The objection in CA is on outcomes of the testing. UC made that quite clear when they rejected their own studies based on decades of data and millions of students.
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aren’t teachers/faculty/admin paid a stipend from CB for administering tests like the SAT and AP?
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I think it’s generally understood that the UC system got rid of the tests not because of the study — which supported their use — but to settle a lawsuit while they develop their own test (which they promised to do but have not done).
e: this might be what you are saying (wasn’t sure on tone)
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I believe the current state of things is that school employee proctors are paid a stipend only for proctoring weekend tests, not in school tests. (But I am not sure)
Proctoring is a small percentage of a counselors responsibilities though…which include ordering tests, procuring/managing student testing accommodations, ordering computers (if needed for new digital SAT), procuring and training proctors, working with admin to determine number of rooms/seats needed including the large variety of accommodation requirements, organizing/distributing tests by room, collecting tests, organizing/packing up/shipping completed tests back to CB/ACT. I am sure I am missing things too. These activities have to be done for each SAT/ACT/AP/PSAT.
Remember…many counselors’ primary responsibility is social-emotional counseling, with high student:counselor case loads (~450:1 is US average). Only relatively affluent schools have dedicated college counselors and/or testing coordinators.
It is no surprise that some schools are opting out of hosting SAT/ACT tests on weekends, and there are quite a few not giving in-class tests anymore either (unless required by state law). All of this is also why those who want to take AP tests outside their school have a difficult time finding a seat, and are often unsuccesful.
It’s important to note all of this site based labor is free to CB and ACT (beyond the nominal weekend proctor stipend), as is the use of the testing sites.
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Yeah, I agree this is telling potential applicants at schools where most/all of the advanced courses through junior year are AP/IB that they will need to get both top grades and top test scores to maximize their chances of admission to Yale. But I also agree this was probably always true in practice, and in that sense Yale is more clarifying its practices than changing them.
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with all due respect Chris, absolutely no one in CA believed that spin; anyone with an iota of common sense would immediately recognize that CA could never develop its own test (that woudl have different outcomes than the SAT/ACT due to K12). Settling the suit was just a quick way to get to where they wanted to go: ‘the courts made us do it’.
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They can definitely seem attractive to high numbers US students who are concerned about holistic review in the US. But I do caution their undergraduate program structure is different and usually much less flexible than most prominent US colleges. My S24 eventually focused on the Scottish universities which are a little more flexible on the front end, and then specifically on St Andrews which is a real outlier in terms of wanting/enrolling US students. But even so, he is still mulling over whether their structure is really what he is looking for.
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Well, almost all admitted MIT students have a Math score in the 760-800 range, ie., speed+mastery of the concepts and their applications to such an extent they make a couple mistakes at most, with the assumption they can do much better and learn fast. 700 is what topnotch math students in environments where good students score 450-500 would get from self discipline, mental agility, and personal study, qualities MIT wants. Afaik, MIT hasn’t really admitted anyone with math scores below 700 since the SAT went back to 1600 (v.2100).
For more typical STEM programs a score of 580-600 is pretty indicative, too.
The SAT ISN’T very indicative for HASS students- they would be those benefiting most from being able to submit AP scores in Humanities&Social sciences showcasing their strengths rather than multiple choixe basic verbal test and math that doesn’t matter much for their fields (AP Stats would be more useful than SAT math and AP Lit, AP foreign language, AP history… would matter more for s.o who wants to major in English or History).
IMHO though the point is to offer a benchmark - an a in AP which results in a 1 or 2 (most common situation in Mississipi for instance) but where one student gets a 4 would be significant for instance.
I agree wrt the “STEM=$$” v. “Science is exciting” problem discussed upthread.
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yup, not sure that our suburban HS has a ratio that low; when I ran the numbers a few years back it was closer to 700:1. (prolly one reason why our 4-high school district only administers the psat in class, but not the SAT/ACT on Saturdays.)
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This gets the conversation back to local schools and how they serve their communities. Parents and advocates need to put pressure on boards to make sure they support students paths to college. That should be the case in a test-required or optional environment. I know that the teachers unions have been calling for this for quite a while in their contract negotiations 
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I think the critical issue is sort of embedded in the last part of this sentence.
There is a very well-founded concern about how various socioeconomic factors are a contributing cause to standardized test scores. There is a less well-known but to some also serious concern about how rate of work is a contributing cause to standardized test scores.
