The SAT is in trouble. Its business model is threatened by the more than 1,000 colleges and universities that no longer require it for admission. Many more higher education institutions dropped the SAT due to the pandemic. The SAT is big business. It collects more than $1 billion each year in revenue. Its CEO, David Coleman, was architect of the Common Core standards, with a background at McKinsey. His salary is about $1 million a year. He achieved notoriety when he promoted the Common Core and came out against personal essays; he told an audience of educators in New York State that when you grow up, no one “gives a sh—“ about how you feel. They want facts. His Common Core curriculum insisted on the study of more non-fiction, which drove down the teaching of literature.
Some relevant history: The SAT was created in the 1920s as a replacement for the traditional College Boards, exams that were written and graded by high school teachers and college professors. The leaders of the College Board decided to adopt the SAT on December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor Day, when it was clear that the nation was entering the War. The author of the standardized, machine-scored SAT was a Princeton psychologist named Carl C. Brigham. He wrote a notoriously racist book called A Study of American Intelligence, in which he used the I.Q. tests of World War 1 to compare the various races. Brigham was a pioneer in the development of I.Q. testing; like most psychologists at the time, he believed that I.Q. was innate, fixed, and inherited, rather than a product of environment and .educational opportunity
Coleman’s latest move to protect profitability involved scrapping subject tests and the essay question.
Critics saw the changes not as an attempt to streamline the test-taking process for students, as the College Board portrayed the decision, but as a way of placing greater importance on Advanced Placement tests, which the board also produces, as a way for the organization to remain relevant and financially viable.
“The SAT and the subject exams are dying products on their last breaths, and I’m sure the costs of administering them are substantial,” said Jon Boeckenstedt, the vice provost for enrollment management at Oregon State University...
In recent years, the SAT has come under increasing fire from critics who say that standardized testing exacerbates inequities across class and racial lines. Some studies have shown that high school grades are an equal or better predictor of college success.
More than 1,000 four-year colleges did not require applicants to submit standardized test scores before the pandemic, and the number rose — at least temporarily — as the coronavirus forced testing centers to close and made it difficult for many students to safely take the test.
Perhaps the biggest hit came in May, when, following a lawsuit from a group of Black and Hispanic students who said the tests discriminated against them, the influential University of California system decided to phase out SAT and ACT requirements for its 10 schools, which include some of the nation’s most popular campuses.
The College Board acknowledged that the coronavirus had played a role in the changes announced on Tuesday, saying in a statement that the pandemic had “accelerated a process already underway at the College Board to simplify our work and reduce the demands on students.”
But David Coleman, the chief executive of the College Board, a nonprofit organization that in the past has reported more than $1 billion a year in revenue, said that financial concerns were not behind the decisions, and that despite the growing number of schools making the SAT optional, demand for the test was still “stronger than some would expect.”
He said the organization’s goal was not to get more students to take A.P. courses and tests, but to eliminate redundant exams and reduce the burden on high school students. “Anything that can reduce unnecessary anxiety and get out of the way is of huge value to us,” he said.
Some experts, though, said eliminating the subject matter tests could have the opposite effect, increasing pressure on students to take A.P. courses and exams, especially in their junior year, so credits can be submitted in time for college admissions decisions.
Saul Geiser, a senior associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California, Berkeley, said the move would “worsen the perverse emphasis on test prep and test-taking skills at the expense of regular classroom learning…”
At the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, officials dropped the SAT essay requirement in 2016 because they saw it as an undue burden on students, including an added fee, said Mike Drish, the university’s director of first-year admissions.
Mr. Drish said the university evaluated students’ writing preparedness based on their grades in English classes, as well as teacher recommendations and essays submitted as part of the admissions process.
For more on the uncertain future of the SAT, read this story in Inside Higher Ed.
Scott Jas him, a veteran reporter about higher education, writes:
Many observers — some of them long-standing critics and others sometime fans — say the College Board will be smaller and less influential in the future. And they expect most colleges that went test optional this year to stay that way, further eroding the board’s influence...
Although there were an increasing number of schools adopting test-optional admission policies, in this area, as in so many others, the pandemic has accelerated what will come to be permanent changes in the functioning of our society,” said Steve Syverson, a retired senior admissions official at the University of Washington at Bothell and Lawrence University.
“Lots of colleges didn’t really even need to require the SAT, as they were already admitting everyone who was admissible, but they didn’t want to eliminate it as a requirement because they felt it would devalue them,” Syverson continued. “In a sense, the pandemic — and the pervasive adoption of temporary test-optional or test-blind policies — gave them permission to eliminate the requirement. And I believe a large number of institutions will not return to requiring it. So I think there’s no going back.”
