When younger, we had annual Iowa tests through lower or middle school. Hated them. But many kids today have zero experience with long, arduous (and somewhat tricky) testing. Why should they be forced into only ‘one and done?’ Those kids who innately test well, even blindly, should benefit and the rest left aside?
Why? What about the kid who has a panic attack in the middle of the test? They need to wait a year to take it again? What about the kid who has the flu that morning? For many kids, the idea that if they mess up, they can try again is a huge relief. What purpose does it serve to take that away?
The tests today are very different from the tests that you and I took in the past. Those tests were designed to measure aptitude without regard to what specific classes students have had. Today’s tests are designed to measure accomplishment. It isn’t uncommon for a kid to take the test a discover some deficiencies in their knowledge which could be remedied with additional study. Its not my D’s fault that our school decided to teach “whole language” instead of the rules of grammar, but the ACT required a pretty detailed knowledge of grammar. Luckily for her, she took the pre-act and we discovered it there. But it could easily have come up on the first ACT.
Why wouldn’t colleges actually value the student who can take a test, get a score they are not happy with and instead of giving up, regroup and study to do better? Doesn’t that show the ability to learn, adaptability and persistence? Aren’t those traits the school is looking for? Or maybe the schools don’t care how many times a student tried to get a high score. They are using the tests as a threshold, not a differentiation device. I know some people disagree with that, and I have some sympathy with that opinion, but at the moment, that is how the tests are being used.
People seem to think that the way they did things is the way everyone should do them. You and your son didn’t need retakes, so no-one should. Scores didn’t end up mattering for your daughter because she wants to study russian so no one should need to depend on scores. I don’t think its fair to expect everyone to go the same route.
I think entrance exams for foreign universities are different types of tests. I think the distinction is between a norm-referenced standardized test (SAT/ACT) vs. subject-specific, criterion-referenced tests (such as AP exams in the US, A-Levels in the UK).
If your kid takes APUSH and gets a 4, their score is based on how well they answered the questions on the test, which in turn is based on their knowledge of the underlying US History curriculum. The test itself is difficult enough to meaningfully differentiate between those who know their history and those who don’t. The 5 point scale also deters any sort of test score arms race – no matter how hard a student studies, there’s no possibility of getting better than a 5 – and typically a school that award credit or placement for a “5” will also award the same for a “4”. Plus, the test is only offered once a year… so not much opportunity for multiple retakes. Kids who take APUSH or an equivalent course will sit for the test in the spring of the same year they complete the course; kids who haven’t taken that course generally won’t.
In contrast, SAT/ACT aren’t really designed to test on advanced material – so the same basic test can be used to sort out middle school age kids applying for summer programs for gifted youth. The scores are calculated to be tied to percentile rankings, but not all kids taking the test are on equal footing – some are first time, unprepped sitters, other are prepped-their-whole-lives, multiple repeat takers. And of course everything in-between.
When you start the back and forth about pushing a child towards a specific instrument because it might pan out to be a “hook” years later, I have to throw up my hands. I’m sure there are circles where this is considered normal, but not where we live.
Seriously, kids just seem to do what they enjoy.
You’ve missed my point. We didn’t need retakes because there was no arms race for scores. No one thought they needed a perfect score. No one thought that a colleges were selecting based on who had the highest scores – rather, the idea was that college were using scores as a way of setting a threshold for admissions and of validating high school records. (A reasonably attainable score would get a student in the door for consideration – but the admissions decision would be based on other criteria).
The score arms race started about the time my son was applying, and I think a big driving force was websites such as this one. Before that, kids had no way of knowing how others were scoring, outside the realm of their own peer group and high school. My son was at an ethnically mixed high school and his scores were higher than the other kids in his honors & AP classes who took the test at the same time – so that was the source of the perception that the scores were good.
I probably should mention that my son is dyslexic, and took all tests without accommodations. I’m not saying that should apply to others – just that I am not coming from a place of lack of awareness of limitations that others face. The problem is the outsized focus on the tests-- as well as the focus on elite college admissions. We used the scores to guide our decisions on where to apply – rather than targeting colleges and then hoping or trying to get scores to match what they wanted. Neither of my kids had a college list developed until fall of their senior years. Given my daughter’s weaker scores, some schools were dropped from consideration at the outset, depending on their individual admissions criteria. (Not the US News score ranges, but how the courts ranked the importance of test scores in their own reported explanations of admissions criteria).
