The idea of the s. A. T. Has shifted under the feet of american teenagers. Only the College Bound were encouraged to take it, it was an important sorting tool in the scramble for seats and competitive schools but not that important if you plan to graduate with an academic diploma, and then head off to state u. Where you lived. In more recent years the College Board which administers the test has tinkered with it to respond to criticisms of cultural bias, a writing section was added and the test was scored on a basis of 2400 points rather than the long time yardstick of 1600. More High Schoolers were encouraged to see themselves as College Bound, and encouraged to take the test, and kids were advised to take it multiple times starting younger, while an entire industry grew up around prepping to sit for the exam, the sat is about to make another big change. If you have or are going to have a High School Student in your life, these changes are headed your way. If we believe that assessment must be a force for equity and excellent, it is time that shake somethings up. Under criticism from educators and universities who say the s. A. T. No longer reflect as Students Learning experience, the College Board is announcing sweeping changes. Admissions officers and counselors have said they find the day from from emissions exams useful, but they are concerned that these exams have become disconnected from the work of high schools. And surrounded by costly Test Preparation. It is not the first time the board has changed the test after complaints from centers of higher education. A 2005 revision of the s. A. T. Wasnt well received and many colleges dropped test requirements and admissions. Now the College Board agrees the s. A. T. Must better reflect the aptitude it says it measures. As many as a million 1 2 students take the s. A. T. Around the country each year, students taking the redesigned test in 2016, will find it returns to the 1600 score scale, nine years ago a top score became 2400 points. The essay portion will now be optional added in 2005, essays will be optional for colleges to consider as well. Gone will be obscure Vocabulary Words like fung till yous. And test takers wont be penalized any more for guessing in multiple choice questions. I am sweating right now. You are fine, go ahead. The sat will become more like its rival, the American College testing assessment, last year, more students took the act, 13 states administered the a. C. T. Test to all High School Juniors the majority of four year colleges require an exam for admission, but hundreds of schools now have test optional policies, the sat changes are all meant to put less emphasis on testing as a part of the overall experience. Many students find the tests stressful, and spend time and money in preparation. Test prep courses like those offered by cap lynn and Princeton Review rake in as much as 4. 5 billion a year. It is time for the College Board to say in a clear voice, the culture and practice of Test Preparation that now surrounds admissions exams, drives the perception of inequality, and injustice in our country. College board announced its beginning a partnership with con academy, a pioneer in Online Learning it will offer free sat prep materials on line starting next year. Theres always going to be folks hiring high priced tutors but i think we will make a significant we will level it to a large large degree. Adapted from a world war i army i. Q. Test, the s. A. T. Was first administered in 1926. The standardized test is finding waying to evolve in order to better match the academic of todays and serve them beyond their college year. A look at the new s. A. T. And the place of standardized testing and College Admissions today on the program. Joining us from al burke, new mexico, dean of College Guidance at al burke academy, a private independent high school in our washington studio policy analyst at the new America Foundation education policy program, and from eugene oregon jim recallings director of admissions at the university of oregon, ann, what is the s. A. T. Supposed to do and does it do it. So the sat is really meant to be an admissions tool, for students, and for colleges. It is supposed to say which students will be ready to succeed, in post secondary institutions. And i think todays test it always doesnt reflect what is taught in the classroom, it reflects other skills, and knowledge but not necessarily the curriculum that students are going to be experiencing in their High School Classrooms or in their collegele chews. And so i think a lot of the changes that David Coleman and the College Board are introducing are intended to kind of right that balance, and maybe the s. A. T. More reflective of what students are actually experiencing in 16 and 17yearolds and in their College Classrooms to come. Rafael, you have an academically demanding course of study at al burke, academy, is it as unrelated to what kids are learning in the classroom at a place like your school . Well, as your introduction indicated the s. A. T. Started from a different place, it was meant to be an aptitude test, and the a. C. T. Was the test that was based more on the content of what students knew. That the College Board announced yesterday seemed to be a lining it more with the act. And they are becoming more and more alike. As they have been doing for years but this is a much larger step to making the s. A. T. Much like the act. Jim rollins, youre the end user arguably, what use is the act to a College Admissions department . The act, or set each serve a role with us as one of the several pieces that lets us see something about the trajectory, we wouldnt every want a test to tell us the same thing that the curriculum and the gpa already tell us, because then it would be redundant. Either way, many of the things professionals have valued about tests in general, is that they do give us some small insight into a way to measure students readiness in certain ways. Mass not depend on variances of grading and grading culture at the high school. It does give us one small thing that is nonno maturer the student is. From what you know so far, about the changes that are contemplated in the test, do you think the results are going to be more useful to you now . I dont think anything about the announcement answered that question for us. It simply lets us know what to be on the look out for, and the next go years