Syverson was the co-author of a 2018 report that found colleges that are test optional generally get more applications and more diversity among those applicants and among students...
Pat McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University, which does not require tests for admissions, said, “Eliminating the SAT essay and subject tests is an admission of some problems in the SAT system, but hardly enough of an overhaul.”
She added, via email, “If the College Board really wants to save itself, it would eliminate the SAT entirely and, instead, become a leader in working with institutions to develop innovative strategies for assessing student strengths and competencies, not only in high school but across the life span, thus helping higher education do a better job of matching students and programs more effectively. More effective matching of student talents and interests would reduce attrition and wasted credits, save students money and increase completion, a win-win for everybody. But as it is right now, the SAT is simply a high barrier that funnels students without much concern for what happens to them once they get through the barrier.”
A high school counselor who asked not to be identified said, “My small-d democratic side says, goodbye tests, good riddance to chasing a test score, goodbye to a zillion-dollar test prep industry, goodbye to a built-in advantage to resourced kids and schools.” She is quick to add, though, that even if that happened, and the role of the College Board shrank, there would still be a need for changes in admissions to bring students from diverse backgrounds into higher education.
The other side for her is that “tests give the illusion of a meritocracy,” and that parents — at least of the wealthy — love tests. Eliminating the SAT would be very difficult in that environment, she said.
Good start!! Now to get rid of the AP classes (curriculum in a can) and the stupid AP tests. Colleges aren’t looking at AP classes/scores either. Free the children!
“Colleges aren’t looking at AP classes/scores either.”
I know lots of students who were able to graduate college in 3 years (and save quite a bit of money as a result) by taking AP classes in high school. Not all colleges give credit, but many do, and I believe it is middle class and low-income students who benefited most as they were more likely to attend those colleges who did give credit.
And in terms of admissions, I recall that the U. California system application gives extra weight to AP classes, which meant that students from public schools that had AP classes had a much better chance of admission over private school students, while the most selective private colleges favored private school students under the belief that “those privileged students have no need to prove themselves by taking an AP exam where they might be directly compared to the less privileged students from public schools who might surpass them by scoring higher.”
It is true that SAT/ACT/AP Exams have been badly misused. But they were the only time where students in private schools and public schools took the same exams for college admissions.
My daughter is a college freshman this year. Last year she applied to 10-12 schools and none of them wanted the scores from her AP exams that she took (she scored a 5 on the ELA). GW University, NYU, UCo Boulder, UMD….none of them….all said test optional and this was before Covid hit. Colleges know that AP is just curriculum in a can. Memorize the facts for the test and then a brain dump.
My kids, who are four years apart, were right on the cusp of that change. My oldest, who attended Wellesley, was able to leverage 4 AP courses and graduate in 3 years instead of four, which saved a year’s tuition.
By the time her twin siblings began applying to colleges, the AP free-for-all had begun. When I spoke with admissions officers from schools of Wellsley’s caliber, several told me “that credential has been devalued”.
AP courses used to be designed by those who taught them. In the time period I’m referring to, the College Board had begun requiring teachers submit a syllabus to them and be vetted and required to attend AP training. All of which came with a fee, of course.
Christine Langhoff…thank you!! I get tired of trying to convince people that this “AP for all” thing is just another money making gimmick for the College Board (and to pad GPA). It’s actually the biggest reason that my son attends a private HS (yes, they have an AP program, but it is like the AP system from 5-10 yrs ago and it’s teacher recommendation which students get to take the AP classes).
My University gives credit and placement for a vitality of AP exams, along with IB and A level exams. This can save parents money and get students more quickly to smaller upper level classes. Moreover, since most colleges and universities do not accept transfer credit from incoming first year students, the AP exam is often the only way for students to get credit for university courses taken during high school.
Ah! Good riddance! I was an early beneficiary of this trend when Hampshire College admitted me in the early 1990s, at age 31, without requirement of this obstacle. Perhaps I flatter myself by thinking I’ve done well intellectually without ever having sat for this test. In any case, I feel pretty good about never having given a penny to the College Board or the numerous test-prep scams that have accumulated around this test like the parasites they are.
a new mantra? Never give a penny to the College Board…
Diane Thanks for the history . . . I didn’t know the background of the SAT and can see why, with its influence, good efforts by good teachers have been so “against the tide” for so long. The no-essay thing is one big clue. CBK
Good riddance! The SAT originated in eugenics and has been a primary means for perpetuating racism and the status quo throughout it’s history. It has also, always, been a scam.
