This post arrived the day before Christmas. The author, teacher Michael P. Mazenko, says the decision took everyone by surprise.
Why did Colorado switch from the ACT to the SAT overnight? No one who knows will explain.
Michael P. Mazenko writes:
This week, David Coleman and College Board pulled off a big coup in both Illinois and Colorado by getting state departments of education to shift from the ACT to the SAT for the state-mandated junior college exam. These are the only two states to require a college test in high school, and both states had history with ACT going back more than a decade. In Colorado, this decision was announced yesterday, December 23, 2015, just as CDE closed for the holidays, and schools were out on break. While Eric Gorski of Chalkbeat did an admirable job reporting the news, there were few people around to answer significant questions. Many in Colorado’s education community are critical and suspicious of the unprofessional timing of the announcement.
Here in Colorado, the decision by CDE to contract with SAT rather than ACT was shocking to say the least. To begin, the state has been dragging its feet on this decision for nearly eight months for no clear reason. And, up until today, every indication was that the state would remain with ACT. Yet, here we are with a surprise announcement to switch testing companies in the middle of the year. The state has done a huge disservice to schools and students by voting for this significant change so late in the year with little time to prepare for it. And, it’s not just switching from ACT to SAT. College Board has announced a significant re-design of its test, the SAT. Thus this spring’s test is an entirely new SAT for which students and educators have no context, piloting, data, score comparison, training, or understanding of the new format. I am deeply concerned for junior-level students who will be asked to take an entirely new test, blind, and allow that test to become part of their permanent academic record.
In following the story, I am particularly bothered by mention of the decision being made by “a selection committee” that no one I know following the issue has heard of. When Colorado passed HB1323 which required that the junior level test be put out to bid, there was no talk of a committee. Previous coverage and discussion of the subject made no mention of the committee. With no names of members, no one was available for questions and comment beyond CDE’s spokesman. Additionally, I am troubled by the connection to the PARCC test and implication that the decision is an attempt to force Colorado to remain tied to PARCC. Just a couple weeks ago, CDE interim head Eliot Asp and State Board of Education President Steve Durham implied that Colorado would leave PARCC after this spring’s test. Durham noted that a majority on the Board are “opposed to this test.” Yet, shortly after those comments, the state named Rich Crandell – of Arizona and Wyoming – as the sole choice to head CDE. That surprised many in state, for Crandell was instrumental in promoting CCSS and PARCC in Arizona. Prior to this week, most people expected that Colorado would stay with ACT and withdraw from PARCC to replace it with the ACT-Aspire for grades 3-10. Now, everything is up in the air, and schools will scramble to prepare for an entirely new test and system in just three months.
Both ACT and SAT carry a significant decrease in test time, but the ACT is preferable for Colorado based on history and experience alone. ACT has been the state and national benchmark for “college readiness” for decades. It is a known commodity that is trusted by Colorado’s students, parents, teachers, and colleges. The state and Colorado schools also have fourteen years of data for student performance on the ACT, and numerous school districts have UIPs written around ACT data. And, now the ACT is aligned with Aspire for grades 3-10 with ACT at grade 11. Thus, the state could have had solid data for practically a child’s full career, and it would have synced with the 14 years of ACT data we already have. With the State Board and CDE indicating a probable withdrawal from PARCC, it only made sense to stay with ACT and use the Aspire for the grades 3-10 test. And those tests significantly decreased test times, which is what parents and the legislature voted for. Interestingly, Colorado’s new “graduation requirements” for the year 2021 according to CDE’s own document use ACT as one required benchmark. They’ve just contradicted their own plan. It seemed logical that Colorado would maintain a trusted relationship with ACT. Thus, the decision to switch to SAT is all the more baffling.
This decision is a problematic game-changer, and the most troubling part is the “newly designed” nature of the SAT. The SAT given this spring will be a new style and format with no piloting for test score comparison and data. Just like CDE did with PARCC, they are using Colorado’s students as guinea pigs for a new test. I know juniors who took the SAT this fall – which is early – because the test was familiar, and they wanted a score for a test style they knew and for which the scores were already established. They are wary of this new test because there is no data or experience with it, and we don’t really know what the scores will mean or what the cut points would be. Taking this new test for the state is risky. Obviously, many students will take this new SAT, but why would they take it as a school/state test, for which it will become their public record? As an educator, I must administer this test. But if my child were a junior, I would have serious reservations about taking this new test for the state. While I would encourage my child to take the ACT and SAT on a Saturday for which he can choose if he sends the scores, I would be wary of allowing the state to put scores for a brand new and unfamiliar test on his transcript. Colorado parents should be made aware of this concern.
