Standardized Testing: The SAT & ACT College Admissions Tests
By Anna A. - $3,000 1st Place Scholarship Winner
Why should either or both the SAT & ACT continue to be employed or retired as a means to decide whether a student will be admitted to the college or university of their choice?
Every fall high school juniors begin the school year dreading that rite of passage about which they have heard so much: the alphabetical soup of testing that precedes the college application process. This hodgepodge of letters—SAT, ACT, SATII, AP and IB—is both intimidating and stressful to teenagers who are already up to their necks in schoolwork, extracurricular activities and volunteer engagements. As any high school student would agree, these tests not only put unnecessary pressure on students, who believe a three-hour test will determine their fate, but also perpetuate the discriminatory status quo inherent in the United States educational system.
The fundamental problem with the SAT and ACT standardized tests, is that they do not measure aptitude. These tests, no matter what they claim to measure, can only gauge a student’s knowledge and experience, never her innate ability. As the National Center for Fair and Open Testing explains, standardized test scores can easily change with training, nutrition, or friendlier test proctors.
More importantly, however, because tests such as the SAT and ACT measure knowledge, not aptitude, they create a system that perpetuates biases against certain socioeconomic groups. Peter Sacks writes in his book Standardized Minds: The High Price of America’s Testing Culture that an individual can predict a child’s test scores simply by looking at how wealthy her parents are. He cites recent data, which show that a student taking the SAT can expect to score an extra 30 points for every $10,000 increase in her parents' income. Aside from the socioeconomic bias, the emphasis that standardized tests put on speed creates a prejudice against minority groups, who are often disadvantaged because their first language is not English. While the SAT and ACT may measure basic math and reading skills, their true distribution in scores come from test taking strategy and test preparation. Such factors cannot and should not be used as means for colleges to evaluate students, or as means to predict future success. Sacks writes, “test scores tell us little about someone’s real-world capabilities in medicine, law, or teaching. In short, scoring high on standardized tests is a good predictor of one’s ability to score high on standardized tests.”
From the perspective of the educational system, the increasing emphasis on testing inevitably pressures educators to teach to the test. Teachers are forced to narrow their curricula as subjects perceived to be of lesser importance are gradually phased out. As a result, teachers administer closed-ended fill in the blank or multiple choice tests to reinforce their lessons, and disregard open-ended essay tests, which better reflect students’ understanding of the material they are learning. Students learn tricks and shortcuts that are useful on multiple-choice SAT and ACT tests, but which ultimately fail them in the real world. America’s focus on standardized testing creates an atmosphere that lowers teacher morale. A study published in the journal Educational Policy, for example, found that only three percent of teachers agree that such tests are good, whereas 77 percent feel that standardized test are bad and not worth the time and money invested in them.
America’s standardized testing culture has become more concerned with corporations that profit tremendously on sales of prep books and prep courses at the cost of the educational system’s well being. A 1993 study by Walter Haney, George Madaus and Robert Lyons found that America’s taxpayers spend approximately $20 billion annually in payments devoted to testing programs. As Sacks explains, “indirect social and economic costs of erroneous decisions about people’s ability to succeed due to standardized tests results in the loss of billions of dollars to the American economy and lost opportunities to those who are discriminated against.” A better alternative, as the City University of New York successfully demonstrated, is an open-admissions policy, which disregards standardized test scores. CUNY found that “open admissions boosted the economic gain for all races…over and above what they would have earned in the economy without open admissions…the additional economic benefit from open admissions summed up to some $67 million” (Sacks).
Many proponents of standardized testing argue that tests such as the SAT and ACT are the most efficient and practical method for colleges to assess students’ abilities. However, so many other, more important factors must be prioritized before a simple number: high school academic record, extracurricular activities, student portfolios, research activities and essays all give a more accurate and holistic portrait of students. The many talents, quirks and intricacies of every student cannot be communicated in a number, and only when college admissions offices accept this fact will they truly be able to compose the most interesting and diverse student body.
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