Respectfully, if the kindling is the test cheating in the current scandal, there are other solutions to address that particular problem, its specifics. Not re-invent testing policy across the board. The cheaters should not have been allowed solo testing and moving a test location, there should have been some oversight (duh) to ensure no one set eyes on a student’s answer form or had the opp to change answers.
I don’t like the tests, but in this case right now, don;t throw the baby out with the bath water. It’s a discussion for another time.
@calmom Ok, I see what you are saying, but it won’t work now. The world has changed and there are kids prepping for these tests from the time they are 10 years old. There are summer camps whose whole purpose is to help the kids cram for the SAT. The arms race isn’t going away.
The only way to change any of this is to take away the financial need to reach for these elite “meets full needs” schools by making the state schools affordable. And for middle/upper class families to stop worshiping these elite names.
Some kids I know that went to elites did get in just by being themselves and doing what super interested them. And that just happened to be what the colleges wanted. And generally those students didn’t necessarily do what the colleges said they wanted. They didn’t do X amount math, science, languages, but only did course work they enjoyed. Their passion projects were true passion projects. In doing just what they wanted, the students made themselves interesting. But they weren’t trying to look interesting. They were just having fun.
And then others at their school tried to copy the strategy. Unsuccessfully.
It’s a hamster’s wheel. I’m ready to get off.
I know MIT/Caltech/Harvey Mudd require not only SAT/ACT but also two subject tests in Math and one science. And what do these schools have in common? They are very successful colleges, with difficult curriculum and yet high matriculation rate, on top of that, very high median salary of entry job. Do they only look at the standaized testing in selecting their students? Of course not. But they definitely use the tests as ways to “prescreen” potential students. It worked for them wonderfully. No tests could be perfect, the gradual trend of easing the difficult level of SAT math section recently has led to much tighter/harsher “equating” that punishing kids who grasp concepts well but just are more careless. But it is still better to have them than not.
While I believe you make some very good points here, I do believe schools wants to see evidence of genuine passion in areas a student really has passion for. I also believe this can manifest itself in a prospective students application. For example a student close to me had genuine interest in a sport she devoted time to, loved, and excelled in. She also was extremely passionate about the environment from like age 7 after having an environmentalist speak at her school. When she was 9 I couldn’t throw away a coffee cup without putting it into the recycling bin around her. She was a crusader for animal abuse, the way we slaughter animals for food, was vehemently against hunting. Once we saw a deer strapped to the back of a truck and she screamed at me to pull up next to the driver so she could tell him how she felt. Of course I didn’t do this. She became a pescatarian, educated and interested in sustainability, and plans to major in Environmental Science.
These passions showed in her pursuits. She applied to and was awarded an all expense trip to Asia to participate in a food sustainability program during one Summer. She had to compete with students across the country and was chosen. She did this without us knowing about it and even accepted the invitation without telling us. Of course that warranted a convo but I still respected the initiative. She organized friends to start a community garden and neighborhood clean up crew because she felt she could make a larger impact if she enlisted the help of others. These are things she just did. Without help or prompting from adults. Over the course of another Summer she applied to a competitive woman’s leadership program. She was 1 of 2 HS students that was accepted. And, the other was a senior. She later interned for the same program over another Summer because she loved being around powerful dynamic woman. She met a Congresswoman through this program who asked her to volunteer for her one Summer and she did. My point is she did this because she had a genuine interest in these things. Of course it would look great on a resume, but I don’t think you can fake genuine passion and interest for something. This isn’t what she did, it’s really who she is.
Test anxiety is a real thing, and multiple test opportunities helps reduce such anxiety. IMO, that counts as a ‘legitimate need’.
Depends on what interested them and what they ignored, to do only what interested them. If you want astrophysics but would rather work with little kids than stem activities, or take a some random elective than physics, watch out. Maybe the real you would prefer to never take a foreign language or a balanced courseload.
I presume the kids you note had genuine interests in the right directions. And clear, focused thinking. And made things work.
One of the interesting things about high energy kids is how they can stretch, are willing to try new things, to see how those do interest them. Not just stick to same-old.
Which is exactly why the tests no longer have any value and should either be discarded entirely or the system entirely revamped. Because there shouldn’t be an incentive for that prepping and cramming in the first place. And that system does create tremendous incentives to cheat – not all cheating is as elaborate or complex as the case in the indictment. But I’m sure there is plenty of cheating going on.
