From the article published a month ago in the Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice journal “The University of California Was Wrong to Abolish the SAT: Admissions When Affirmative Action Was Banned”, is he speaking directly to some members of this thread?
“It is quite possible that some readers are not convinced by the evidence I have presented in this section and continue to believe that SAT scores are biased against socioeconomically disadvantaged and underrepresented minorities. It turns out that even if such a belief is correct or that one believes that there are other values to achieve than maximizing expected academic performance, there is a much better solution than getting rid of the SAT, but the reader will have to wait until the fourth section to find out the answer.”
That’s a gross starting point, which many like to use to support thier pov. (not saying you are) IMO, the true relevant data is the demographics of college-ready HS grads (however defined), and beyond that, for MIT, the demo of HS grads that did well in AlgII (and perhaps Precalc).
This topic arose when the MIT guy said they were successfully increasing URM while increasing test scores.
I’m curious why MIT doesn’t reveal SAT test scores by race when he’s happy to share enrollment by race. It seems that MIT is goal-seeking certain URM and ‘rising SAT scores’ and that Whites are the collateral damage.
When used in this manner, higher ed institutions that are focused on rising average SAT scores, or reporting a 25th percentile SAT score of 770 are not using the SAT as a way to assess college readiness, but as marketing. I don’t think that’s the intention of the exam.
I also question the motivation behind the surge in international students and why this is happening.
The main article on how wealthy high schools have higher grade inflation was based on North Carolina, before COVID, so SAT scores were required. In fact, the study demonstrated grade inflation by comparing the changes in math grades and math SAT scores.
The high schools with the highest grade inflation were not being penalized for their grade inflation. I mean, do you actually think that AOs can keep track of every high school? If we’re looking at public universities, there are almost 1,000 high schools in, say NC, and there is simply no way that the AOs at UNC are following the trends in GPA and SATs for every single one of these. Same for Michigan, and UT Austin accepts the top 6% of each high school, regardless of the high school’s SAT scores. Other public universities with higher acceptance rates care even less whether their A student really should have been a B+ student.
For “Elite” private colleges with low acceptance rates, they are receiving applications from students in even a larger number of high schools.
There are simply too many high schools, and I cannot imagine that AOs to be looking into this deeply.
GPA’s objectivity and generalizability are unknown with each school having different standards for awarding GPA while a SAT/ACT or AP score is more standardized and reliable. SES may influence standardized tests but they still measure knowledge and ability to assimilate material. Schools are doing the right thing by moving away from TO.
I hope that you realize that what you just wrote was one of the points that the article was claiming, and that many of the past 1,610 posts are back and forth about whether it’s true.
One more article alluding to the fact that GPAs and graduation rates are not measuring up to the performances on standardized tests. Basically after all the arguments we are back to square one. Need standardized tests to separate the wheat from the chaff.
One of the biggest weaknesses of the American public education system is the lack of uniform and rigorous standards. There is a huge variance in the quality of education received which depends entirely on where you live. As MA residents, we have been fortunate that our kids have received a solid education - it hasn’t been perfect, of course, but both of my kids have been very well prepared for college. Many. parents aren’t nearly as fortunate.
This and your prior post sum up the entire discussion quite well. It reminds me of the letter that Edward Everett (the famous orator and featured speaker who lectured for 2 hours at Gettysburg) wrote to Lincoln afterwards, “I should be glad if I could flatter myself, that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion in two hours as you did in two minutes.”
But also need better and more relevant standardized tests than the SAT and ACT. In most other countries where standardized testing is used, the tests focus more on achievement in more parts of the school curriculum, compared to the SAT and ACT in the US.
In the schooling system, I came from one that would test in science, math, history, and languages in 10th and 12 grade ( State/ National standardized tests like AP tests here). 10 and 12th grade first-time test taker pass percentages ranged from 70-80%. So effective 65% graduated the first time, which is pretty low and reflects the state’s wide-ranging academic standards.
Problem is if you have a standardized test that tests across different subject matters, it will put even more emphasis on K-12 preparation across all of the tested subjects and you would also need consistent if not standardized course curriculum. The countries that practice more comprehensive college admissions testing tend to have more uniform public and even private school curriculum and more constant testing at every level to funnel and place students.
While the SAT and ACT can certainly be improved, they do test very basic building blocks for advanced education, arithmetic, algebra, geometry and trigonometry, reading comprehension and basic writing/editing skills. Personally, the SAT could be more straightforward in its questions and the ACT puts too much emphasis on speed (the 2 big areas where coaching can improve scores). They both also need to include more difficult questions to widen the spread at the top end. IMO subject tests are a better tool for placement rather than admissions.
This image sums up what they see
Lowering standards, it is thought, can help narrow such achievement gaps. Yet it may have the opposite effect. A recent working paper by Brooks Bowden, Viviana Rodriguez and Zach Weingarten of the Universities of Pennsylvania and Texas at San Antonio analyses how a more lenient grading policy introduced by North Carolina public high schools in 2014 affected effort and academic performance. The authors found that after schools implemented the new grading scale, which led to more As and fewer Fs, students with low test scores showed up to class less often and put in less effort. The attendance of high-scoring students did not change. Although the policy led to slightly higher graduation rates, it also contributed to wider gaps in gpas and standardised test scores between high- and low-achieving students.
