FairTest has been fighting the misuse of standardized testing since 1973. This is the statement it released about the SAT scores that were just released. It is all about the Benjamins (test fees), not the kids:
FairTest Reaction to Class of 2017 SAT Results
2017 SAT SCORES “CAN’T BE COMPARED TO PREVIOUS RESULTS” BECAUSE
“REDESIGNED” EXAM IS “MARKETING PLOY DESIGNED TO SELL MORE TESTS”;
LAUNCH FAILS TO SLOW SURGE OF SCHOOLS BECOMING TEST-OPTIONAL;
980+ COLLEGES, UNIVERSITIES NOW DO NOT REQUIRE SAT OR ACT SCORES
The College Board, the SAT’s sponsor, warns that scores released this week “can’t be compared to previous results.” That is because the revised exam is “a marketing ploy designed to sell more tests, not a better tool for tracking college readiness,” according to Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest).
“The College Board is a test-selling company,” Schaeffer explained. “Based on its public tax returns, the Board takes in more than $900 million each year. It holds assets topping one billion dollars. The firm’s president receives nearly $900,000 in annual compensation.”
“The SAT redesign aimed to reposition the Board’s flagging, flagship product,” Schaeffer continued. “It hoped to stave off further growth of the rival ACT, which has become the nation’s most popular college entrance exam. Most importantly, it tried to stem the rapidly growing movement toward test-optional admissions policies.”
Schaeffer concluded, “Since plans for the revised test were announced, more than 100 colleges and universities dropped SAT and ACT requirements. That’s a pace of one every two weeks. Schools increasingly recognize they do not need the SAT – old or new – to make high quality admissions decisions.”
More than 980 accredited, bachelor-degree institutions now will evaluate all or many applicants without regard to test scores. The list of test-optional schools includes almost 300 ranked in the top tiers of their categories by U.S. News & World Report.
Here is a list of test-optional institutions.
Comprehensive free directory of 980+ test-optional and test-flexible colleges and universities: http://fairtest.org/university/optional
List of 290+ schools that de-emphasize ACT/SAT scores ranked in U.S News’ top tiers
Click to access Optional-Schools-in-U.S.News-Top-Tiers.pdf
Chronology of higher education institutions dropping admissions testing requirements
http://www.fairtest.org/sites/default/files/Optional-Growth-Chronology.pdf
Diane Ravitch's blog 
High school grades are a better indicator of college success than SAT scores. Males generally out perform females on the SAT. Yet, females tend to perform better in college. Testing is designed to benefit the testing company, not the students. The SAT is an “illusion” of so called competency. Finally, some colleges are catching on to the SAT smoke and mirrors.
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But the problem in High School now is that they push AP for ALL. AP is just another College Board product with another test tied to it. I do think there are some classes that should be offered as AP and I do think that there are “some” students who should be taking AP, but the school systems are turning everything into AP and ignoring everything else. So it doesn’t matter what we do as parents, we can’t make any headway with this testing madness and data grabbing. My son will be going to a private HS next year as a freshman and I am looking forward to NO Common Core, NO standardized tests, AP as an offering and not a replacement, NO Naviance (SEL), NO PSAT8 PSAT9 PSAT10. I am so happy that Fairtest is expanding it’s list of colleges and getting the word out that these tests don’t mean anything at all.
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Since AP courses have become so widespread, it has been asserted that many of the courses are not on the level of those that are being taught at most universities. The high school AP courses often present less depth and breadth of scope.
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I’m not a fan of AP for all or all AP for some students. I taught AP and pre-AP English and I learned a lot about how to teach better, but I questioned a lot of what was on the tests. I think some things should be reserved for college. High schoolers don’t bring adult perspectives to adult literature. With high quality literature written for young adults now, I’d rather see them reading novels with appeal to their own ages and mindsets. They can still learn everything they need for a strong base in literature through modern YA literature. The canon could die or be updated. And the College Board created the canon.
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As a Principal, I encouraged my students to take dual credit courses rather than AP courses. There is something about having more than a single test score to determine whether a student should get credit. Even if a student does all the work required work in an AP class, if they don’t score high enough on the test, then they don’t get credit.
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And as a Spanish teacher certified to teach Spanish AP but refused, I too steered the students to Advanced Credit courses in which they would receive a state university transcript with the same credit hours as their lower level introductory Spanish courses. The beginning level courses in a foreign language cover the same material no matter whether secondary or university level. Why not get credit?
AP is a joke, a sad joke played on the students.