Using the SAT as a gatekeeper for Talent Search programs was a real game changer. imho.
@calmom I like your way of thinking, but I fear if the tests are eliminated then grades will become the singular focus. At my kid’s private prep schools, grade mongering, cheating, and garnering favor with certain teachers (parents and students alike) made it just awful. My S knew one boy (with prominent parents) who went to the bathroom during every single physics test all year and the teacher said nothing. A sole dependence on school academics would make the focus on grades exponentially worse. And how do you control for that? It’s a lot easier to fix the current standardized testing system than give all the power to high schools.
I don’t really see a lot of difference between the side door and the back door, except that the back door is a corruption of the entire university administration and the side door is the corruption of individuals who are associated with the university but not the university itself. (And yes, the side door is illegal and not just corrupt.)
Is donating enough for a building to be named after you at a college so selective that you doubt very much that it would admit your child if he was just in the pool of general applicants perfectly fine because the college knows about it and condones it?
Is purchasing a $500,000 shell for a rowing program to put your decent rower on the coach’s recruiting list because you doubt very much that university would admit your child if she was just in the pool of general applicants more moral because the money doesn’t go directly to the coach and your child actually does row (albeit not enough to give you confidence she would be a designated “recruit” without the donation)?
If we believe that athletes at Ivy League universities are just as qualified as other students, then they should stop giving out recruiting seats and let them get in on their academic and other accomplishments, just like a good scientist or dancer or theater major. If we believe the son or daughter of a family that gives tens of millions to the university deserves his seat, then let that student go into the general applicant pool anonymously and see if that student is admitted.
And as long as the university is going to sell some guaranteed seats to families in exchange for millions of dollars as long as their child can score 1400 on the SAT (no questions asked about special accommodations or number of times taking it), it would make far more sense for their “institutional needs” if universities just simply put those seats up for auction and used the money for the university’s real institutional needs instead of what the donor wants and plastering the donor’s name on a building or a pet project of the donor’s.
It would also stop the farce that a donor can give $25 million to a college to make sure his child gets “special consideration” (i.e. admitted) plus possibly the free advertising of having a building named after him and still get a huge tax deduction so that the American taxpayers are footing half the bill for the seat that the donor just bought for his child. It isn’t a “donation” if something is given in exchange and apparently the value of a seat in some elite Ivy League schools is priceless. Although if schools would just put 10 seats each year up for auction to the highest bidders whose kids can hit 1400 on their SATs (no problem if your kid gets extra time), perhaps the value that donors get would be clear and taxpayers would not have to foot so much of the bill for their “charitable donation”.
This may come as a surprise, but we don’t “all place such outsized value on HPYSM.”
Even with the “huge” numbers of kids applying to these schools, by far the majority of college kids don’t aspire to go to these schools. And these kids are bright, ambitious young people who go on to apply to and get into all manner of “non -elite” schools. Many of them do very well and proceed to go on to professional and personal success and happiness. I think CC is a very insulated world and many people here don’t realize that there is a very big world out there made up of people who live their entire lives not worshiping the prospect of attending a very short list of colleges. They may have family traditions of attending their flagship (or in my state, a number of big state schools), staying connected in their communities, and going on to personal and professional success and satisfaction. Many are the first in their families to attend and finish college in their immediate area and are very proud of that accomplishment, and thereby pave the way for the young people coming up behind them.
CC doesn’t even come close to representing us “all.”
I was advocating “one and done” SAT for those of us ready to opt out of the college arms race. Our kids would only apply places where that made sense.
@observer12 “Is donating enough for a building to be named after you at a college so selective that you doubt very much that it would admit your child if he was just in the pool of general applicants perfectly fine because the college knows about it and condones it?”
– Depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to build a large university without having to rely on public funds, then yes, it’s perfectly fine. A private entity is allowed to make such a call. It sees the admission of one person whose donation will enlarge the school, pay for a lot of scholarships, help attract top scholars, etc. as a perfectly fine trade-off. Heck, it seems perfectly fine to me, too. The rich have been subsidizing America’s intellectual class for ever. Because we don’t want our government to do it, somebody has to.
Why? Genetic disorders aren’t selective. It’s just as easy for a rich family’s kid to be born dyslexic as it is for a poor family’s kid.