Issue Brief: Rough Draft

Evolving Past The Score: Removing Standardized Test Requirements for Public Colleges

Public colleges are meant to be an accessible way for students to receive an education after high school. They provide a more affordable and convenient way for in-state students to further their education. Currently, many of these public institutions require their applicants to submit standardized test scores. In the past, standardized test scores have been used as the official scale to compare applicants from a variety of backgrounds. 1.1 million students in the high school class of 2020 took the SAT, one of two official standardized tests for college admissions.1 However, the mechanisms of standardized testing have become all too biased at the expense of equity and accessibility. The influence of test preparation and retake costs have led tests like the SAT and ACT to no longer be fair measurements of all students’ performance.  As of December 2020, 1,600 colleges across the country have dropped their standardized testing policies, most for the first time, to account for the uncertainties of the pandemic.2 These temporary policies give public colleges the opportunity to recognize that standardized testing is no longer a fair way to measure students’ future performance and inforces educational inequities, therefore allowing them to permanently remove this requirement for all applicants in the future.

Test Preparation Expenses and Inequities

Financial Costs

College admissions have become increasingly competitive, which has led many students to turn to methods to improve their scores on standardized tests like the SAT or ACT. Unfortunately, these mechanisms come at an expense, therefore making it inaccessible to many students and in turn sacrifices the equity of these examinations.

The expenses of test preparation are incredibly high. Some private tutors cost as much as $1,000 for an hour consultation session, which is an incredibly high price that few can afford. 

While this is an extreme example, even the most popular testing programs, like those provided by Princeton Review and Kaplan, cost upwards of $1,000 for a regular group preparation session.3 While Khan Academy is leading the industry of free test preparation programming, it still does not reach enough students to counter the inequities of costly preparation courses.4 Studies have shown that family income and a student’s ultimate score on the college admission standardized tests are strongly correlated.5

Until recently, the College Board denied that test preparation could significantly impact a students’ score on their exams. However, after the launch of their partnership with Khan Academy, the College Board has recognized that more hours spent practicing leads to greater overall point gains on their exams. 7 While the College Board is encouraging students to use their free platform for test preparation, they are still neglecting the time commitment that test preparation requires. Students are already spending so much time on their schoolwork both in and out of the classroom. These students should not also be expected to spend additional hours preparing for one exam so that they may keep up with the increasing competition of their peers across the country.

Besides test preparation courses, the cost of these exams also unfairly benefits students of higher socioeconomic backgrounds. (Insert statistic about how many times students on average take the SAT and ACT. Insert information about what the fee waiver from the college board covers and what the requirements to qualify are) While fee waivers are available for students from these backgrounds, they are still not available to a large enough extent. If a student wishes to attend a public college in their state, they should not be required to pay to take (and retake) the required standardized examination just one considered in the first place.

 

Costs Beyond Finances

Financial costs are also not the only expenses to consider in the realm of inequitable test preparation. The time commitment that students spend preparing for these tests also is a source of concern. One source sites that students spend an average of 10 to 20 hours a week on practice exams, in tutoring sessions, or going over problems in preparation for either the SAT or ACT.6 This time commitment is simply not feasible for many students who have other responsibilities outside of school, like having an after-school job to support their family or watching their siblings while their parents work. 

Moving Past The Test

Effectiveness of Predicting Student Performance

For many years, standardized tests like the SAT and ACT have been seen as the pillar of college admissions. They have been deemed the most accurate way to predict a student’s future success beyond high school. However, college admissions standardized tests have been proven ineffective in predicting students’ success beyond their first year in college. For those reasons, removing the standardized testing requirements for these public colleges would improve student retention and graduation rates. Public colleges that heavily rely on standardized test scores in the admission process may be accepting students that perform differently in school than on tests. High standardized test scoring students may find themselves greatly struggling beyond their first year of college while lower scoring students might find themself under-challenged. (Include statistics about transfer and graduation rates in test-optional public colleges versus test-required public colleges).

