Taking Back SATurdays--- College-Readiness Exams, 12/30/2015

If you want to make money in education… start a standardized testing company.  Standardized testing is the greatest education hustle since malfunctioning copy machines.

I woke up the other morning to an article from the Washington Post:  “The SAT, now the No. 2college test, pushesto reclaim supremacy”. Check out some of these awesome excerpts:

“The SAT, once the nation’s dominant college admission exam, fell behind the ACT in recent years after its rival locked up huge swaths of the market…” 

“Now the SAT’s owner, the College Board, has mounted a comeback in its bid to regain supremacy…”

“The competition between the ACT and SAT…”

“After the SAT’s last revision, in 2005, which added a required writing assessment, it lost market share…”

“…state officials had decided to drop free ACT testing for high school juniors and instead give 11th-graders the SAT under a three-year contract worth $14.3 million…”

…’Dominant’?  ‘Rival’?  ‘Comeback’?  ‘Supremacy’?  ‘Competition’?  ‘Market share’?  ‘14.3 MILLION’?

I would just like to take a moment to say:  Nick Anderson, I don’t know you, but I freaking LOVE you for writing that article.  Don’t worry, you didn’t do anything wrong; you just provided us with something to chew on.  Ladies and gentlemen, how would you feel if you learned that the tests you and your children so regard are more concerned with competition for lucrative contracts… than with enhancing the educational process?  When you think about testing, you think about data and diagnostics, right?  But what if the primary ‘D’ word that these companies are concerned with… is DOLLARS.

…Think I’m exaggerating?  Fair enough; I hope I am.  Keep reading.

The first time I questioned the role of standardized testing companies  in education was my high school junior year, back in 1999-2000.  My mother, who was an educator, told me that the board of education was introducing test prep classes, and students were taking them to boost their test scores (I think she was nudging me to try to surpass my own score, which wasn’t half bad, btw).  I was puzzled.  “So, if the students are getting assistance before they take the test, then… *light bulb* what is the test actually measuring?  Isn’t that like attempting to measure one’s vertical with stilts on?” 

Sure, it’s not the testing companies’ faults that students were finding themselves in need of assistance; heck, many of the students didn’t really need assistance to pass, they just needed assistance to pass with flying colors--- to go from appearing college-ready to appearing to be Ivy League material (keyword ‘appearing’).  But that’s when I saw… the test prep books.  “From the makers of the [insert name of standardized test here]…”     

Timeout!!  So, they make a test that measures 'college-readiness', then, when students don’t make the score that they wish to make, they print and sell materials to help the students boost their test presence.  And I say “boost their test presence”, for two reasons:  1) because the materials aren’t about subject mastery, they’re about test mastery; 2) because the students aren’t testing to demonstrate their college-readiness, they’re testing to generate college-readiness scores, whether they’re actually college-ready or not.  At the end of all things, the testing companies make money hand-over-fist--- on one end from signing million-dollar contracts, on the other end from selling study materials.

…What a HUSTLE!  Well-played!

And yet, tests like the SAT are found to be lacking, constantly needing to be adjusted.  The SAT started off on a 1600 point scale, then went to 2400, and now it’s back to 1600.  It started off with math and verbal, then it added writing, and now it’s cutting back on the verbal.  It started off as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, and then it became the Scholastic… [Something-Else] Test, I’m too lazy to look it up right now.  We talk about these college-readiness tests as if they’re some kinda learning essentials, or infallible measuring tools, or sacred monuments in the Temple of Education… but they’re not.  If they were being used as diagnostic tools, then when substantial numbers of students found themselves lacking, the test-makers’ concern wouldn’t be selling study materials for the tests; it would be helping schools create more effective classrooms.  Their concern would be investing in the schools themselves to help improve the classroom experience so that students wouldn’t need test-prep classes or test-mastery materials.  There’s a difference between raising intelligence and raising test scores.

I say all this to pose a question:  are standardized tests like the SAT and ACT really fit for determining college-readiness?  Near the end of Anderson’s article he quotes Governor Jack Markell as saying, “Even though people are getting sick of tests, they are desperate for opportunity.”  Perhaps that’s the problem--- why are tests like these so directly connected to opportunity?  According to CollegeAtlas.Org, 70% ofAmericans will attend a 4-year college, and of that 70%, less than 2/3 willgraduate.  How many of that 2/3 were required to take tests like the SAT as a key to college entry?  Is 2/3’s not a majority?  How does an effective standardized test result in a majority of 4-year college students turning out not to be college material?

Don’t get me wrong, I think tests have their place--- as diagnostic tools to help measure student growth and target student learning.  But as barriers to college entry?  Barriers that don’t even filter the 2/3’s of the 4-year college students who don’t graduate?  I say give those high school students their Saturdays* back and find a better way to spend $14 million.

*Not sure how it is across the country, but where I'm from students normally take college-readiness exams on Saturdays.