This suggests that policies that lower the bar may harm the very students they are meant to help. “I don’t think we’re helping anybody by handing out higher grades or giving out graduation certificates,” says Dr Bowden, one of the authors of the study. Better instead to set expectations high, reckons Dr Polikoff of usc. “People rise to the expectations you set.
Doesn’t that require a big tradeoff of simplicity vs time & cost. To test curriculum, one would need a test for science, one for math, one for foreign lang, one for lit, one for reading, one for history…
Bingo. And while they certainly have a low ceiling, the tests work well for 85% of the population.
But that’s the point of the two tests. If the SAT was more straight-forward, it’d have to go to speed like the ACT to get a ‘curve’. Sure, the SAT could add more difficult math problems, but that too would require speed, even of the top 10%.
The SAT tests reasoning based on its complex wording. The ACT tests reasoning based on speed.
The referenced increase in HS graduation rate varies since 2007 varies quite a bit by state. Some example from specific states are below. Nevada increased HS graduation rate by 32% from 51% to 83%, while Vermont dropped HS graduation from 89% to 83%.
Average Public HS Graduation Rate in 2007 and 2019
Nevada: 51% → 83%
Mississippi: 64% → 88%
Florida: 67% → 90%
Alabama: 69% → 91%
…
Wisconsin: 90% → 90%
South Dakota: 84% → 84%
Minnesota: 86% → 84%
Vermont: 89% → 83%
Nevada only had a 51% graduation rate in 2007 for a variety of reasons. I expect NV had more job opportunities for persons without a HS degree than most states, which may contribute to NV lagging behind other states. Another contributing factor was the state required that students pass a “proficiency exam” to graduate, and a good portion of students did not pass. This requirement was eliminated in 2016. However, prior to elimination rate in 2016, graduation rate had increased from 51% to 74%. Rather than the year they removed the proficiency exam, Nevada had an increased graduation rate with nearly each year since 2007, and the largest increase from 2011 (63%) to 2012 (71%). I can only guess about the reasons for the sharp increase, but I expect political and administrative pressure play a role.
I attended what I consider to be a typical a public HS in NYS public HS. However, the HS I attended had a much higher grad rate than typical for the state – 88% in 2007 and 95% in 2019. The average SAT score of my HS was a bit higher than the state average, but I don’t think that was the main driving force for the higher graduation rate. Instead I believe it was more make the administration having an attitude of trying to graduate every student.
For example, students who were designated at risk of not graduating were placed in to a variety of special programs. Students receiving this designation took classes together as a group, different classes from other students. These classes had a higher teacher to student ratio and placed more attention on basic skills, such as getting homework done. They had programs, such as having a teacher aid follow the student around all day and make sure they attend classes. My limited personal experience in this environment was the few kids who failed to graduate often did so primarily because they didn’t feel that a HS degree was necessary, with influence from available job opportunities and what they saw others they know do.
Has anyone here taken one of the practice SAT’s available via Bluebook? The difference between 500 and 700 can be knowledge of whether to use a comma in the phrase - “the great philosopher Socrates who…” or “the great philosopher, Socrates, who…” There are many of these questions: the obscure uses of the semicolon, the placement of the colon, that simply aren’t being taught in almost any school today. Certainly not at our blue-ribbon, top 20 in NYS public school. So, it does come down to test preparation and tutoring. And the SAT is just less in the collective consciousness in Yonkers than it is in Scarsdale.
Great that Yale wants SAT scores (or other standardized testing). Yale publishes their admissions data, and they have “walked the walk” on diversity both as to race and as to wealth. At least much more than many of the other Ivies - Dartmouth, Harvard. In an environment where every application is reviewed twice and closely analyzed, Yale can be trusted to interpret a SAT scores from New Haven differently from those from Darien. This isn’t necessarily the case at UYourstate.
If schools really want to be the incubators of the best and most motivated, they have to find the flowers growing in the desert and not the tulips growing in the greenhouse. And they can’t expect the desert flowers necessarily to get straight A’s as freshmen. Getting those students to succeed is the function of a school isn’t it?
The difference between a 500 and 700 is not knowledge of a comma. Many kids who take a test with no prep and score a 500 can never get to a 700 no matter how much prep they do, the exception being math if much of the material had not been learned yet.
Prep is important, and some kids definitely have an advantage there, but students can do a lot of prep at very low cost if they have the drive. There are kids in Yonkers who very much have the SAT top of mind and put in the work to do their best. Just go over the southern border to NYC, where admission to the top public high schools is 100% based on the score of a standardized test, and those schools have tons of disadvantaged students from neighborhoods worse than Yonkers. About 50% of the students at Bronx Science and Stuyvesant are on free or reduced fee lunch, but they figued out a way to prepare for that test, and they will figure out a way to prepare for the SAT. And so will some of the kids in Yonkers.