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If all educators directed students towards Dual Credit rather than AP, then it would put a serious dent in the profits of ETS
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“Psycho Metricks”
Psycho metricks test
Claims to find the best
Claims to find the scholars
But really finds the dollars
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“Which test? Or test witch?”
Test witch points to cash
Bending like a rod
Indicating cache
Of water under sod
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SAT is the only an objective measure. Teachers favor some students over others. SAT scores tells colleges an important fact. By discrediting standardized tests you are discriminating against students who fall into this category. There are many populations who focus well working alone. Since schools now use project learning in all subjects including math, the popular and favored students are graded higher than the introvert who because of a physical look or cultural background may not have the disposition or personality teachers like.
SAT shouldn’t be the only measure, but it should be part of the package.
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There’s nothing “objective” about the SAT and believing that there is is extremely harmful. The biases of society are baked right into the test, but because people believe it is “objective” it is unchallengeable. All standardized test scores, including and especially the SAT, reflect the socio-economic distribution of the students taking them. The only way you can believe that is “objective” is if you believe that socio-economic distribution actually reflects “merit” – rich people are rich because they are smarter, harder working or otherwise better than poor people. If that’s the argument you want to make, go ahead and put your name on it and let’s have that discussion.
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Most standardized testing, including IQ tests, are culturally biased. They discriminate against the poor and those that are different like ELLs. As an ESL teacher, I advocated for my students. I argued with the psychologists about some of their conclusions. I would be told that a students that had been in this country for four years had an IQ of 82. I observed this student closely enough to know that this students was of at least average ability. This student functioned higher than the presented score. The psychologist’s score was inaccurate due to the cultural bias of the test. Eventually, the psychologists agreed with me as more research became available on the cultural bias of standardized tests.
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Please…since you are Usually Right, sign yourself up to take the new SAT test and see if it really is a fair and good test. When you have taken it and have been graded accordingly, feel free to post about what a great test this is.
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“SAT Objective”
Very objective
Object is dash —
Coleman directive —
“Dash to the cash”
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You are on a roll lately!!! LOVE it
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Kudos to FairTest and to Bob Schaeffer, who has followed the machinations behind the SAT for 40 years, from the days when ETS designed the SAT for the College Board and defended it as an aptitude test–and, therefore, not coachable since it was measuring something innate.
They stood firmly against New York State’s pioneering Truth-in-Testing legislation in 1981, using selective data they, of course, controlled–despite evidence to the contrary. They mounted arguments that any legal requirement that forced them to disclose technical information and item statistics would add to the cost of test production, reduce the frequency of test administration, raise the fees and (tear jerker alert) make it more difficult for kids from poor families to afford. They lost.
They changed the designation of their exam from Scholastic Aptitude Test to the simpler SAT acronym for cosmetic reasons to remove the offending notion of aptitude. But the brand is the same. The motivation to make huge non-profits and oppose transparency has remained constant.
Fast forward to release of the 2017 SAT results. I smell a RAT in the just revised SAT. It goes by the name of David Coleman. We are told the 2017 SAT scores “can’t be compared to previous results.” Coleman, the president of the College Board, is behind this move. He’s the same guy who was the architect of the Common Core Standards, which he crudely over-promoted and helped turn into a failure. There’s no conflict of interest here for this boy genius. It’s all about the money and seizing as many edu-bucks as possible.
As Bob Schaeffer notes, the revision of the SAT is nothing more than an attempt to strengthen the College Board’s weakening hand in the college admissions testing market.
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“Test Reset”
You simply can’t compare
The newest test to old,
Aligned with Common Core
Or so we have been told
But re-set wipes the slates
Like impact to the brain
And simply obviates
The duty to explain
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A test based on a clearly-delineated body of knowledge would be more fair to poor and minority students. If parents and teachers knew what was on the test, they could start preparing their kids in kindergarten. But the SAT and Common Core tests do not test a clearly-delineated body of knowledge. Instead they purport to test reading and thinking skills by having kids operate on random pieces of text.
Because the topics of the texts they use are chosen at random (glaciers? cotton candy? the United Nations?) one cannot prepare except by practicing “reading skills” like using context clues and doing sample test questions. But, as cognitive science shows, reading skills are insufficient to unlock meaning; one must know 95% of the words. This advantages upper class kids who get exposed to broad vocabulary and knowledge from their parents. To fare decently on these tests then, poor kids must either study everything in the universe, or content themselves with skill drills and practice test questions, which will goose up scores, but never allow them to equal the knowledge-rich upper class kids. A third alternative would be to study a broad, knowledge-rich curriculum, but this is rarely offered these days in our test prep focused and skills-oriented schools.
