Jonathan Pelto writes that Rhode Island may impose the SAT as a high school exit examination, despite the fact that the SAT was not designed for this purpose. One of the most basic rules of the testing industry is that tests should be used only for the purpose for which they were designed. The SAT was not designed to be a high school exit exam. The SAT, like all standardized tests, is tightly correlated with family income. Studies continue to show that grade-point-average is a better predictor of college academic performance than the SAT. Back in the old days, before standardized testing became a major industry, the test developers would warn districts and states not to misuse the tests.
Meanwhile, growing numbers of colleges and universities no longer require that applicants for admission submit standardized test scores, neither the SAT nor the ACT.
FairTest reports:
HALF OF “TOP 100” LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGES DO NOT REQUIRE ACT/SAT
SCORES FROM ALL OR MANY APPLICANTS;
MORE THAN 240 “TOP TIER” SCHOOLS IN 2017 U.S. NEWS GUIDE
NOW HAVE TEST-OPTIONAL OR TEST-FLEXIBLE ADMISSIONS POLICIES
A record number of colleges and universities now have test-optional admissions policies. Half of the national liberal arts schools ranked in the “Top 100” by the recently published U.S. News “Best Colleges” guide do not require all or many applicants to submit ACT or SAT scores. The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest) released the new tally.
“Top 100” liberal arts colleges with test-optional policies include Bowdoin, Smith, Wesleyan, Bates, Bryn Mawr, Holy Cross and Pitzer. Test-flexible policies, which allow applicants to submit scores from exams other than the ACT or SAT, such as Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate results, are in place at Middlebury, Colby, Hamilton and Colorado College.
U.S. News ranks more than 240 test-optional and test-flexible colleges and universities in the top tiers of their respective categories, according to FairTest. For example, the top three regional universities in the north, Providence College, Fairfield University, and Loyola University, are test-optional. So is the number two university in the south, Rollins, the third ranked school in the Midwest, Drake, and Mills College, fifth ranked among western regional universities.
Bob Schaeffer, FairTest Public Education Director, explained the new tally. “Admissions offices increasingly recognize that they do not need ACT or SAT scores to make good decisions. That’s why more than 70 schools have adopted test-optional policies in the past three years. We are particularly pleased by the sharp growth at both selective liberal arts colleges and access-oriented institutions.”
Schaeffer continued, “The test-optional surge gives applicants more control in the admissions process. Teenagers regularly tell us that they are attracted to schools where they will be treated as ‘more than a score.’”
Overall, more than 870 colleges and universities are test-optional for all or many applicants (http://fairtest.org/university/optional). The test-optional pace accelerated after the “redesigned” SAT was unveiled (http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Optional-Growth-Chronology.pdf).
– FairTest’s new list of top-tier colleges and universities that de-emphasize the ACT and SAT:
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I sounds like SAT sees the handwriting on the wall as a growing list of colleges abandon the test, so they are focusing on turning it into a high school graduation requirement, and if successful ,that will keep the money flowing into the College Board so David Colemen keeps getting his high, very high, six figure income. In fact, the SAT could end up making even more money because then every high school student in the country would have to take the SAT to graduate and not every HS grad goes to college.
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Gov. Raimondo’s state of R.I., is owned by hedge funds. Matt Taibbi wrote about it, in connection to the public pension heist.
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In Missouri, the ACT is required for all juniors now. A student’s score does not figure in on graduation. The absurdity of requiring all students to take it is, well, just another inane and insane requirement instituted by those who aren’t in the classroom and/or school.
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SAT, ACT, NAEP, PISA, whatever the test may be it doesn’t matter as all suffer the many onto-epistemological errors and falsehoods and psychometric fudging inherent in the standards and testing malpractice regime that render any usage of the results COMPLETELY INVALID as proven by Noel Wilson in his 1997 never refuted nor rebutted dissertation “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine.
A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other words all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
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RI also wanted to use the old NECAP and the PARCC as exit exams as well. We already have in place a performance based graduation requirement…how much more are the powers that be in RI willing to dump on our students?
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Sorry, that last piece is supposed to be “dump” on our students….annoyed and in a hurry so I made a glaring typo.
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The SAT has outlived its usefulness as a college entrance exam. In the parlance of the high tech industry, it should be end-of-lifed. If it’s going to be used as a graduation test in Rhode Island, that’s just a sign that ETS’s salespeople have figured out how to milk the cash cow a little longer.
For many decades, the SAT was probably a useful tool for distinguishing otherwise indistinguishable college applicants. Since many, if not most, came from middle- to upper-middle class families and from high schools that appeared similar on paper, the test gave colleges a way to normalize grades and separate the truly accomplished from everyone else. For private elite colleges, in particular, that made sense.
Now the kind of differentiation which the SAT provides is no longer helpful to top colleges. In fact, it is large irrelevant. Way too many kids are applying with straight A’s and high test scores. So the top colleges base admissions on very different criteria. They’re largely basing decisions on the students’ personal accomplishments, or what the colleges fancy to be “trajectories” for success: top athletes, academic competition winners, music and art prodigies, organizers of charities, young founders of companies. This criteria provides plenty of candidates in addition to the legacies which elite private colleges have to admit. There’s simply no room left, and no use, for SAT scores.
After the top-tier private colleges come public universities. Their admissions are slightly more regulated by state law, such as having to take the top 10% of graduates, or a certain number from every high school. Or they’re well aware of the biases in the SAT and they can’t rely on it much if they want a diverse incoming class. Once the public universities are removed, the SAT can serve only a small number of colleges whose admission staffs can’t afford to do much screening and who fall back on the standardized test as a proxy. That’s such a limited use of the test now that it can’t hold on much longer, and the folks at ETS surely know this.
If the SAT has truly outlived its usefulness for colleges, then states should not be swindled into adopting it for a high school graduation test. It cannot possibly serve both masters.
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The new Common Core SAT only serves one master: David Coleman.
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“For many decades, the SAT was probably a useful tool for distinguishing otherwise indistinguishable college applicants.”
Umm, no it wasn’t. It has always suffered the onto-epistemological errors and falsehoods and psychometric fudges as outlined in my above post.
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The bottom line is that the SAT ) or the ACT, take your pick) is an incredibly poor test. Other than predict family income – which it does pretty darned well – it just doesn’t do much. As one college enrollment expert said about using the SAT to success in college or college completion, “I might as well use shoe size.”
I’ve written on this blog numerous times that educators are doing students and public education a disservice by continuing to emphasize and rely on the SAT and its companion, the ACT, which is equally as bad.
But who – exactly – has the courage to drop them? And who has the courage to say that Advanced Placement courses are for more hype and than they are educationally beneficial?
Where is the AFT and NEA “leadership” on these issues? The National School Boards Association? The superintendents’ association?
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