In December 1989, I graduated summa cum laude from Roger Williams University in Bristol, R.I. Up until this year, I have made an annual contribution to my alma mater in grateful appreciation of the things I discovered there.

This year I am withholding that contribution and instead giving the same money to Bates College in Lewiston.

As a parent of two elementary-age children, I worry about the senseless test-driven “accountability” culture strangling our public schools. I know first-hand what poorly designed and executed educational policies can do. I am a high-school drop-out.

Today, my alma mater would not accept me as a freshman student because I have not taken the SAT test. However, the admissions office at the time I applied had the wherewithal and the ambition to look deeper than simplistic test scores and into life potential.

Bates College does not require SAT or ACT scores for admission, but it does examine these scores so as to study what they mean in relation to long-term academic success. They have found that test scores are not an accurate predictor of student achievement.

When my children seek the benefits of higher education, I don’t want them to be leashed to a crude test score and I don’t want them caught up in the pointless and stressful horse race of private tutoring, test-taking and score comparisons with their classmates.

It is time we all re-examine our charitable contributions in this context.

John Painter, Whitehouse Station, N.J.