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“The Basis of Testing”
High-scorers possess
The stuff that we test
And all of the rest
Is useless, at best
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A new test, the Classic Learning Test, is starting to gain some momentum.
From their site: “The Classic Learning Test (CLT) invites students to wrestle with works of the greatest minds in the history of Western thought across literary and mathematical content. Rich material reflecting both theistic and secular perspectives benefits and enriches the student in the test-taking process. Among standardized college entrance exams, the CLT provides the most accurate and rigorous measure of academic formation, accomplishment, and potential.
“Will this be on the test?” For the student, this critical question determines what will be studied, what will be committed to memory, and what will be left behind. The landscape of American education is informed by the same concerns of this student. Standardized college admissions tests, the sacred portals of entry to higher education, exert enormous influence over the curricula and texts selected by educators from high school down to Pre-K. As such, misguided attempts to remain “value-neutral” often lead to a rejection of the rich intellectual inheritance of Western civilization in American education.
Many exceptional educators must avoid values judgments in discussions concerning historical, literary, and scientific endeavors. This is done in order to prepare students for a standardized test requiring only a regurgitation of disconnected facts or the careful presentation of a “value-neutral” argument. However, even scientific laboratory discoveries – from the atomic bomb to genome editing – can have moral and ethical implications. The term “value-neutral” is an oxymoron in this context.
Existing standardized tests focus too narrowly on sterilized texts without allowing students to consider broader implications of decisions, ideas, and discoveries found in the rich and abundant variety of sources ranging from St. Augustine to Kant. The CLT reintroduces this variety by focusing on sources and materials that draw upon a strong tradition and challenge students to analyze and comprehend texts that are not just concerned with one small, narrow topic but rather represent the scope and complexity of Western tradition.”
It won’t be for everyone, but it’s a great alternative for some.
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“Among standardized college entrance exams, the CLT provides the most accurate and rigorous measure of academic formation, accomplishment, and potential. . . It won’t be for everyone, but it’s a great alternative for some.”
The CLT doesn’t provide any “rigorous measure of academic formation” just as there is no measuring of anything that a student learns. There are judgements, evaluations and assessments, many of them rather poorly designed, of what a student MIGHT know but there is no measuring.
Tell me Jane, what is the standard unit of measure of that “academic formation”? Please define “academic formation” as a useable definition that can be measured using a standard unit of that supposed “academic formation”.
I await your response! Thanks in advance, Duane
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Afraid I will disappoint, Duane. I am simply a mom of high school-aged children who has been disappointed with CCSS, AP, and the SAT. I am glad to see an alternative test that will make a small step toward breaking up David Coleman’s monopoly. You’ll have to find someone else to argue the finer points.
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I can understand your disappointment, Jane. My thoughts and feelings tend more toward anger with these educational malpractices of standards (CCSS) and tests (AP, SAT CLT) due to their inherent foundational conceptual errors and falsehoods and all of the pyschometric machinations involved. And CLT suffers all the same problems.
If you are going to support one CLT while decrying the others, then please support your support. Help me understand why the CLT is that much different. Answer my questions, please, as I cannot be satisfied with your copout of being “simply a mom” and not wanting “to argue the finer points”. Prove your contention that CLT is “better”.
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There is no fair “standardized test” anywhere, other than tests used to diagnose specific learning disabilities. And even those suffer all the same onto-epistemological errors and falsehoods but at least they do not sort and rank students according to some bogus criteria as there are no “correct” answers but answers given which indicate to some degree whether or not a student has X disability.
Fairtest.org, while have brought attention to the injustice involved in these tests, needs to go the next logical step and condemn all standardized testing used to rank and sort students. They certainly are perpetuating the falsehoods, errors and injustices involved in these malpractices by insisting that there can be a “fair test”.
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They probably should have called their site “unfairtest” because that is really their focus.
“feartest” would also have been accurate, perhaps even better.
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Any kind of standards test is crap. Assessing teachers by standards and insisting they make a google drive portfolio is also a load of crap. At 62, I am ok on the computer, but to keep up with all the latest google this and google that on the drive is just well, exhausting, to say the least. My niece is in 8th grade and has never taken a SOL test. Her mom opts her out every year. Oh, she would pass cause she is smart. But she doesn’t need to take a test to prove how smart she is. Just as I don’t need to comply with these teacher standards just to prove I can teach special ed. students. This is why old school teachers just quit.
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Like!
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“The Googleplex”
Google is perplexing
And even googleplexing
The Google link
Will drive to drink
Or even drive to texting
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