ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, April 6, 1996 TAG: 9604080004
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ESTHER W. JOHNSON
IN LISA Applegate's article (March 25), "9 out of 12 Merit Scholars ain't bad," she has perpetuated misconceptions about Scholastic Assessment Tests and Preliminary Scholastic Assessment Tests. This newspaper has once again clouded the already murky landscape of college testing, and succeeded in confusing the public about both the selection of scholars and the role that a school plays in "producing" semifinalists.
The article's headline is misleading. Blacksburg High School does not have nine merit scholars - but nine semifinalists. It's a very long way from semifinalist status to scholar status. Last year, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corp. publication, 15,000 high-school students nationwide were recognized as semifinalists. Of those, 6,700 received merit scholarships, and only 2,000 received the actual "national" awards.
Applegate mentions that the NMSC "tries to keep high-school comparisons to a minimum by not keeping records of the highest number of semifinalists one school has produced." Did it ever occur to her that there's a reason for that? It isn't to steal praise from a school, but precisely because the corporation is well aware that the Educational Testing Service didn't create the test to measure school performance but individual performance. Any person with even a rudimentary knowledge of research and statistics knows that a cardinal rule is that one never uses test results for anything other than what they are intended. A strong caution on the publication's front page warns against this.
In addition, her assumption that a school "produces" semifinalists is utter hogwash. Although any high school would like to claim credit for its semifinalists, it cannot in good conscience do so. A high school nurtures, reinforces and recognizes high scorers - a noble goal indeed - but it does not produce them. It's highly likely that many of these are the same students who blew the top off seventh-grade SATs in The Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth search. They're likely to be the academically gifted students who scored in the 99th percentile on state standardized tests from kindergarten through elementary school. Yet no elementary or middle school is given credit for "producing" the scholars.
It's far more likely that what produces scholars is an enriched background where parents read to their children from an early age; where books, magazines and newspapers are an everyday part of life; where parents role-model by reading and engaging children in discussions and valuing their ideas; where parents turn off the television and turn on the world of libraries, music lessons and cultural events.
And it's likely that many of these characteristics are found in homes where parents happen to be professors. Scholars aren't mass produced on an assembly line in a high school in Blacksburg or anywhere else (including the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Northern Virginia, which has 118 semifinalists). Scholars are "grown" from infancy over many years. The fact that many of them end up in one place at the same time is a pleasant happenstance for both faculty and student peers. Their presence enhances and enriches a school. Blacksburg High School is indeed fortunate to have these fine young people, but it cannot take credit for them. It's likely that these nine would have been semifinalists in any school in any state in this country.
It's also simplistic, if not downright mean-spirited of Applegate, to imply in a backhanded manner that children of professors at James Madison University and the University of Virginia are not as bright as those of professors at Virginia Tech, due to the smaller number of semifinalists at Harrisonburg High School (three) and Charlottesville High School (two). If such a comparison were valid (which it isn't), she would have had to add at least the numbers from Albemarle High School (one) and St. Anne's-Belfield (six) to the Charlottesville total. One might also note that since Tech is almost twice as large as JMU and UVa, one would expect to see twice the number of professors' bright children in the local schools. How foolish to step into that quagmire.
It's sad to perpetuate the idea that all semifinalists have "hundreds" of prestigious schools wooing them. Semifinalists are named solely on the basis of scores on one test, in October of grade 11. If they don't present academic credentials of the same caliber as their scores, colleges don't woo them. And even semifinalists who are excellent students may be offered admission at numerous prestigious universities that don't offer them a single penny of merit money.
I remember a valedictorian, the Roanoke Valley's only merit scholar on the national level that year, who took his $2,000 with him to Duke, and received not a penny more from the university.
Semifinalist status isn't a guarantee of major financial reward, and any newspaper that implies that it is does a great disservice to both students and their parents by setting up unrealistic expectations. We expect better of The Roanoke Times.
Esther W. Johnson is guidance coordinator at Northside High School.
LENGTH: Medium: 88 linesby CNB