Mail Call

Responding to our Sept. 6 cover story on testing, many readers deplored the emphasis schools place on standardized exams like the SAT. "Our world needs more creative, curious and engaged thinkers, not more people who are good at taking tests," wrote one. "The test can never measure character traits such as determination and a passion for learning," warned another. Still, one correspondent argued that "social mobility is greater with testing than without it." One letter took that thought a step further, suggesting that if U.S. leadership is based on meritocracy, "rather than hounding presidential candidates about past drug use, we should require them to reveal their SAT scores."

Kudos for showing how dangerous these new standardized tests are. As a former English teacher who quit rather than "teach for the tests," I applaud students who refuse to take these exams. Education officials need to find an alternative fast, before our kids grow up with no idea how to think without a No. 2 pencil and a multiple-choice bubble sheet.
Jennifer A. Ellis
Winter Haven, Fla.

Twice in my more than 30-year teaching career, I've seen the educational pendulum swing toward testing. Sure, we can and will adapt so that all of our kids will be "above average." But a test-driven curriculum saddens me because that's all it is. The challenge for teachers of the 21st century is to provide mastery of those necessary test-taking skills without losing sight of our deeper mission. To me, the real work of teaching is to help youngsters discover their strengths, to demonstrate the value of cooperation and to model empathy, imagination and tolerance. After parenting, teaching is the most important thing we can do for the well-being of everyone on this planet.
Judith M. Halley
Brockport, N.Y.

Peter Jennings never finished high school. Eugene O'Neill and John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize in Literature without finishing college. Bill Gates never finished college either. All you need to "succeed" is discipline, drive, determination and a dream. And I don't know any school that teaches those things, or any test that can discern or assess them.
William J. O'Malley, S.J.
Bronx, N.Y.

I read your Sept. 6 excerpt of Nicholas Lemann's upcoming book, "The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy," with intense interest. The Kaplan Educational Centers (which was formerly Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Centers, and is now owned by the same company that owns NEWSWEEK) have been successfully preparing students for standardized tests such as the SAT for more than 60 years. I want to make it absolutely clear that the Kaplan Centers have never used actual past SAT questions in our classes. Over the years ETS (Educational Testing Service) provided the students (and me) with only a few sample questions. Your article states that ETS tried to get the New York State Legislature to declare the Kaplan business illegal. I was never aware of that, but I do know that this same legislature put an end to the ETS policy of secrecy by passing "truth in testing" legislation in 1979. This legislation required ETS to provide, to any student who requested it, a copy of an SAT he or she had taken, along with the correct answers to the questions on it. Thus, students could understand and learn from the tests that play such an important role in their futures. You can imagine my excitement when, for the first time in 35 years, I was able to get my hands on an actual copy of an SAT. It is indeed ironic that today both ETS and the College Board are our serious (yet friendly) competitors in preparing students for the SAT--a test that for 50 years they had deemed uncoachable.
Stanley H. Kaplan
Founder, Kaplan Educational Centers
New York, N.Y.

I am deeply troubled by society's attention to the standardized tests used by high schools. High SAT scores prove just two things: math ability and good vocabulary skills. Period. No one has invented a standardized test to assess the qualities that really determine a prospective student's ability to do well in college: willpower, self-control and self-motivation. Will my son or daughter walk away from a party at 1 a.m., knowing he or she has an 8 a.m. class? Will they put down the beer and pick up the books, with no adult around to tell them to do it? Can an SAT score determine the values that are more important to a student's success in school than any knowledge or skill you can measure?
Beverly J. Lynch
Langhorne, PA.

NEWSWEEK must enjoy a level of precognition that is denied to most of us. How else to explain that I was able to read on Aug. 30 your assertion that the second anniversary of Princess Diana's death "came and went on Aug. 31" ("Goodbye, Di," Periscope, Sept. 6)? I don't really care about your conclusion that "even Britain barely noticed"--this observation is open to legitimate discussion (now that the date has passed)--but your willingness to report a news item in advance of the event, as if it had already happened, is extremely disturbing.
Judith M. Costello
Atlanta, GA.

Editors' note: By the week before the second anniversary of Princess Diana's death, it was clear that very little attention was being paid, or was likely to be paid, to the occasion. But our wording was misleading, and we regret it.