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In the latest sign of trouble for the standardized testing empire that has played a major role in college applications for millions of students, the organization that produces the SAT said on Tuesday it would cut the testing of subject and optional essay section, further confusing admissions. process.
The move comes as the testing industry has been battered by questions of fairness and troubled by logistical and financial challenges during the coronavirus pandemic.
Critics saw the changes not as an attempt to streamline the test-taking process for students, as the College Board described the decision, but as a way to place more emphasis on advanced placement tests, which consulting also produces, as a way for the organization to remain relevant and financially viable.
“The SAT and subject exams are dying products on their last breaths, and I’m sure the costs of administering them are considerable,” said Jon Boeckenstedt, the vice-provost for enrollment management at Oregon State University.
The main SAT, taken by generations of high school students applying to college, consists of two sections, one for math and one for reading and writing. But since at least the 1960s, students have also had the option of taking tests on subjects to show their proficiency in subjects like history, languages, and chemistry. Colleges often use the tests to determine where to place students for first-year courses, especially in science and languages.
But the College Board said subject testing has been eclipsed by the rise of advanced-level exams. At one point, AP courses were considered the province of elite schools, but the board said Tuesday that “AP’s expanded reach and widespread availability for low-income students and students of color means that material testing is no longer necessary. “
More than 22,000 schools offered AP courses in the 2019-20 school year, up from more than 13,000 two decades earlier, according to the College Board. There are some 24,000 public high schools in America.
The College Board said it would discontinue the writing section of the main SAT test because “there are other ways for students to demonstrate their mastery in essay writing,” including, he said, the reading and writing part of the test. The essay section was introduced in 2005 and has been considered one of the most radical changes to the SAT in decades. It came as part of a larger overhaul of the test, which included eliminating verbal analogies that were a mainstay of SAT preparation courses.
Admissions officers hoped the essay would give them a way to examine original samples of student writing, in order to better assess their skills. However, it was criticized for promoting an overly stereotypical approach to writing and was made optional in 2016 as part of another redesign.
In recent years, the SAT has come under increasing criticism from critics who claim that standardized testing exacerbates inequalities between classes and races. Some studies have shown that high school grades are an equal or better indicator of college success.
More than 1,000 four-year colleges have not required applicants to submit standardized test results before the pandemic, and the number has increased – at least temporarily – as the coronavirus has forced testing centers to close and made it difficult for many students to take the test safely.
Perhaps the biggest success came in May, when, following a lawsuit by a group of black and Hispanic college students who said the tests discriminated against them, the influential University of California system shut down. decided to phase out the SAT and ACT requirements for its 10 schools, which include some of the country’s most popular campuses.
The College Board acknowledged that the coronavirus had played a role in the changes announced Tuesday, saying in a statement that the pandemic had “accelerated a process already underway at the College Board to simplify our work and reduce student demands.”
But David Coleman, chief executive of the College Board, a nonprofit that in the past reported over $ 1 billion in revenue a year, said financial concerns were not the root of the decisions, and that despite the growing number of schools making SAT optional, the demand for the test was still “stronger than some think”
He said the organization’s goal was not to get more students to take AP courses and tests, but to eliminate redundant exams and reduce the burden on high school students. “Anything that can reduce unnecessary anxiety and escape us is of great value to us,” he said.
Some experts, however, have said that eliminating testing on the subject could have the opposite effect, increasing pressure on students to take AP courses and exams, especially in their junior year. so that credits can be submitted in time for college admissions decisions.
Saul Geiser, senior associate at the Center for Studies in Higher Education at the University of California at Berkeley, said the move “would worsen the perverse emphasis on test preparation and test-taking skills at the expense of learning. regular in class. ”
Mr. Geiser said that mastery of writing skills and subject matter “is the best indicator of student performance in college.”
University prep experts said the announcement, while constituting a major change, was in part only an acknowledgment of a changing environment for standardized testing. Jonathan Richard Burdick, vice president of enrollment at Cornell, said “the writing was on the wall both for subject exams and for the writing option long before the pandemic hit.”
Harris Zakarin, co-owner of test preparation company Regents Review, said uptake of tests has declined in recent years. “In my experience, over the past couple of years, it has become extremely rare for a college to require a student to submit an essay with the SAT,” he said.
Zakarin said he expected SAT’s rival ACT to follow suit and eliminate its writing component. ACT said in a statement that it is continually assessing applications for its products.
At the University of Massachusetts Amherst, officials dropped the SAT writing requirement in 2016 because they saw it as an undue burden on students, including additional fees, said Mike Drish, director of freshman admissions. of the University.
Drish said the university assesses students’ writing readiness based on their grades in English classes, as well as teacher recommendations and essays submitted as part of the admissions process.
Mark Rosenbaum, director of California-based pro bono law firm Public Counsel, which represented plaintiffs who sued the University of California for standardized tests, said the College Board’s decision was a step in the right direction but did not go far enough.
“Everyone knows that the AP tests are also discriminatory in terms of students’ access to these tests and preparation for these tests,” said Mr. Rosenbaum. “It’s not like this eliminates racial and class discrimination.”
In addition to dropping the essay and subject testing, the College Board said it would continue to develop a version of the SAT that could be administered digitally – which it tried and failed to do quickly. with a home version last year after the pandemic. close the test centers. The board gave no deadline for the introduction of a digital version of the SAT, but said it would be given at test centers by live monitors.
There were around 2.2 million registrations for the weekend SAT tests in 2020 (some students take them more than once), but due to the pandemic, only 900,000 of those tests were taken.
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