In all, the decision by CDE to switch from the ACT to SAT should be met with suspicion and criticism. The majority of Colorado students have little history or familiarity with the SAT. The primary question we should all be asking is this: Who is benefiting from this decision? It’s not the schools or the students.
Michael P. Mazenko
Greenwood Village, CO 80111
A Teacher’s View
Twitter – @mmazenko
And how about the new Colorado Commissioner!?? How embarrassing.
If there is a money trail, it will probably lead to David Coleman through Bill Gates.
Historically, the College Board has been the holy grail of psychometrics – piloting, field testing, calibrating items. They had immense item banks; any given SAT contained items being field tested.
So I guess all this is out the window.
And previous SAT scores were always interpreted by colleges; there were never cut scores.
So this really is new territory.
Thanks, David Coleman
ACT tests teachable knowledge; the new SAT tests unteachable mental attributes like short-term memory ability, doggedness, analysis and inference making skill (which we’re born with). Thus the ACT promotes substantive learning in high school, whereas the SAT promotes pure test prep and no acquisition of knowledge.
When Colorado gives the SAT test, the powers that be will bemoan the fact that so many students will have done poorly. Of course, their education department will say that the state must double down on PARCC to make the students truly college and career ready. What a manipulative bunch of . . . No, I will not use the word I want to say on Diane’s blog. I started to prep some student for the new SAT here in NY, but I managed to talk all of them into taking the ACT for college. The test is horrible. My son preps for the math part of the test and there are many questions that require a precalculus background (which most states do not require for a high school diploma). The writing/grammar part is exactly like the ACT, but the critical reading is impossible because you have a two for one penalty for many paired questions. In most passages, there are at least two paired questions in which one has to determine where in the text one finds the justification for the answer to the previous question. Therefore, if you get the first question wrong, you WILL get the paired text-based question wrong. A fair test would have each question independent of each other. It is a test constructed to create failure just like any other PARCC-type test. But then again, that is the real purpose of the test.
Totally agree about the reading section (and the answer choices on the paired selections are highly subjective). The math is worse, though. Many open response questions that have to be answered in very exact formats, and the material is much more difficult. Students must be fluent in material covered in Algebra 2 and pre-calculus, which was never expected before. This test will be much more difficult to prep for.
The Colorado Department of Education announced that a state selection committee chose the SAT over the ACT, in part because it was more aligned with Common Core. The fact is, Colorado state law HB15-1323, which codifies the consensus of the state’s “1202 assessment task force”, says that Colorado must choose a college entrance exam. There are only two options in choosing college entrance exams, as ACT and SAT currently have the market cornered.
ACT and SAT have both made changes to align with Common Core. The College Board’s SAT made a quick transition to Common Core alignment, while ACT, who partners with Pearson, is making a more gradual transition every year. Bottom-line, today’s ACT is not the same ACT that Colorado has been taking since 2001; how ACT will continue to evolve is unknown.
ACT has already made some major changes, most notably in the writing test and ACT scoring. ACT now has an emphasis on measuring critical thinking, and critical writing. ACT has also been piloting computer-based testing. Compass Education, who offers tutoring and ACT /SAT test prep, strongly encourages students to avoid the online ACT pilot as there have already been some “hiccups”. http://www.compassprep.com/top-act-changes/ The changes to ACT scoring and reporting have also drawn considerable attention.
ACT has a new and secret predictor score (chance of success score) that parents and students do not get to see: “It’s one thing for standardized tests to be important factors in admissions, but now ACT proposes to pass judgment on chances of success in ways that are patently unfair to individual students. And these kinds of projections have no place in reports forwarded to colleges unless they are also provided to the person who paid for the test—the testtaker. ” -says Nancy Griesemer, DC College Admissions Examiner http://www.examiner.com/article/act-announces-changes-to-college-reports-that-could-drive-admissions-decisions
Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, agrees. “It is an increasingly slippery slope when test-takers (really their parents) pay ACT for the privilege of creating gobs of data which ACT can then massage data and sell to colleges…Of course, there is no independent oversight body ensuring that ACT’s calculations are fair, valid or useful.” “Of particular concern to many counselors is the way in which ACT proposes to mine for data used to generate the “chances of success.” Others wonder about the legality of ACT using information such as grades and GPA’s to form recommendations without specific permission from the student: “Is it legal to provide colleges information to be used for admission without informed consent? ” https://web.archive.org/web/20150704005352/http://www.examiner.com/article/counselors-react-strongly-to-new-act-score-reports
ACT sells student data. The selling of student data also gets at the issue of student privacy. The Colorado Dept of Education is prohibited from selling student data by state law (HB14-1294).
