Kenneth Bernstein regularly blogs at The Daily Kos. He is an experienced teacher with National Board Certification.

He shares his views here on test prep and testing:

For a number of years, until I decided I had ethical problems with doing so, I earned money beyond my teaching salary by teaching and later tutoring SAT prep for Princeton Review.   That company probably has more experience with preparing students for standardized tests than any company in the nation.  Thus it is probably worthwhile to note what they taught us to say about the SAT to our students:

Other than a bit of vocabulary and some ability to read questions accurately, what the SAT measures is how well you did on that version of the SAT on that day.

In other words, it did not measure how bright you were, nor how prepared for college you were (high school grades are a better a predictor of 1st year grades at .30), and SAT had little predictive relevance beyond 1st year grade and for that it had a predictive validity (R-squared) of around 22%, meaning that it predicted less than 1/4 the actual first year grades.

We hav always known there was a strong correlation between family income and SAT scores.  Princeton review courses, which were more accessible to those with more income, merely exacerbated that problem.

Now test prep companies are already moving into the business of offering courses for high stakes state tests, and once we have tests aligned to the Common Core State Standards the problem will become even worse – those with money, who will already perform better, will gain an additional advantage by being able to purchase such test preparation.

What will this tell us?  Exactly what the SATs tell us according to Princeton Review – beyond the correlation with family income, how well the testee did on that application of that test on that day.