Standardized testing has been commonplace in America for quite some time, and its importance has increased since the passing of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001, which requires annual testing in all 50 states. Standardized tests have multiple purposes: They are used to assess how schools and teachers are doing, to figure out where educational resources need to be distributed, and to compare students across the board when they are applying to college. According to the College Board, the average SAT score for the class of 2015 was 1490 (out of 2400 total points possible), marking a decline in all three areas of the test – reading, math and writing, from the previous year. [1] This data is not going ignored. The National Center for Fair and Open Testing, also known as FairTest, is an education advocacy group that is deeply concerned with what these scores mean for the future of education in America. According to the FairTest public education director Bob Schaeffer, “Test-and-punish policies, such as ‘No Child Left Behind’ have clearly failed to improve college readiness or narrow racial gaps, as measured by the SAT.“ [2]
CollegeBoard has instituted a “new SAT,” which students will take for the first time on March 5, 2016. There are many different reasons for why College Board decided to make this change. Evolution in the college admissions process, the rise of the ACT (another popular college admission test), and criticisms that the former SAT gave an unfair disadvantage to students from certain backgrounds (minority students, students with low socio-economic status, etc.) For example, certain terms on the vocabulary section were accused of being used only in certain social circles and not representative of the vocabulary required for a college course. According to College Board, the new test will include several changes: There will no longer be a penalty for guessing, the number of answer choices for each question will be reduced to four instead of five, and the essay (writing) portion of the exam will be made optional. Will this new exam be more fair and equitable to students of all backgrounds? It remains to be seen. Statistics will surely be taken over the next year to document the results. Perhaps this new exam will give rise to different results in the world of education and college admissions.
[1] Source : https://www.collegeboard.org/
[2] Source: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2015/09/03/latest-sat-scores-raise-new-alarms-over-test-and-punish-education
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