Originally, it is called the Scholastic Aptitude Test because it was supposed to measure aptitude for college–which students were and weren’t likely to succeed. However, follow-up studies by independent scholars showed that it did no such thing. High-school grades were better predictors of future college success.
So, they changed the name to the Scholastic Achievement Test, but critics pointed out that given the small range of stuff treated on the test and the wide range of K-12 curriculum, it didn’t measure K-12 achievement and didn’t even attempt to.
So, it was a test seeking a purpose. In response to these criticism, it changed its named to simply the SAT.
Then along came Lord Coleman, appointed by Bill Gates to be the decider for the rest of us in US K-12 education, despite having almost no background in education and profound ignorance about US educational practice. And he Cored the SAT, making the questions on it as convoluted and bizarre as the questions on the invalid state tests of the puerile Gates/Coleman Common (sic) Core (sic) State (sic) Standards (sic). The name was, ofc, wrong on each of these four counts, but I won’t go into the obvious reasons why here. That’s a book.
cx: its history, not it’s history
cx: these criticisms
Coleman should have called his Common [sic] Cored version of the SAT the SCAT
(the Scholastic Common Core Attempt-a-Rehabilitation Test)
He couldn’t use SCAT. That test is owned by Hopkins and is another piece of garbage used to “sort” the younger kids.
Oh my Lord!!!!
I was thinking of “scat” in this sense:
And not in this sense:
and I used the word “garbage” when I wanted to use another…..but there is a no cussing rule for this blog and I try to be respectful.
lol
Yikes. Forgive the many typos in that post. I really need to proofread these things before hitting the Send button.
We’re a nonprofit!
Really? How much does your CEO make?
$900,000 a year in salary and benefits.
Ah. I see.
Being appointed by a Master of the Universe like Bill Gates to think for everyone else and be the “architect” of their lives is very lucrative!
But Coleman had the requisite hubris (and that’s about all).
I was so scared about the SAT, for it would be gatekeeper for my dreams of going to a university and becoming a scholar, that the night before I took it, I got no sleep at all. Literally. I lay awake all night. The admission fee was a lot of money for me, then, and I didn’t want to wait and take it later anyway because I needed to get those college applications in. As it turned out, I did well on it. I’m a good test taker. But these scam artists should not have such power over people’s lives.
The most shocking thing about the SAT is not that it has existed for so long but that people in UNIVERSITIES didn’t see through this scam a long, long time ago. That’s shameful.
Nice point, Bob: “The most shocking thing about the SAT is not that it has existed for so long but that people in UNIVERSITIES didn’t see through this scam a long, long time ago. That’s shameful.”
Maybe they did . . . but then, who reads university professors’ papers? CBK
Many, many scholars exposed the scam over many decades, but it served the purposes of the entitled white people who ran our nation’s colleges and universities. It sorted people by ZIP Code quite effectively and fulfilled its original eugenicist purpose.
This test gave white deans and chancellors and university presidents a justification for continuing to admit, overwhelmingly, kids from well-heeled, white families. So, in that sense, it was successful. It did just what it had been designed to do. That’s the real reason why the scam able to be perpetuated. It served that purpose and still does.
Bob It doesn’t take much to extrapolate from your analysis to the answer to the question about: Why entrepreneur businesspeople and corporations should NOT have power over universities, regardless of their financial “donations.”
Remember Un-Koch My Campus at George Mason University in Virginia. Koch not only wanted to control curriculum, but also wanted to control the hiring of professors . . . where the criteria was to tow the neo-liberal party line at least in economics. So if they control the choosing of professors, they need not steer paper content . . . that never gets written. CBK
The people at the universities knew what they were doing and they played along with the scam. The test scores mirror the socio-economics of the test taker AND the College Board is their favorite form of marketing to the masses of high end students/parents. The Uni’s have to come clean now….everyone knows there is a back door, a side door, and a lead in to pro sports. College has become another “business model” IMHO….with an expensive pay to play agenda.
I trace the start of the long, slow-motion demise of the SAT to the Truth-in-Testing law passed by the NYS legislature circa 1981. This law began to require disclosure by ETS (which developed the exam for the College Entrance Examination Board) of certain test data. It was the first time ETS was forced to make some of its technical/research data available.
A turning point came when Stanley Kaplan, a brilliant entrepreneur, showed that his profit-making test preparation business could increase the “aptitude” of students for learning. That is, his program raised student scores significantly. Successful coaching blew up the fraudulent claim that the SAT measured something innate in students and was, at the same time, predictive of college success.