 

Improving Campus Diversity

As more and more colleges dismiss their standardized testing requirements, they begin to notice an increasing diversity in their incoming classes. Colleges that identify as “test optional” have reported more diverse student bodies, including demographics, income, interests, and parental education backgrounds.8 27 out of 28 studied colleges reported increased minority, low-income, and first-generation student populations after removing their standardized testing requirement.9 When college admissions offices are forced to look beyond the test scores, they are able to select students on an individual basis that will contribute to the campus community.

Figure 1: Percentage of Student of Color and First-Generation Students Of Hampshire University

Retrieved From: Talula Cedar James, More colleges are taking an anti-test stance for admissions,https://www.shsoutherner.net/features/2019/11/27/more-colleges-are-taking-an-anti-test-stance-for-admissions/

(Nov. 27, 2019)

 

Improving A College’s Ranking

According to recent studies, colleges that identify as test-optional institutes received more applications than institutions that did require these scores.10 For some rankings, such as the US News College Rankings, a factor that is highly considered when ranking colleges in the United States is acceptance rates.11 Based on that information, if a college has more applicants, they can expect to have a lower acceptance rate and then ultimately a higher ranking. While a lower acceptance rate does not ensure a higher ranking for colleges, when paired with the higher success of students accepted without test scores and higher graduation rates, going test optional may prove to be very good for a college’s reputation. For those reasons, it is in the best interest of the colleges of America to adopt test optional policies in the future.

 

Conclusion

While colleges eventually move past the pandemic, it is the responsibility of public colleges to continue to work as test-optional institutions to ensure equity is instilled throughout the application process. Removing these standardized testing requirements at the public school level will encourage colleges in the future to abolish the examinations in the future entirely. Until then, public colleges have a duty to set an example. From this example, colleges can expect to see more diverse incoming classes, higher rates of student success, and less overall bias in the college application process. 

 

Bibliography

1.https://newsroom.collegeboard.org/nearly-22-million-students-class-2020-took-sat-least-once#:~:text=Nearly%201.1%20million%20students%20in,of%20the%20class%20of%202019.

2.https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2020/12/29/sat-act-score-test-optional-covid-college-application/3992269001/

3.https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/29/your-money/another-college-expense-preparing-for-the-sat-and-act-.html

4. https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sat/practice/khan-academy

5.https://www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2019/05/17/students-need-more-than-an-sat-adversity-score-they-need-a-boost-in-wealth/

6.https://www.kaptest.com/study/sat/how-long-should-i-study-for-the-sat/#:~:text=Generally%2C%20students%20put%20in%2010,to%20put%20into%20your%20prep.

7.https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2017/05/09/can-coaching-truly-boost-sat-scores-for-years-the-college-board-said-no-now-it-says-yes/

8. https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2018/04/26/604875394/study-colleges-that-ditch-the-sat-and-act-can-enhance-diversity

9. https://tower.mastersny.org/4900/features/privilege-sat/

10. https://www.studyinternational.com/news/universities-us-test-optional/

11.https://www.liberalartscolleges.com/college-acceptance-rates/#:~:text=Colleges%20also%20care%20about%20their,subsequently%20lower%20their%20acceptance%20rate.

 

Notes

• I still think my introduction could be a little more informative 
• I think I need to better incorporate the idea of “public colleges” more specifically throughout the piece to stay on-topic
• I think my conclusion could definitely be stronger or more impactful
• I was having a hard time bringing information about standardized testing in relation to the pandemic into the piece beyond the introduction and conclusion
• I want to make sure my subcategories and heading make sense and are in the appropriate order (they can definitely be worded better) 
• Obviously have to find/make the rest of my infographics but I wanted to make sure they are as relevant as possible (new data should actually be coming out in the next few days now that most college decisions are coming out for high school seniors)
• For some reason when I copy and pasted from my Google Doc the superscripts got messed up so my in-text citation numbers look a little weird