Using the SAT for School Grades? What Justifies that Baloney?
“Mathematics, Science, being able to use the English language – these tests don’t measure it and they don’t improve it. So why do they exist?” – Leo Botstein, President Bard College
“It distracts from the basic purposes of schooling. It’s no help to teachers. There’s no diagnostic power in the SAT or the ACT.” – Anthony Carnevale, Former VP, Educational Testing Service
“What it correlates to is your parents’ income level, as opposed to your intelligence or your ability to get good grades in college. Or even your ability to get good grades in high school.” – Jamie Macy, Former Admissions Reader, Stanford University
“I concluded what many others have concluded, that America’s overemphasis on the SAT is compromising our education system.” – Richard Atkinson, Former President and Regent, University of California.
“It’s spreading. It’s infiltrating all things. There were always questions about the usefulness, validity, fairness of the SAT, now we’re going to increase it’s reach and its impact.” – Akil Bello, Co-founder and former CEO of Bell Curves, a test-prep company dedicated to underserved and disadvantaged communities. Currently the Director of Equity and Access for the Princeton Review.
“What theory of cognitive development justifies that bullshit?”
– Richard Atkinson, Former President and Regent, University of California.
These are all quotes from the 2018 documentary “the TEST and the ART of learning,” which highlights our nation’s obsession with the SAT. I became aware of the film and watched it ($4.99 rental on Amazon Prime) this week. This parents’ reaction accurately sums up what I felt watching this documentary.
“Every word being uttered in this film is as if someone is reading my mind. These tests are crazy and way too much emphasis is being placed on them” – Cheryl R, parent reaction to “the TEST and the ART of thinking.”
I encourage parents of high school students, and everyone concerned about education, to watch this film, especially the Florida lawmakers who participated in passing SB1108 this session, which was signed into law by the governor on 6/22/21.
During Florida’s 2021 Legislative Session, Senate Bill 1108 (Diaz), and its House companion HB507 (Rizo), sailed through their committee stops without opposition. The bills addressed several issues including providing assessment alternatives for English Language Learners, extending the current Competency Based Education Pilot program and creating a new “Innovative Blended Learning Pilot Program.” In addition, the bill requires each school district, beginning in the 2021-2022 school year and subject to appropriation, to select either the SAT or the ACT for districtwide administration to each public school student in grade 11, including students attending public high schools, alternative schools, and Department of Juvenile Justice education programs. This year, the state set aside federal Covid relief funds ($8 million) for this purpose.
If the only intent was to give all students access to college entrance exams, I wouldn’t be writing this piece. A free college entrance exam, even a flawed one like the SAT, would probably be welcomed by parents everywhere. The problem is that Florida intends, eventually, to use the SAT/ACT scores as part of its Accountability System/School Grades calculation. As the film highlights, using SAT scores for Accountability measures is a bad idea.
During Florida’s 2020 Legislative Session, HB7079 (Aloupis), which also called for a free SAT/ACT for every 11th grader, passed the House but died in the Senate Education committee. HB7079’s Staff Analysis clearly stated the intentions of the Department of Education to use the SAT/ACT scores for school grade calculations:
The FLDOE’s goal of using SAT/ACT scores to replace the 9th and 10th grade ELA FSA and Math end-of-course (EOC) scores in the school grade calculation was celebrated during their rollout of the new B.E.S.T. standards. They claimed that this would be a “big win” for parents, because the SAT/ACT were “valued by parents and students” and were better aligned to “college readiness.” They said the move to SAT/ACT was “an innovative Policy proposal” which would “streamline testing” and “align testing with values that Florida’s parents, teachers and students can embrace.”
At the time, we wrote about our concerns:
“Including SAT/ACT scores in the School Grade calculation is a bad idea, even if the students will not need to meet a particular passing score on the SAT or ACT for graduation.
–Both the SAT and ACT exams are now aligned to the Common Core State Standards, yet these “BEST” standards purport to eliminate Common Core from our state standards. How can we hold educators accountable for teaching one set of standards, by testing for another?
-SAT and ACT scores are highly correlated with family income and parents’ education attainment. Including such scores in the A-F school grade calculation will (continue to) favor schools serving high income, highly educated families.
–Research supports the notion that these tests specifically disadvantage children of color, children from low-income families and children with disabilities; again, making them a poor choice for an accountability measure.
-There are also concerns regarding gender bias and these standardized tests: “Despite the fact that girls consistently perform better than boys in high school math classes, girls underperform boys in the math sections of these tests. For example, for SAT tests taken by the class of 2019, girls averaged 519 and boys averaged 537.”
Regardless of whether parents “value” their child’s SAT/ACT scores more or not, these tests are poor measurements for an accountability system that attaches high stakes, like teacher compensation, school funding and even mandated closure of schools, to a school grade calculation. Attaching high stakes accountability to these scores will further advance the disparities we see today, placing schools serving lower income populations, or those with more students with disabilities and/or students of color at a disadvantage in our flawed school grade calculation.”
https://accountabaloney.com/index.php/2020/01/28/hoping-for-the-b-e-s-t-using-sat-act-scores-to-calculate-school-grades-probably-wont-get-us-there/
The film, “the TEST and the ART of learning,” highlights all of these concerns, and then some. One of its major concerns is the inevitable effect on classroom instruction itself. These concerns were summarized in a 2018 report by the Achieve, Inc., an independent, nonprofit education reform organization, entitled “What Gets Tested Gets Taught: Cautions for Using College Admissions Tests in State Accountability Systems.”:
…neither the ACT nor College Board, the developer of the SAT, developed these tests as measures of how well students are meeting state mathematics and English language arts (ELA) standards, which is the primary purpose of state accountability tests. When they are used as a state’s mathematics and ELA tests — when they “count” for schools, educators, and students — there is the greatest likelihood that they will drive classroom instruction more than state standards do.
https://www.achieve.org/college-admissions-tests-accountability
The Achieve report suggests that if/when SAT/ACT scores are incorporated into our high stakes accountability system, then the content of the B.E.S.T. standards will become meaningless, because, as the film’s interviewed SAT tutors point out, these are tests that reward test prep and “test taking tricks,” nothing that resembles true learning, and the results can be gamed:
“At the end of the day, the single greatest indictment of this test, or any of these tests, is now and always has been that every single one of us at this table can raise a score. In 6 weeks, I can raise a score. If this test taught anything meaningful, that would not be the case.”
https://www.thetestdoc.org
In the film, James Murphy, a journalist says: “What worries me… in the past they’ve said we’re going to change the test so it looks more like the high school curriculum, my worry now is that what they’re going to do is change the high school curriculum so it looks more like the test. And to me that’s a disaster. Nobody should have to go to SAT class in the middle of their school day.”
Florida is headed down that path. Schools will be incentivized, by the school grades system, to set aside the new B.E.S.T. standards based curriculum and spend time focused on the test taking tricks and tips that may lead to higher test scores but are no substitute for education itself.
Again, I encourage you to watch the film. I urge you to encourage your legislators to watch the film. And, while you watch it, ask yourself: why are we going down this path?
HINT: it is NOT #forthekids
“You can defend the test as it gives us a clean number, we like that. It seems to be a national, in that sense, “more objective” standard, we like that. It seems to provide for opportunity, and we like that. All of these are narratives that Americans embrace, it’s just that on every single point it’s a myth. On every single point it’s not true.” -Joseph Soares in “the TEST and the ART of learning,” Department Chair and Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University and editor of “SAT Wars — The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions.”