Friday, March 29, 2024

Why U.S. Colleges Are Rethinking Standardized Tests



1. What are the SAT and ACT?

The SAT, administered by the New York-based College Board, and the Iowa City-based ACT are decades-old screening instruments for U.S. school admission. Both are multiple-choice, written exams heavy on math and studying, taken by highschool college students sometimes of their junior 12 months, generally senior. The SAT was invented within the Twenties. Harvard University, within the early Nineteen Thirties, was the primary college to make use of the SAT as an instrument in admissions choices, initially to find out recipients of 1 small scholarship program, in keeping with Nicholas Lemann, writer of “The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy.” The College Board, an affiliation of academic establishments, adopted the SAT to switch a battery of essay checks throughout World War II, a change billed as short-term that as a substitute proved lasting. Lemann stated. College Board membership expanded tremendously after the warfare, and the SAT turned a mass-administered examination. The ACT emerged within the late Fifties as a competitor.

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2. How necessary are they?

In a 2018 survey by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, almost half of faculties stated they gave “considerable importance” to ACT and SAT check scores in deciding which candidates to simply accept, down from 60% in 2004. The scores are additionally thought of for scholarships, an necessary technique of tuition assist for a lot of college students. Some massive public techniques such because the University of Georgia and the University of Florida nonetheless require them. “A high score on the SAT or ACT will not compensate for a non-competitive” grade level common in highschool, the University of Georgia says on its web site. “Your record of three to three-and-a-half years’ worth of rigorous academic work in the classroom will be the primary focus of any admission decision.”

3. Who has moved away from the checks?

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The Common Application, the nonprofit behind the standardized software type, stated solely 5% of about 850 member faculties are requesting scores in 2021-2022, in comparison with 55% in 2019. The University of Chicago and Brandeis University had been amongst faculties that had stopped requiring testing earlier than Covid-19. The pandemic, by forcing the cancellation of most in-person testing, accelerated the reconsideration of standardized checks. All eight Ivy League faculties have made them elective for present highschool juniors. Harvard has suspended it for college students as younger as present eighth graders, and Cornell, for a few of its undergraduate faculties, received’t even settle for scores. The University of California system abolished testing necessities. “Test-optional admission is the new normal,” stated Bob Schaeffer, interim government director of TruthfulTest, a nonprofit that has led the “test-optional” motion for 30 years. “These schools aren’t going to go back even if they want to in most cases.” The College Board in 2021 additionally eradicated the essay part from the SAT.

4. Who’s nonetheless taking the checks and sending scores?

Even although many schools aren’t mandating scores, no less than one group of scholars are nonetheless sending them: wealthier ones. In the present software cycle for present highschool seniors, 52% of scholars within the wealthiest households submitted scores this college 12 months, in keeping with information from the Common Application by way of February. Only 39% of the poorest did so. Applications amongst first-generation college students — these whose mother and father didn’t obtain bachelor’s levels — grew by 21% from two years prior. Only 37% of underrepresented minorities despatched in scores in 2021-22, in comparison with 52% of non-unrepresented minorities. It’s not clear how faculties are evaluating college students with out testing.

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5. What’s the priority about racial disparities in testing?

“The use of standardized tests to measure aptitude and intelligence is one of the most effective racist policies ever devised to degrade Black minds and legally exclude Black bodies,” Ibram X. Kendi wrote in his bestselling e book, “How to Be an Antiracist.” In the newest report for the category of 2021, the imply rating was 1,112 for White college students and 934 for Black college students. (The total imply rating was 1,060. An ideal rating is 1,600.) 

6. What explains the disparity in scores?

Quite a lot of elements, in keeping with consultants. For one factor, wealthier households can afford to ship their excessive schoolers to test-prep programs that educate methods for excelling on written exams. Wealth additionally influences the standard of education a given little one receives. William Spriggs, an economist at Howard University in Washington, D.C., says Black college students “are less likely to be in schools where there are advanced math courses,” similar to calculus. Priscilla Rodriguez, a vp on the College Board, stated the SAT just isn’t a racist instrument. “Every question is rigorously reviewed for evidence of bias and any question that could favor one group over another is discarded,” she stated. “Further, changes made to the test over its 100-year history have removed all vestiges of an aptitude or ‘IQ’ test.”

7. What options are there?

Bowdoin College, which led the way in which by making admission checks elective beginning in 1969, considers what programs had been obtainable at an applicant’s highschool, whether or not the coed selected essentially the most or least difficult and the way the individual carried out relative to friends. James Nondorf, vp for enrollment on the University of Chicago, stated college students can present their strengths in competitions similar to chess, debate or math. (About 68% of candidates to Chicago selected to use with check scores this 12 months, down from 75% in 2021.) “I love entrepreneurship competitions, hack-a-thons, coding competitions,” Nondorf stated. “In some ways it’s better than testing. It showcases a particular skill as opposed to testing, where you’re seeing a whole set of things measured.”



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