Apparently, there's a new movie out this weekend that is probably hoping to be this decade's version of The Breakfast Club. Only this time, the Force of Evil that is banding our little group of misfits together is not an insane principal, but the SAT.
Yep, our newest teen dramedy, The Perfect Score:
A group of seven high school seniors, made up of two girls (Johansson and Christensen) and five boys (Evans, Nam and three others), decide to break into the Princeton Testing Center, so they can steal the answers to their upcoming SAT tests and all get perfect scores. Each in the group has their own set of circumstances that lead them to the conclusion that the only way to truly decide their own fate is to cheat the system. The unofficial leader of the group is Kyle, an aspiring architect who dreams of attending an Ivy League school but repeatedly scores below what is required for acceptance. He develops the plan with his best friend Matty, whose low SAT scores result in a rejection letter from Maryland, the university that his girlfriend attends. Anna, who desires to meet her parents' standard of excellence but is badly in need of some excitement, joins in and brings Desmond into the fold, the star basketball player who at the urging of his mother decides to forgo the NBA for college and needs to pass the SAT to get in. Providing the access inside the local educational testing headquarters is Fransesca, an anti-establishment girl who joins in the scheme for kicks. Completing the group is Roy, a loner who wants in on the action after accidentally overhearing the plan. Although the kids seemingly share nothing in common, they join together and while getting to know each other, discover themselves in the process.
Aw, they band together through cheating! Isn't that sweet? No, not really. It's hard to believe that, maligned though testing is, the filmmakers thought teens would flock to see a movie about misfits dealing with the SAT in this fashion. Even with cheating and larceny thrown into the picture, the SAT just isn't that exciting a topic for a movie. Stand and Deliver was the first, and probably the last, exciting movie that revolved around a standardized test, and it was a genuinely moving film (although its depiction of the ETS proctors as evil men in black was as hysterical as it was incorrect).
I particularly like this part of the description: "Each in the group has their own set of circumstances that lead them to the conclusion that the only way to truly decide their own fate is to cheat the system." Moral equivalence at its best, folks. I mean, c'mon. If you're going to break the rules, kids, do it to save someone's life, or at least do it for some reason other than give yourself a break that you don't deserve. I admit I don't have a lot of respect for teens who try to protest the exams, or downplay their utility, but I have more respect for protestors than for these inane "Fight the system" cheaters.
The standard line about cheaters is, "If they put half as much effort into studying for the exams as they do into figuring out a way to beat the exam, they'd pass it." And it's true. The SAT is not like a casino, where the deck is always stacked in favor of the house, and dumb luck is the only difference between being poor and being a millionaire. That's just what testing critics want us to believe.
That much said, I'll probably have to go see it, because I've attended many an ETS workshop on catching cheaters over the years. It'll be fun to see if the screenwriters came up with a plan that the cheaters haven't. If you ever wondered what passes for psychometric small talk at cocktail parties, cheating techniques is definitely one of the more popular topics.
Posted by kswygert at January 14, 2004 03:52 PM