Posted on 06/26/2020 7:53:52 AM PDT by karpov
The COVID-19 pandemic probably won’t kill the SAT, but will no doubt leave it in a badly weakened condition.
Both the SAT (and its close competitor, the ACT) have had to cancel administration of their tests for the last few months and, according to this Washington Post story, universities have decided that they will make their admission decisions without those test scores.
Before COVID-19, support for standardized testing was already eroding and recent developments are sure to cause further slippage.
Undoubtedly, the greatest blow was the decision by the University of California (UC) system to stop relying on standardized tests and develop a new test of its own within five years. One opponent of standardized tests (quoted in this Los Angeles Times piece) declared that this marks “the beginning of the end” for the SAT.
Under the plan, UC schools will be “test optional” for incoming students this year and next. For the following two years, UC institutions would be “test blind” for California residents, meaning that SAT and ACT scores would not be used at all, although out-of-state students could still submit scores. And by 2025, the state will either have developed a completely new admissions test or, if no such test has been approved, the UC system will go completely test blind.
Many who say that the standardized tests are unfair and pose a huge obstacle to a truly equitable admissions system are gleeful. Xueli Wang, for example, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, stated that California’s suspension of standardized testing is “a monumental step” toward “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
What is so bad about using standardized test scores (always in addition to other information about the student) in deciding which applicants to admit?
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
Standardized testing won’t be replaced.
Colleges will be replaced. The concept of a “college education” will be replaced.
I don’t know. Actual grades? A written essay? A personal interview? Of course, this would require grades given according to some new and more serious standard, and written essays would have to undergo hand-writing analysis to prevent plagiarism.
Yo, as an 8-year professor who left academia, for various reasons, other than the upper echelon universities and colleges, SATs were becoming near worthless anyways. Why? Cause universities and colleges were/are LOWERING their admissions requirements...and have been doing so for years. Multitudes of ‘loopholes’ to bypass admitting a student who has sh*t SAT scores, too boot.
No, I am not advocating or dismissing the value of the SATs, but hey, just indicating what is actually happening in universities and colleges today.
Why not race based admissions?....whites need not apply, Asians are subject to strict quotas and open admission for Blacks. That should make BLM happy.
Its more hypocrisy from the elites at America’s top universities. Its part of how they plan to escape from the seeming hypocrisy of unstated racial quotas.
Sure, standardized testing is “optional” but as a middle class White, Chinese/Korean or South Asian ethnic applicant, I dare you to apply to one without an SAT or ACT test.
Just like in the Soviet Union. Peasants and children of ordinary workers, will have precedence over the children of former land-owners and business-owners.
Can’t make BLM happy. They will just want more.
A combination of all pass/fail and no standardized testing. What could possibly go wrong with having no standards at all?
Sure we’ll get “diversity, equity, and inclusion” but at the woeful price of everybody having zero competence at anything.
The world has lost its mind in so many ways.
Then make the Asian students take seminars so they can confess their guilt in keeping blacks as slaves 160 years before they arrived here.
But standardized tests really don’t say that much. Especially with how the SAT works, take it a bunch of times and only pay attention to the high scores. Some people are natural test takers, whether or not they know the subject, especially when it’s multiple choice. Then of course they renormalize the test every decade or so. What does an SAT score actually mean?
The SATs were at one time a good predictor of the breadth of knowledge and the ability to manage college level materials.
It hasnt functioned in the manner for at least 30 years.
Grade inflation has done the same thing as P/F grading. The problem is that schools that hold the line against grade inflation wind up hurting their own students because few parties recognize that an A at a stringent-grading institution is a much different than an A from a school with lower standards.
The original SAT and ACT were more or less IQ tests. You couldn’t prepare for them. My own brother scored in the 90th percentile on his ACT after staying out all night drinking.
Around 1990, due the complaints of overachievers, the tests became partially IQ, partially knowledge; so much so that Mensa no longer accepted them for membership. And with that, the “test prep” industry flourished and grew, sucking cash from desperate parents hoping to get their kid into the exclusive schools.
Admit students by totally fair games of chance like blindfolded dart boards or roulette wheels.
The moron meter will hardly move because most students coming out of high school have much lower scores anyway
If you’re black, trans, homo, etc.....you’re in. Too bad for everyone else.
Grade inflation and related social promotion are also booming as taxpayers want to tie teacher pay to student performance; suddenly everybody is an A student.
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