But in theory, college admissions offices could understand both of these issues and compensate for them with contextual/holistic review. That in fact is the gist of what Dartmouth and Yale are claiming to do (at least as to the socioeconomic issue, and I think that the “baseball analogy” podcast was also getting into the other issue). And they are saying with the way they are actually using them, it actually helps more applicants from disadvantaged groups get admitted.
So, from my perspective this starts becoming a type of trust issue. Do you trust colleges like Dartmouth and Yale to do what they are saying they will do?
And you can see that in this and other conversations online, the answer for some people is some variation on, “Heck, no, I don’t trust these colleges as far as I could throw them, and I think they will really use these tests to do things I think are bad.” And then others are more open to the possibility maybe they actually mean what they say, but then some of those people are still (reasonably) wondering how many people it will actually help, and in that sense still do not fully trust what you might call the hype around these policy announcements.
And so on.
So, yes, in theory a sophisticated college using contextual/holistic review could make sure that test scores are only ever used to help and not hurt various disadvantaged groups and such. But a lot of people do not necessarily trust it will work out that way in practice.
Edit: By the way, there is also yet another common attitude in these discussions which is along the lines of, “I also think they have a hidden agenda, but I share that hidden agenda, so that is good!” Obviously these people do not directly contribute to the criticisms, but they may do so indirectly to the extent other people see them as confirmation of that hidden agenda, with a different evaluation of its merits.
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The issue is the money…and money is a zero sum game in most districts.
If a school is going to allocate more money to counseling (which takes much advocating because that money could instead go to science lab improvements, hiring an AP physics teacher, new theater, new pool, etc etc)…does it go to servicing the social emotional needs of students by hiring more counselors or providing more opportunities for testing when 80% of colleges are test optional? And that’s just one example. Tradeoffs. The answer/allocation will vary by school, but $ are limited everywhere.
The majority of high school graduates now attend some type of college; helping the majority of students would seem central to a high school mission ( or the state’s education dept mission).
I understand the philosophical objection to the tests, but let’s not pretend the issue is money. It is not, and never was. The schools and states could fund it easily if the public expected them to do so.
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I agree…but spending on many other things may also help the majority of HS students. I know you know how it works…I expect we have all been to HS board meetings (or even been board members) and know how many factors, including advocacy and politics, play into the budget allocation decisions.
ETA: It is always the money at its base, even in communities like mine that support testing.
yes, that concern is valid. But the same is true for every piece of the college application to highly rejective schools. So, why pick on the one (standardized) piece of teh holistic pie?
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Although I agree with your background premise, I am not sure many critics of standardized testing actually DO pick only on standardized testing. Meaning they may also criticize many other things about highly selective college admissions.
I should note, though, I am not necessarily the best person to speak on their behalf. My own feeling is that the root cause of most of the inequities in highly selective US college admissions is the way we have structured and funded US secondary school education, and that their admissions policies cannot fix those conditions. There can perhaps be admissions policies that make things worse, and admissions policies that make things better, but I suspect even the best admissions policies (subject to the premise these colleges will remain highly selective in some way) can only do so much.
So with that view, I am naturally sympathetic to the idea that different highly selective colleges can try experimenting with different policies to see what works best for them. But that is natural to me because I really see this as dancing around the edges of a much, much larger problem, one that goes far beyond exactly who gets admitted into which of these particular handful of colleges.
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Our school makes it very clear that taking the AP exam is entirely optional and it is not uncommon for students to skip the exam (often for financial reasons because they are expensive, but also just because they want to focus on other things than more test prep, especially as the final exam for the class is around the same time and is generally quite different than the AP exam, requiring a different approach to prep, so they prefer to focus on the course grade rather than the exam which does not contribute to course grade and, depending on where they apply to college, may not provide any great benefit).
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It’s very common for students in my area to know from the outset that they are not going to take AP exams for the reasons you state here.
Edited to add: these are private and public schools that are big T25 feeders.
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Why would the class final exam be different from the AP exam? To me that is a bright red flag that the course did not follow the AP curriculum, or the teachers are afraid of how the students will perform ( which is why Yale wants test results).
Students in public schools here opt out of taking the tests when they won’t pass. Private schools usually require them for all. I don’t know anyone who engaged in test prep for any AP exam-why would one? The course itself is all the test prep needed.
You would have to ask the teachers. I am just a parent.