Thousands of students around the country and around the world will be preparing for the SAT and ACT tests while trying to maintain a high GPA. These tests will potentially have a significant impact on students lives. Some will be taking these tests for the second or even third time to get that 1500 out of 1600 or that 33 out of 36, that they long desire.
These flawed tests are not truly able of measuring students how well students will perform in college as they are supposedly used to predict. A single test that students have to wake up for at six, seven in the morning on a Saturday and travel to some random location to take a difficult test should not impact the student's chance of getting into college, let alone predict how well they will
For example, two high school graduates from Cincinnati, Ohio of the class of 2017 scored a 1560 out of a 1600 on the SAT and the other scored a 35 out of 36 on the ACT, in addition, both of these students were National Merit Commended Finalists. Surprisingly, they were rejected from both Massachusetts Institute of Technology during Early Action and Northwestern University after being wait-listed. However, if you were to look the College Board’s website, BigFuture, you would find the ranges of SAT scores for Northwestern are between 1450-1570 and the ACT ranges are 32-34. The ranges of SAT scores for Massachusetts Institute of Technology are between 1500-1600 and the ACT ranges are 33-35. Another example of this phenomenon took place in Toledo, Ohio. Nathan Card a graduate of the 2017 class of Ottawa Hills, received a 35 ACT, but was rejected by schools such as Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Dartmouth, and Cornell. All of these students met or exceed the requirements for both of these schools yet they were somehow reject even with High test scores. These are not the only students that have come across this issue, countless students across this Nation have experienced these similar issues.
These tests can have a negative impact on students as Columbia University recently states that “Standardized testing evaluates a student’s performance on one particular day and does not take into account external factors. There are many people who simply do not perform
Since this test has been devised, the number one question everybody is asking is, “ isn’t it unfair to base a student’s entire future on one test, when he or she simply could have had a bad day when taking the test”? The president Kirk T. Schroder of the Virginia Board of Education, answer this question by saying, “First of all, these tests are untimed, so no student is under arbitrary time pressure in taking the test.
... a tedious process, but the change can have immense, positive effects for the future college student. The ACT and SAT that supposedly measure a student's learning potential through multiple-choice questions should be replaced by a test of a student's desire to learn determined through the analysis of essays, recommendation letters, and school or community involvement. This change can result in a more academically motivated freshman class. Standardized testing in its current form does not accurately measure most students' learning potential. It does not allow for diversity and creates a huge hurdle for many potential academic achievers. An adjustment to a diverse, open testing format of the ACT or SAT and a stress on the student's other academic accomplishments can accurately measure the student's desire to learn, therefore measuring the student's learning potential.
Some students simply do not test well, others try their hardest and still cannot reach the impracticable standards set for them. The individuals who create these tests do not understand the pressures of being a student, or the struggle to answer thirty-five questions in a compressed time period. One test cannot accurately measure the intelligence of a student.
One of the main reasons that colleges have stopped looking at SAT scores is because there has recently been much speculation about the test being biased against certain groups, these groups being African Americans, Latinos, women, and those of a lower socioeconomic status. Also, some colleges are not placing an emphasis on the test anymore because the College Board has admitted that the SAT is designed so that only one half of those taking the test answer correctly. (Alfe, 2002)
"Study finds high SAT and ACT scores might not spell success at college." PBS. PBS, n.d. 18 Feb 2014. Web. 17 May 2014.
In recent years many schools have begun to put more emphasis on standardized test scores. Almost all college bound students now take entrance exams like the ACT or SAT. These tests supposedly indicate how "smart" a student is and how successful they would be in colle...
Almost every person who has graduated from high school has taken the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), which is generally used for college admissions. We all remember the stress of taking a test that could affect our future educational plans. Now due to the “No Child Left Behind Act” of 2001, this kind of test is now being administered to children from the 3rd to 8th grades as a way to determine if the school or teachers are educating them properly. High-stakes standardized tests of this nature should not be used to determine the educational abilities of either schools or the teachers.
The question to ask at this point is, why would something with documented negative medical effects be used all across the nation? There are multiple professionals claiming the adverse effects result from the use of standardized testing as the sole measurement of student success, yet it continues to be a defining factor for students across America. These test results are able to make or break the students, and, according to several professionals, it is in fact breaking them.