as the s. A. T. Finishes and as the College Board hopefully and i take them at their word when they say they will talk to us throughout this process, the motion that this might better reflection what is going on with with students is something that even once the test is offers we wont be able to preach a decision as to whether it is improved what we have the use for it in our assessments. What will really give office chance is after we get a few years of students arriving with the schools and then have to go through the process of looking back. Orb for that matter ways in which it might not have been adding as much information. So it will be a very gradual process where colleges have to do this over time, but we have to realize based on the wide variety of students we each serve, each of us may reach different subtleties or major differences in conclusions we do make about how s. A. T. Scores now or in the future help the university of oregon make a decision that may be different than harvard. Or chico state. Lets unpack that idea of what with the scores tell you, just a little bit more. The last big invasion was adding the writing test, did you move easily, transition, to the 2400 scale and did the results of the writing test tell you what you needed to know . In an official sense the university of colorado never fully turned over. We dont tend to talk about the totals as much as the two scores up to 800. Again, it makes more years for an institution to see how well a 5 50 on the sat may have helped us predict whether a student was ready for our First College level math class. Then what was the score at which we started to see it associated with success. When the test changed, back in 05, we needed to go through that same process, but the College Board has given us assurances that a 550 on the math, should mean roughly what it did before. There was differences in how that splitted apart from one english section into a critical reading and a writing section. But the bottom line is we were all working off of history which took a while, and i think like many institutions the university of oregon has never even finished getting to the point where we felt we accumulated enough to make a robust decision on how to best introduce the writing sub score into the mix. Rafael your students are preparing to take the test, and make it part of their pitch to colleges to accept them as students, the writing is optional now. How did it change taking the test in the last several years and how doing it is going to change the act of preparing for the test now that the writing section is optional. The act of preparing is still going to be up in the air. We are not sure as mr. Rollins indicated what the impact will be. We arent sure what the validity will be. We arent sure what good it will do for my students or for admissions professionals. I am going to start advising my students to just hold on, lets not rush to prepare for this new sat, lets step back and see what happens, see what the College Board tells us further, see what the preparations will be made available are like. But in the end, i find myself thinking what is the sat for then if we already have the a. C. T. Which is doing everything that s. A. T. Is trying to do, and has been long established. I am going to tell my students to look more at the act. When we come back, we will talk about inequality, earlier you heard the head of the College Board saying that the test to become a driver of it rather than a factor to neutralize it this is inside story. Parents that meantluent purchasing tutors extra test prep, and low income kids just didnt have access to that, and i think when the s. A. T. , especially because it is measures things like vocabulary, or sort of their test taking tricks when you didnt have access to those you were already at a disadvantage, so it was a real challenge. It is another barrier on top of all the other barriers they already faced getting to college. And these days all students really need to get post secondary education, you cant afford not to go to college. So what you have seen, with the new things built in, to help provide test prep, this at least goes some way to answering those critiques in is. I think so. Theres still a lot of details tock worked out, but i am excited by the Prospect Building these free online test prep materials that all students can access. I think thats going to be a huge step in terms of leveling the playing field, and giving all students access to some great materials that can help them prepare. It went be depend on your parents income, or where you live, and you can get a sense of what the test will be like, a t lot of those gimmickky things are just the test taking tricks i think is what they are trying to been by changing and taken out the penalty for getting a question wrong, those were some of the things that students were taking the test, i think they were focused both on the content, but also the how do i maximize my score game a little bit. And i think those changes will make it easier for all students to sort of approach the test focusing on the context, and not necessarily those test taking strategies. Jim, when theres a 400point difference, between students from low income and high income backgrounds. Youre a state university, a public institution, what does an application tell you beyond whether this kid comes from a poor neighborhood or not . We learned plenty about that on the application in a way that does help us make sure we are looking at those test scores through the right filters. And i would very much say that the test itself doesnt exacerbate the inequality as long as colleges are doing what we are supposed to use it. I can tell you for example that with any of my staff, to consider a student for admission on the details it is one of the first thins we talk about, is how there are corelations between Family Income and test scores. But i also talk to them that doesnt entirely point to problems with the test. Just as much it points to the inequalities to what we see on the test, because the wealthier families tend to be at schools that are more likely to offer advance cowhers. They are more likely to have longer tenure for highly regarded teachers that want to be paid more, and the act score that comes out of that, and sat has the same problem, is very much a function of those things. Much more than a problem with the test itself. It is a