ACT "Learnings" from a senior official?

Parents Forum
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A friend sent me this link, but I can’t piece together who they are talking about who supposedly said these things, and who owns the website reporting on it. (It looks like the website is owned by some sort of fee-based test-prep service.) Can someone clarify and tell me if this article is truthful?

Thanks!

http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/superacac-learnings-important-act-and-sat-updates/

(snippet below:)

May-News-Feature From May 18th through the 20th, four members of Compass’ leadership team (myself included) ventured to the SuperACAC conference in Reno. We attended a number of educational sessions, including those organized by key administrators at the College Board and ACT. To provide counselors and families with a succinct overview of the latest admission testing updates – especially in light of the sweeping changes to the SAT – I have written summaries and commentary for three notable sessions.

ACT Innovation and Insight: Why More Students are Taking the ACT

Don Pitchford, ACT | James Marviglia, Cal Poly SLO

This session proved to be highly controversial. My colleague Adam Ingersoll wrote an assessment that was shared online and backed by many other attendees whose comments included “absolutely awful,” “borderline unethical,” “just not right, and “caused a first-year counselor to panic.” Here is Adam’s take:

You don’t expect statements and advice from a senior official at a testing agency to be as factually and ethically shaky as what we were treated to in this session. Some highlights (lowlights) follow. I’m paraphrasing, but not very loosely. He said:

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I was in Reno, but I didn’t attend the ACT session since the UC admissions session was a higher priority for me. :slight_smile:

According to my conference program, the ACT session was presented by Dean Pitchford, PhD, from ACT, who is a liaison to colleges – not sure if that is on the marketing side or the technical side – and James Marviglia, VP for Marketing and Enrollment Development at Cal Poly SLO. The session description sounded like it was a marketing presentation on the topic of Why the ACT has won the Testing War.

I heard some rumblings about it during cocktail hour that evening.

Colleges, particularly smaller colleges, are investing mightily in yield management software that (they hope) will let them dial in the preferred class at the preferred average revenue/student. The “leakage” of data from the ACT to colleges with respect to what order the colleges are listed mimics the leakage that already exists on the FAFSA, and the outright questions asking to which other colleges the student is applying. There was some strong discussion of that after the Common App session since NACAC’s position is opposed to that, and the Common App rep said that until NACAC prohibited it, their hands were tied.

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Thanks for your input! Apparently this guy also claimed the ACT was easier than the SAT? It just sounds like a super unprofessional presentation - but if it has some truth to it, it would be good to know!

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Who knows which is “easier”? I personally did better on the ACT (34C w/ a 34E, 35M, 35R, 33S) than the SAT (700M, 690CR, 680W), but I have friends who scored between a 2140 and 2250 that did significantly worse on the ACT.

There seems to be a sentiment on CC and elsewhere that the ACT is easier. It’s more straightforward and therefore goes less out of the way to trick students, but I don’t think it’s “easier.” The math questions are easier to understand, but they require understanding of more subjects and don’t contain semi-absurd word problems that try to trick students. The reading is (in my opinion) much easier for the ACT, but it also doesn’t ask open-ended analysis questions unlike the SAT. If the student is a fast test-taker, I think the ACT will probably be his/her test with the better score. I found that when I took the SAT, taking longer to answer questions didn’t help me. I either knew the answer or I didn’t.

I personally did not like the SAT. It felt like it wasn’t actually a test on my knowledge of math, reading, vocabulary, or my ability to write. The writing section has all sorts of nonsensical questions about idioms and what “sounds” the best. The reading section includes vocabulary words that aren’t particularly common and tests them in the most useless way. The math section is mostly geometry and basic algebra, combined with “understanding” what the question is asking. The ACT, on the other hand, tests in a straightforward way. Generally, the questions on the English section are about grammar or basic editing understanding. The math section will ask questions in a straight-up “What is _______?” format. The reading section is more about being able to read quickly, retain information, and directly reference the text than analyzing or interpreting the passage.

The only weakness of the ACT is the superfluous science section, which tests neither your knowledge of science nor your ability to read. It’s a mashup of graphs, charts, and experiment summaries that mostly tests whether or not you’ve been exposed to the science section before. In my opinion, people benefit heavily from test prep on the science section. I have friends that have gone from 25 on the science section to 34, just because the first time they took it they didn’t understand the section.

I think it’s incredibly dishonest for a test-prep company to stoop so low as to claim that one test is “easier” than the other. It sounds like a ridiculous marketing scheme targeted at parents and students who don’t know any better. More students are taking the ACT for a number of reasons, including not having to take subject tests and the fact that the ACT claims to test knowledge of high school material, not “reasoning” ability.

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I dunno, @micmatt513 - it is a little bit like trying to decide whether Comcast or Time Warner has better customer service. :wink:

I’ve seen students who score lower on the ACT than on the SAT but who still like it more because the questions better match the kinds of questions they’ve had in school, even if there were far too many to get through in the allotted time.

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Good analogy, @arabrab. I don’t think either of them is great. I think they both have decent ideas on paper, but both have a lot of failures practically. The ACT trades difficulty of questions for quantity, whereas the SAT sometimes reads like an angsty teenager who’s trying a bit too hard to seem intelligent (I know because I was/still am one of them :wink: ).

I wish we could bring education back to being about cultivating minds and developing thinkers, not about turning students into profit generating test-takers.