Thus for standardized testing to be legitimate, that statement must be true, otherwise standardized testing would be a very expensive and pointless test. In a study conducted by William Hiss, he sampled 33 universities and over 123,000 students and concluded that SAT scores are a poor predictor of college performance which he defines as college culminated GPA over the years. By plotting a scatterplot that compares college GPA with SAT scores, he found no reliable correlation between SAT scores and college GPA. In fact, studies undertaken by the College Board indicate that the SAT adds only modestly to the prediction of student’s success. Interestingly, Hiss found out that high school GPA is the best predictor of college GPA. According to Hiss, “kids who had low or modest test scores, but good high school grades, did better in college than those with good scores but modest grades.” (Hiss) Hiss elaborated on this saying “a pattern of hard work, discipline and curiosity in high school shows up ‘as highly predictive, in contrast to what they do in three or four hours on a particular Saturday morning in a testing room.’”(Hiss) Looking at high school grades shows much more information that just how well the student did in a particular class. It shows whether the students were challenging themselves with advance placement class and
General testing in today's school systems has a negative effect upon the actual learning of the students. Standardized testing narrows school curriculum, labels children as failures at a young age, and uses money that could possibly be used in a more productive manner.
Rejection. A word that I despise; and is something that has happened to me so many times in so many different ways. One of those ways was being rejected from one of my many college choices because my SAT scores did not reach their requirements. “Why apply?” you may ask, although my SAT scores did not meet their requirements, everything else on my application was perfect. I had great grades in high school, I volunteered many times; both inside and outside of school, I always helped around in my school administration whenever help was needed, and I always dedicated a month of my summer just to help my school give out the school books to students and sell the school uniforms. Doing all those things and being rejected made me feel like I was nothing; like what I did in my school life was all a waste. After taking all of those things into consideration, I still got rejected because of my SAT scores; which is why I genuinely believe that colleges should admit students using criteria other than their SAT scores.
This argument goes along with the other two mentioned and explained above. There isn’t much that is positive to say about these assessments. It places so much pressure on students to perform well and pressure on teachers to teach what is going to be on the test. This brings negative energy to classrooms. An article by Greg Jouriles helps explain why we don’t need these tests. He claims, “Standardized tests are unnecessary because they rarely show what we don’t already know” (Jouriles, Greg). He also goes on to explain that one’s test score isn’t reliable and that we should trust the teachers when grades are published. A school system can accurately judge the students in the school on what they are good at better than the standardized tests do. They can break down many different aspects of what students need to improve on and what they are already knowledgeable of. Students need to learn more than just the test information. Only studying and learning test material makes students less diverse and leads to boring lectures in the classroom. Another article written by an organization called Fairtest adds, “Some students simply do not test well. Many students are affected by test anxiety or do not show their learning well on a standardized test, resulting in inaccurately lower scores” (Fairtest). These tests punish students for what they can’t control, making them stressed and panicked that they won’t graduate or move on to the next grade. Some children are from low-income families attending schools with large classes with little to no materials for learning what is on the test. In addition to that, some teachers have never been educated on test content, which is not their fault, and this results in low-test scores. This all leads to why there are such negative feelings throughout classrooms of many
“SAT I: A Faulty Instrument for Predicting College Success.” Standardized Testing. Ed. Cynthia A. Bily. Detroit: Greenhaven, 2011. 106-11. Print.
Standardized testing is a very controversial topic. However, Standardized testing will be amongst students every year. With the transition from PSATs to SAT and other tests, you’ll know that this topic will never leave people’s minds. Standardized testing examines a student’s accomplishments on one day and does not take in other factors. There are a handful of people who don’t perform well on exams.
The tests results aren’t usually given back to the students until a few months later, and the people who created them give no feedback to help better the student. U.S Secretary of Education Arne Duncan states “Results come back months later, usually after the end of the school year, when their instructional usefulness has been expired.” Students, when they receive the results, are already focused on the current year’s exams, not the past. These tests also do not value a student’s the differences among the students. Some students are natural at taking tests, it does not phase them. While other students really struggle with taking tests and making sure they are done on time. It is required for the all the students to know this certain information and it is required in all core subjects. The National Research Council concluded that negative consequences of misusing these test include, narrowing the curriculum, teaching to the test, driving teachers out of their professions and undermining student engagement and school