I mean, the SAT has "aptitude test" in the name; the idea that you can practice it and do better each time is a bug and not a feature.
But I think the bigger danger is that after a while, practicing for standardized tests starts monopolizing the curriculum at secondary schools, and teachers start being evaluated by their students' test scores to the exclusion of all else. Even 20 years ago, I remember getting herded onto a bus to some community college to take an extra "practice state proficiency test" whose score didn't count for anything at all.
Even if universities have lousy motivations, de-emphasizing that kind of thing probably makes high-schoolers' lives a little better.
Since 1993 SAT no longer stands for 'scholastic aptitude test'. It had its roots as a sort of IQ proxy but that has fallen out of favor because it doesn't reflect the full purpose of schooling (e.g. advancement from given means, value-add of schooling for a given student) nor range of things that cause students to achieve (e.g. hard work, conscientiousness, etc).
One could make a test called 'big brain test' and sell it to schools to say it measures big brains, and it might be only somewhat correlated but still get widespread adoption because it fulfills a need schools have to have some sort of quantitative sorting of students, but it still wouldn't necessarily be a measure of big brains. This is sort of what the history of the SAT is.
But I think the bigger danger is that after a while, practicing for standardized tests starts monopolizing the curriculum at secondary schools, and teachers start being evaluated by their students' test scores to the exclusion of all else. Even 20 years ago, I remember getting herded onto a bus to some community college to take an extra "practice state proficiency test" whose score didn't count for anything at all.
Even if universities have lousy motivations, de-emphasizing that kind of thing probably makes high-schoolers' lives a little better.