州和哥伦比亚特区接受了该标准。这些测试旨在评估高中和中学以上学校的教学成果，如果该计划在广泛地区成功推行（这是个宏伟的目标），那它有朝一日也许会替代SAT。

But in the meantime, the best we can do is trying to stop the cheating on the SAT because in the land of the blind, the one-bubble test is king. The College Board has retained former FBI director Louis Freeh to evaluate its test security. Penn State is also using Freeh, who may be on his way to developing a lucrative post-FBI career cleaning up educational messes. He certainly has his work cut out for him.

但与此同时，我们所能做的就是竭尽全力地去阻止SAT中的作弊现象，因为在我们这个雾里看花的国度，唯一浮出水面的考试必然是王道。College Board已经聘请前任联邦调查局局长Louis Freeh来负责监管考场安全。Freeh同时也在宾州任职，或许他还能借清理教育界的机会重振当年在FBI的雄风，这职位由他担任再合适不过了。