What's Holding American Students Back? The SAT

University of Wyoming President Robert Sternberg was stupid in elementary school. IQ tests said so. Knowing his scores, his teachers in the 1950s expected him to perform badly, and he agreeably lived down to their expectations. In fourth grade a teacher named Virginia Alexa saw something special in him and conveyed her high expectations. Almost overnight he became an A student. He went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Yale University and a doctorate in psychology from Stanford, and later served as president of the American Psychological Association. Not so stupid after all. “My entire future trajectory changed as a result of just one teacher,” Sternberg writes in a 2010 book, College Admissions for the 21st Century.

He worries about “stupid” students who don’t have a Virginia Alexa looking out for them. It’s not only IQ tests that defeat students, he says. It’s also the SAT and ACT, the college-admissions tests that he says are—contrary to their developers’ assertions—“basically IQ tests in disguise.” Sternberg says he thinks college applicants should also be asked to demonstrate their creativity, practical intelligence, and even wisdom, qualities which are in shorter supply than cleverness. “If you look at why this country is so screwed up,” he says, “it’s not because the people running it have low SATs.”