Rarely is it that the good old days were just that. In the good old days, air conditioners did not cool a room on a hot summer day, Tivo did not record your favorite television shows, and you didn’t have the ability to carry 20,000 songs in your pocket. But in the good old days, a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast were all one needed in order to prepare for the SAT.

The College Board, the non-profit organization that organizes, distributes, and scores the Scholastic Aptitude Test, has taken a few hits in recent months. After a scoring error that left thousands of students in the Class of ‘06 with scores lower than they should have received, the two of the one-two punch was delivered when it was determined that the scores from tests taken in the spring of 2006 showed the greatest average drop since 1975: a staggering five point drop in critical reading, and a two point drop in math. This has prompted scrutiny throughout the educational community.

A few years ago, Richard C. Atkinson, then president of the University of California, decided to take the SAT. After receiving a very low score, he gave a speech, urging colleges to drop the SAT requirement. “Anyone involved in education should be concerned about how overemphasis on the SAT is distorting educational priorities and practices, how the test is perceived by many as unfair, and how it can have a devastating impact on the self-esteem and aspirations of young students.” There is widespread agreement that overemphasis on the SAT harms American education. One point that he made, that has been echoed by other critics of the SAT, is the fact that the test is more about endurance and test-taking skills than about the material tested.

The College Board began to panic. A large number of the students who pay to take the SAT do so to apply to the University of California. If the requirement suddenly vanished, so would large numbers of students’ entry fees. So in response, the SAT was changed. Ironically, the changes worsened conditions. Instead of a two-and-a-half hour test, it became a four-hour test. More advanced math was added, and the essay that was supposed to help better reveal a student’s aptitude is being widely ignored by colleges. Many schools look only at English and Math, the latter of which just became harder.

In the beginning of this editorial I alluded to the fact that not too long ago, test prep centers like Kaplan and The Princeton Review did not exist. This phenomenon directly contradicts the very platform on which the SAT runs.

The SAT was originally a test that would level the playing field. College admissions officers had a hard time distinguishing a student with a 95 average in a large competitive school like Cardozo with a student in a rural Midwestern school with the same average but with a graduating class of twenty students. The SAT leveled the playing field in the sense that these two students would take the exact same test. But the test that once sought to break the differences between classes has pushed them further apart.

The SAT is a $30 billion a year industry. The emergence of test prep centers and personal tutors have made the SAT very elitist. The average group course costs upwards of $1000. Private tutors make parents reach further into their pockets, and many students whose parents cannot afford such test preparation are automatically at a loss.

So what are the long-term effects of these scandals? Recently, many small colleges have dropped their SAT requirement. Mount Holyoke, Middlebury, Hamilton, Union, Dickinson, George Mason, Providence College, and Hobart, and William Smith Colleges also are SAT-optional. Admissions officers have said eliminating the testing requirement will increase both the size and diversity of their applicant pools, and bolstered their reputation as places personal enough to consider each applicant individually.

The view of the SAT in the educational community has gone way down as it becomes increasingly clear of the detrimental effect this test brings with it. “I guarantee this is the first nail in the coffin of the SAT,” said John Katzman, CEO of the Princeton Review in a CNN interview with Donna Kelly. “Five years from now, our kids will not be taking this test.”