That’s how the Scholastic Aptitude Test lost its groove and became the SAT. The focus of the T-in-T hearing and the resultant legislation was on SAT’s use in college admissions. Now, more 40 years later, we see the slow disintegration of this gatekeeping mechanism on its last legs. But Colemen and his ilk are busy trying to morph their business into ways that will keep them in the lucrative lifestyle to which they have become accustomed..
YUP. The racist notion of immutable “aptitude” was easily proved to be wrong, and that was yet another reason why they changed the name (in addition to all the research that showed that the test did worse than did high-school grades at predicting college success).
BTW, a good read on this subject: https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-How-Get-Schools-Cultures/dp/0393337693
See also any of Diane Ravitch’s recent books and this great work:
Based on the IQ tests of World War 1, most psychologists at the time concluded that Italians, Poles, Jews, and others from non-English-speaking homes were genetically inferior.
Yeah. Insane, huh? As Stephen Gould pointed out in The Mismeasure of Man, another great book on testing scams, back when the Binet test was first being given in the US, two of the lowest-performing groups were Hungarians and Eastern European Jews. Today, two of the highest performing groups. So much for the theory that these tests were measuring innate, immutable, inherited genetic ability!
The best single book that I know on this subject of the powerful eugenics movement in the US in the early 20th century: https://www.amazon.com/War-Against-Weak-Eugenics-Americas/dp/0914153293
The SAT has always been offered only in English and the verbal part actually focusses on English.
So the whole idea that it is a test of innate “aptitude” has always just been ridiculous.
Stupid, really.
I’d like to see how well Americans and Brits would do on a test that was given in a foreign language.
Most would probably show close to zero aptitude.
Superb point, SomeDAM!
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that the SAT should fear;
Seeing that the end of testing, a necessary end,
Will come as soon as it will come.
Come to think of it, it wasn’t too obvious that was rephrasing some Shakespeare there.
I guess I’ll be the lone voice here supporting the SAT and ACT. I shudder to think of how universities will differentiate among 40,000 applications with GPAs of 4.5 or 7.8 or whatever absurd level they have now inflated to. Perhaps by reading 40,000 personal essays stuffed full of B.S. and written and edited by parents. Whatever happens, I’m sure the toniest private schools will continue sending boatloads of their students to the very best institutions. As will the wealthiest parents, who won’t have to go through elaborate schemes to falsify test scores.
The SAT is especially good at identifying the kids whose parents could afford the most expensive tutors.
Life has always been great at identifying the children of the wealthiest parents, and it always will be.
FLERP….take my word for it! Except for the Ivies, your child/children will get an offer from every college they apply to if your salary is decent and they have decent grades. They “may” be waitlisted or deferred for a semester, but they will always be accepted. It’s how the system works. So, you can torture your children by making them take numerous AP classes/tests and SAT test prep (and numerous SAT tests) at the expense of their teenage years, but it doesn’t make much difference except that once they are living away at school, they realize just how much you ruined their childhood and they rebel.
I am with FLERP here. It is always better to have more information than less. As I have posted before, the UC system has found that standardized test scores alone do a better job of predicting college grades than high school grades alone for all the subpopulations of students that they looked it. Of course using both is better than using either by itself.
The UC system dropped the tests. They were the 1st big system to do it due to Covid and they have stated that they will likely keep it that way.
The administration did drop the tests against the advice of the faculty. Should we assume that when the administration and faculty differ, it is the administration that is correct?
I do not know how accurate literacy, reading level, tests are, but if colleges want to know if a student applicant has the ability to read college-level textbooks and to learn fro what they are reading so they are capable of understanding and doing the work, the only test might be one that determines if that applicant reads close to or at a college level.
GPA also reveals who worked hard through high school. As a rule, students with high GPA pay attention and to the work assigned.
So, two factors, does the college applicant have a literacy level high enough to understand and do entry-level college work and does their high school GPA indicate that they may be disciplined enough to get the work done that they are assigned.
The biggest problem is lots of schools are still using the SAT and ACT for scholarship determinations, which means kids still have to take the tea. My nephew recently had to move heaven and earth to take the ACT one more time because, even with his perfect GPA and challenging course load, he had to get a 33 on the ACT in order to get a decent scholarship to a state school, who increased the ACT requirement this year. He had a 32, which the school suddenly increased the requirement
He got a 35 and the scholarship, but he couldn’t have afforded school without that stupid standardized test score.
TOW,
Your nephew should keep an eye on the GPA requirement to maintain the scholarship once he is at the university. Admission folks know that it takes less financial aid to keep a student at a university after a year than it does to get the student to go to the university to begin with. They plan on a significant fraction of students not being able to maintain the required GPA for the scholarship.