The compromised operational security of these exams don't stop them from being more predictive than teachers. So if we want to retire these tests, then we need something better. What we should really be talking about is improving these tests and beefing up operational security.
Is there any data out there which tries to measure test skills independently?
I can't speak to the current state of affairs, but in the mid 90s, taking a 5 week Kaplan course in my peer group raised scores from the 1150-1300 range to the 1300-1500 range. That meant the difference between average state school and high probability of hitting a "reach" school.
Many of the ultra achievers on these tests start prep at age 10 or younger.
https://edtechdev.wordpress.com/2007/10/11/test-wiseness-wri...
We have a real-world instance of the DRM problem here. Once you've put a static exam physically into the hands of the students, it's compromised. The attackers have massively, massively more resources than the defenders. The attackers can hire a hundred students to each take one picture of one page, and put the test back together themselves. And there's no way that the proctors can prevent students sneaking one picture of one page nowadays.
(Also, I'm not saying that's an optimal attack. I just put about 5 seconds' thought into it. But it's a sufficient attack already, so the existence of even further clever attacks only makes my point stronger.)
Even presenting the problems one at a time on a screen (massively more expensive, btw, due to brand new hardware requirements, plus introduction of other attack vectors) would not be sufficient. Clever games played with contrast or whatever won't work because the test needs to be highly accessible, so you can't play games like the old copy protection booklets [1], either.
Basically, if the test is static, it's game over.
Not that students aren't fairly good at cheating with dynamic questions. But those really only work well with the math questions, and even the dumbed-down calculators they still sell today can be convinced to run programs sufficient to "crack" any dynamic problems that the test companies can get their hands on for the math portions.
It's basically hopeless. The adversaries have gotten too darned powerful. They're armed with too much gear that would make old-school spies weep tears of joy.
People apply, pay for a year or two, inevitably fail, but are now also 30k in debt.
What do you think those people will do?
Accepting anyone only works in countries without paid universities.
Well, the underlying basis is the finite number of seats for students. If you have a limited number of slots, you must reject some applicants. Therefore, the question flipped around is, "what criteria to use to reject applicants?"
That leads into what I guess your usage of "basis" is actually about: the philosophy of selecting on the "doing well" instead of some other criteria such as... "economic disadvantages?"... or "local student over out-of-state or foreign student?"..."athletic abilities?", etc. You'd have to expand on what alternatives you had in mind.
I think the "doing well" criteria can be defended by filling up the limited seats with students who will get the most out of college. For example, a student taking "Physics I" needs to know what derivatives are (Calculus). Having some slots used up by students that should have been in remedial math courses (Algebra) instead of flunking out of PHYICS1 is unfair to the potential students who already have the baseline math skills required for solving physics equations. Multiply that example across the entire curriculum required for a degree and the "doing well" criteria seems justified. You want to reject potential students who are not able to succeed at college-level course work. Maybe tests like SAT are bad/flawed but so far, they appear to be the "least bad" tool to predict which students will do well in college.
One can create institutions that don't care about the assessment of "doing well" as an entrance criteria as long as the students pay the fees. That signal is provided by many colleges[1] that don't require SAT/ACT scores. However, the prestige and respect of those institutions don't match the ones that do. That negative perception in the marketplace is not uncorrelated to their acceptance criteria. (E.g. University of Phoenix.)
[1]http://www.collegexpress.com/lists/list/colleges-that-do-not...
In practice, that's not who we select. One college in the Midwest I know of selected 1) kids related to alumni, 2) people of a certain religion, 3) people who would add to the sports and music programs, 4) kids of color with good grades and high SAT scores, and last 5) people who didn't fit the above, especially from California, Texas, or Florida, who could pay full tuition. A major goal at some small colleges is balancing kids who will pay full price and kids who will do well at college, which creates a funny situation where you've got a well off heavy-majority-white party crowd with low test scores and a smaller and more diverse group of subsidized kids who bring many academic and non-academic talents (the music/sports/math/science/high school leadership crowd that may not have well-off parents).
It may not be the only criterion of use, but "do we have good reason to believe they will succeed in college?" is at the very least a critical bar that ought to be passed. It's can be the difference between college as the empowering, education experience it's supposed to be, and college as the meat-grinder wealth-extraction tool it can be when you feed in students who shouldn't be there.
[1]: Not necessarily "best", but being "earliest" in a world of compounding interest makes them quite valuable in their own way.
Match students to the colleges that will be hard enough to get them to grow, but not so hard that they fail.
Preparing for standardized tests ruins a fraction of life.
Whatever the case, it is not surprising that sketchy cram schools are cheating.
College essays? Sure, if the instrument is performant. SAT II's? Sure, if the instrument is performant. Grades? Sure, if the instrument is performant. Or extra-curriculars, or whatever.
College admissions at many of the better schools don't simply try to get "all the best" students that they can. They look to balance many factors, including admitting some fraction of students who have connections or can pay full tuition, including taking a risk on some students who would otherwise not be admitted but show some promise, including throttling-down the acceptance of over-represented groups. This is a fact.
"predictive performant instruments" sure sounds very rigorous and objective, but you're talking about young people who are undergoing a lot of change. They're moving targets and predicting future performance based on one test only goes so far. A test like the SAT is always going to be a blunt instrument as is any singular factor. Admissions officers recognize this.
Can you name some "better schools" whose admissions are not need-blind? My understanding is that this is pretty much universal among prestigious schools.
Universities will certainly not publicly announce that they admit some students strictly because of connections or funding. Yet it happens... children of prominent alumni gain admittance with relatively lackluster grades, some numbers of foreign students which are required to pay full tuition get admitted even though they're not quite up to par with the other students. There's always plausible deniability, they're not going to admit idiots and at the same time many stellar students get admitted with no regard to need.
Admissions is not a "pure" meritocracy, nor is it the opposite.