moment whether we get a chance to see the inequality reflected. Are some of your kids going to worry about the advantages. Any tool is just as good as the people in the end using it. Professionals are certainly well educated. Certainly have is the integrity to use it well, but the tool in the end, how much value does it add to the job that they are trying to do which is predict how strong a College Student my students will be when they get over to the university of oregon campus. And so i worry that for so many of our different populations, the value that the tests add is really just not worth the big stress that gets put over it, the expense of preparation that a lot of families undergo, and so it starts to reach a point of diminishing returns i think. Would you rather see a College Preparatory course of study that doesnt even include these high stake standardized tests . I think that the course of study the curriculum and what we are teaching them at the secondary level, is critical, and add min professionals recognize that. I am just want to make sure that the people who are using the tests like the university of oregon, take a careful look at what they are doing with that information, and how much value it does add. Mr. Rollins i know is leading an organization that will do that. That will take into consideration exactly how much value is added here, and just worry that some colleges out there are not as careful the data and with the value that it adds to the application process. When we come back, we will talk about the future of theostat as a metric that helps you get into school, owhether the friend is towards those schools that are starting to do without them all together, this is inside story. Welcome back to inside story. Starting in 2016, the s. A. T. Is making the written essay optional, and for some of the math section students will to put away the calculator, and the perfect score, again, will be 1600. On this edition, we are talking about the changes in the sat and more broadly about standardized testing. Still with us, dean of College Guidance in our washington studio, policy analyst in the new America Foundations education policy program, and from eugene oregon jim rollins, director of admissions of the university of oregon, and jim, let me return to you, one thing that has changed about applying is that we have moved from the old three or four colleges to students commonly applying to 12 and 15 and even more because of the ease of appliances with the common application and applying by computer. Has that paradoxically kept the s. A. T. And the a. C. T. In the game because you have to assess so many more applications . I think it has, but i think they are are all subtleties. I wouldnt say nationally it is 12 to 15, certainly among a certain segment of schools that happens. But the bottom line, is even might have a little and having watched my own daughter go through that process last year, i can guarantee you those schools requiring a common app are not so easy. But either way, i think your point is a great one, for whatever reasons and whatever motivations the fact that students are applying in greater numbers there are many students in the first place, at least there have been, it does contribute to the fact we have more competition for these spaces when you are faced with being used any tool to distinguish among those, the test score is one of those things that a college may choose to use. Would you like to see more schools do away with the use of the act and the sat as a sorting device. Do ebelieve the data does help us make decisions in some cases and in certain ways. Colleges no ed to make the right decision, and i would hate to see them do it for the sensationalism of going test optional. The bottom line is we all have a decision to make about how we are going to put all the information we feel we need in front of us to make a good decision about who is a good fit for our school, and who is ready for that school. And for some institutions doing that without the scores is something they have chosen to do. And if so they have a response tonight do it very well. Just as those of us that continue to require the submission of the scores we have a commitment and an obligation to make sure we use them in and only in the right context as part of the bigger decision. Let me close by asking both rafael and ann, whether they would like to see continues improvement in the test or a continuation of this trend of moving away from heavy emphasis on them at all. Rafael i think this is up to the vim how they are using these exams. And if they find these are helpful and help them make a better decision, fine, taking Everything Else into consideration, but be open to the fact that it may not be worthwhile. All we want to know is that colleges are thinking about it honestly, and looking at it clearly. I think they are always going to be there because of that expanding poll. It is a matter of trusting the professionals and not the testing agencies. Ann, would you like to see a continuation of this trend of moving away. Many statements are adopting for all their public high schools. So we arent just getting a new s. A. T. , but we are getting new tests that students will be taking as no child left behind, so there will be a lot more information, the which of these is most useful for predicting which students will succeed in college, is an open question. And i think we can be seeing changes in how colleges think about their applicant pool, and which can students are likely to be successful, but we will have to wait a few years until all of the tests are avail and the data is there to exam. Are there right now a lot of kid that are finishing high school and not getting over that last hurdle because of these tests. Its not that students are graduating high school, but they are needing remediation, so theres a gap between our expectations for High School Students and between what many colleges expect their Incoming Freshman to know. I hope these changes will help us get a better sense of where those gaps are. Thank you all for being with me today. That brings us to the end of this edition of inside story, and remember, sweetness is to candy as well informed is to inside story. Thank you for being with us, in washington, im ray swarez. A historic move. One of the nation ace farmest pharmacy chains will. 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