IMPORTANTLY, Last year ACT refused to sign Colorado’s standard privacy and security contract, as seen here from this archived post from April 2015: http://tinyurl.com/jgf36nj
Colorado had been re-negotiating its contract with ACT for the 2016 school year. If ACT refused to sign the privacy contract, it would not be surprising, as they refused to sign a weaker contract last year and ACT has also not signed the SIIA pledge, an unenforceable, self policing industry promise to not sell student data.
*If * Colorado chose to go with SAT, because SAT did agree to Colorado contract terms to protect student privacy, that sends a strong message about data privacy to other vendors. If you don’t agree to Colorado Sept of Ed contract terms to protect student data, they will not do business with you.
As for the changes to SAT and what students can expect, the College Board hasn’t said much about the specific ways the Common Core standards and the new SAT line up, but EdWeek did a side-by-side comparison to highlight how similar Common Core and the redesigned SAT actually are. “Opponents of the Common Core may be displeased to learn the standards they decry as educationally inappropriate were used to update the format of arguably one of the most important standardized tests. ” http://www.edweek.org/media/24satchart.pdf
ACT and SAT changes are part of the evolutionary common core landscape-there will undoubtedly be more changes on the way. If you don’t agree with the current ed reforms, let your elected officials and school district know. However, one thing is certain, parents and students will continue to have the constitutional right to refuse the state mandated tests. For a list of colleges and universities who do not use SAT or ACT scores for admission, parents and students can visit this site that is updated regularly: http://www.fairtest.org/university/optional
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CDE press release: SAT selected for Colorado’s college entrance exam http://us5.campaign-archive2.com/?u=bee6c43ae6102530cf98cadf9&id=1a1c7ceae6&e=e6ebabf197
Major changes to SAT http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/05/living/sat-test-changes-schools/
Compare new SAT with Common Core Standards http://www.edweek.org/media/24satchart.pdf
SAT common core comparison: http://www.edweek.org/media/24satchart.pdf
Compass ed http://www.compassprep.com/top-act-changes/
ACT FAQ https://www.act.org/actnext/faq.html
ACT announces changes to college reports that could drive admissions decisions http://www.examiner.com/article/act-announces-changes-to-college-reports-that-could-drive-admissions-decisions
Counselors react strongly to new ACT score reports https://web.archive.org/web/20150704005352/http://www.examiner.com/article/counselors-react-strongly-to-new-act-score-reports
Fairtest ACT and SAT optional colleges http://www.fairtest.org/university/optional
Click to access D16656BA90D54F3787257DDD0064A563
“Colorado STUDENT DATA PROTECTION, ACCESSIBILITY,TRANSPARENCY, AND ACCOUNTABILITY ACT OF 2014”- applies only to state contracts. http://www.cde.state.co.us/dataprivacyandsecurity/hb14-1294dataprivacy
Who benefits? Those who are trying to privatize the schools that’s who. With a new test their educational results from privatization are obscured and are not comparable with the old test for evaluation. In four or five years when the evidence is clear and obvious the privatizes will have made their money and left town. A flim flam if I ever saw one.
Mr. Mazenko is wrong about Illinois and Colorado being the only states that require a college entrance test in high school. Utah requires the ACT, as does Louisiana, I believe.
Alabama’s high school juniors must take the ACT; it is administered in each high school during school hours.
Exactly what Utah does. My district in Utah also pays for, and administers during school hours, the Explore test in 9th grade and the PLAN test in 10th grade, both ACT products, for the express purpose of “preparing students to take the ACT in 11th grade.”
Michigan has required (and paid for) the ACT for all juniors (not just college-bound students) for six years–and shifted, suddenly and without explanation (beyond better pricing) to the SAT last year. Same deal. Must be a pretty compelling offer that SAT is making, beginning with “aligned with Common Core.”
Who is looking after the children in all of this? This is outrageous
I think it’s time for colleges to scrap the standardized test requirement. As a parent of an 11th grader this is really making things complicated and stressful. The advice has been to skip the new SAT and go for the ACT since there aren’t really good materials to prep for the new SAT.
This article below is one college president’s statement on what happened when their college stopped looking at test scores.
http://tinyurl.com/zwqjdz7
Michigan is also switching from ACT to SAT. The issue here was money. SAT offered a contract deal that could not be refused. I don’t know a lot of details other than that.
ILL-Annoy is switching, too.
I also meant to say that we’re switching, reportedly, for a big $$$ savings–same as Chuck mentioned for Michigan.
So much mental masturbation over which is better to smear our students with: the bovine (ACT) or porcine (SAT) excrement. Or is that bovine (SAT) or porcine (ACT) excrement. Or are they both just equine excrement?
bovine excrement isn’t as bad as skunk gunk
I’m one of the few who tolerates skunk gunk. Not sure what that means but oh well!