Standardized tests don’t serve all students well and accurately; they are unfair gatekeepers, say the critics.

The college board has grown aware that the ability to perform on the SAT does not accurately predict academic success. Some bright students test poorly, but would succeed in academia if given the opportunity. Critics say the test denies them opportunities they deserve.

In my case, the SAT was inaccurate by over predicting my academic success. Do you know what the SAT doesn’t test?

Executive function.

I grew up believing I was an excellent student, mainly by acing tests and not being a discipline problem. That description seems strange to me now, knowing that I can’t sit in a class (or meeting) where I am delivered information. I can’t go home later by myself, and organize my tasks and produce mental work, on my own. I never got through a dense 40 page reading assignment; I never got my papers done. Well into adulthood, I see I’m actually a laughably bad student, and always was.

What I am wired to do: Gigs. Show up at a time, and react. Like an SAT. (In Soviet Russia, task organizes me?)

The SAT accurately predicted my ability to do gigs. It predicted my ability to do well in interviews, which are like gigs.

Standardized tests don’t test executive function - nor do any Sit in place & Do it test - because to take the test, you don’t need any. It provides that framework for you. It masks your lack of it. It’s a quiet place, with a scheduled time and one single activity available. No vast array options to paralyze you. No one walks into a testing hall & says, “I think I’ll watch tv for a while…”. There is nothing else to do but the test.

All the more ironic that the tests are gatekeepers, allowing those who do well to pass on to the place where they must now figure out how to get by without that structure. If they don’t figure that out, they drop out.

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Decades after I aced that test, I’m still negotiating the path it put me on. I don’t regret it, it opened immense opportunities. Some I “deserved”, some I didn’t. Some I took, Some I shouldn’t have.

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I attentively scroll the text of a script up my mac, matching the pace of the lead scientist reading it.

I’m operating a Teleprompter; I love this gig. I think about writing better Teleprompt software, because I enjoy small programming projects, though I rarely complete them. I love showing up on time for the job, loading in the video gear, wiring up the computers, troubleshooting video monitors, neatly organizing cable runs, coordinating with the camera people, sound engineer, director, and talent. Balancing dynamic factors, thinkng on my feet. No array of options for my time, to navigate.

Gigs are like tests.

Once the show launches, I listen to the person on camera, and my job is essentially to play this video game, where I make the text on screen perfectly line up with what I hear. Yes it’s trivial - (borrowing the over-used MIT term). I dryly define my job as a “Professional Text Scroller” (who’d have thought that was a thing?)

Yesterday’s gig was a bank commercial. Today it’s a scientist presenting an industry leading data analytics package, used by millions of engineers and scientists.

Discussing the script, he reworks a couple sentences, and defines terms to me, as one would with someone unfamiliar with his domain.

But I am familiar with his product, Mathematica. The lead scientist doesn’t know that 25 years ago this company enthusiastically pursued me to lead a software team. If I had taken the position, the results would have been as disastrous as in academia. It would have been another rung on the ladder of upward failures in my software career.

Turning down that job was a milepost on the way to a good place for me, to support his product by scrolling text.