Don't be sorry because that is the question. Here's my answer I hope it doesn't ruffle too many feathers. In the High Schools around here and those are the only ones I know about; the curriculum is very structured. It is rigorous and requires teachers who can really teach. I am talking about the Honors programs now. Many teachers are not well trained. Up until recently they were not even required to take a course sequence in their own teaching discipline. You could teach english without taking more than the basic english classes everyone takes. You just had to complete the education major credits in order to qualify. So you had quite a lot of incompetence. This is getting better becuase now they have to qualify in a core subject sequence in order to teach that subject. But we still have holdovers from the bad old days. The results of incompetence was teachers who graded on things other than competence in the subject. Kids who they favored would of course get better grades. Then there was the proven gender gap. Females in the sciences did poorly. So in order to avoid being accused of discrimination teachers would find ways to pass them even though they were not qualified in the material. Also they would equivecate the soft subjects like english and compensate with those by granting better outcomes to the females and the non-english speakers etc. So the schools had an incentive to pass kids who really did not deserve to pass. Now the SAT's don't discriminate regarding the material the kids are required to know. Colleges had to have a reliable gauge with which to determine if kids were really ready for college level material. So they focused on that instead of using your HS record as a sole indicator of ability. Really it is all about less qualified schools/teachers/kids/and discrimination towards the less fortunate because of the requirements that the schools maintain grades in order to keep their accredidations intact. So now the SAT's are really the best way to overcome these drawbacks; I favor it because to me it removes the personality issue; where if teachers find your kid quiet and studious they pass him by and give all the attention to the problem kids. Or the ones who favor the girls because they are so much more mature at that age and have better attention spans than the boys. This is my opinion of the situation but believe me it is shared by many.
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