john's leaving certificate score, i take to be a little bit like the s.a.t. s.a.t., was the highest in the country? i think i got that right, but let's introduce hannah cool. leer from financial times, john schwarz from "usa today." start with this leaving certificate, like the s.a.t. s.a.t.? >> yeah the end of school year. >> highest in ireland in all of irish history? >> i'm not sure. it's little hard to -- >> if i were close, i would have checked. >> was it a perfect score? >> yeah, you can get a perfect score. >> did you? >> yes. >> the highest ever. >> but anyway. i don't know how they go about -- man that's so long ago. >> yes, what three years ago? >> no, no, we started stripe four and a half years ago now. >> oh, okay. >> and so, you know, we -- it was in 2009. we have -- i was in the bay area since 2010. >> let's start, all kinds of things i want to talk about i got a whole list here, i want to start with just the basic friction point. i have been buying stuff online for many, many years. we all have. we buy airline tickets, book hotels, we use paypal, use

the s.a.t. every year, more than 99% do so honestly. his organization spends $11 million on s.a.t. know how many times sam eshaghoff took the s.a.t.? >> actually, i don't. >> 16 times. does that surprise you? >> no. >> does it concern you about the integrity of your test? if one teenage kid can do that 16 times, and that's all that we know about from him alone? >> yeah, so the integrity of the test, the validity of the test score, is the primary concern of e.t.s. and the college board. since i believe that almost all the students take the test honestly, with integrity, and the score is valid, it's very important that we not overreact to this case or any future cases and do things that would be onerous and detrimental to the actual long-term security or access for the administration. >> sam eshaghoff is a smart kid. but you don't have to be a brainiac to cheat the system the way it exists at this present time. there's absolutely no security procedure in place. any review is done after the fact. which prevents any level of accountability once cheaters are caught. and that system has

the s.a.t. anymore. i have no particular grief with the s.a.t.. i will say that the suggestion that it's culturally biased, i think, is not true. it may be biased in other ways, and it may not be the best predicter. but for culturally biased, then you would expect african-american students, for instance, to do better in school, better in college than their s.a.t. scores would suggest. in fact, that's not true. the s.a.t. does not underpredict african-american performance. >> all right. we're winding down our time, so i'd like to pose one last question before we invite our panelists to give their concluding comments. i'm struck that throughout this conversation we haven't tackled some of the deep structural issues that are at the root of this conversation. so let me talk about my hometown of detroit where about 95% of white children in the metro detroit area live in very low poverty neighborhoods. these are neighborhoods with, for the most part, highly functioning schools, good jobs for their parents, places to buy, fresh fruits and vegetables, capi

the same s.a.t. scores and you're only looking at s.a.t. scores, still if they have the same s.a.t. nd one individual has gotten that s.a.t. score with the finest private education and tutoring and suspect a.t. prep courses and -- s.a.t. prep courses and all of that that money can buy and the other person has had none of that, has gone to a lousy inner city public school, has gotten no prep advantages at all and they get the same s.a.t. score, well, which one has the the greater academic potential? you'd be crazy not to admit that student over the former student even if the only consideration you have is who's going to be the best qualified person to do academic work at a particular level. so i think that, you know, to some extent of course we have to look at place. i think that there are, you know, some dangers in overweighting place. i mean, it doesn't make sense to admit students who are not going to be able to do the work at an academic institution. that does nobody any good. you can have a mismatch problem there as well as on the basis of race. but still i think that, you know,