Standardized tests for college admissions have come under intense scrutiny, especially during the COVID pandemic.
But some administrators and testing experts argue that the backlash against tests like the SAT and ACT is unfair and based on little evidence, according to The New York Times.
“[A] “A growing number of experts and university administrators are wondering whether the change was a mistake,” wrote New York Times journalist David Leonhardt in an article about the trend away from testing requirements at American universities.
“Research has increasingly shown that standardized test results contain real information, helping to predict college grades, graduation chances, and post-college success,” Leonhardt wrote in a Sunday article. “Test scores are more reliable than high school grades, in part because of grade inflation in recent years.”
Some administrators at major U.S. universities agree that tests like the SAT and ACT are valuable predictors of academic success. “Standardized test scores are much better predictors of academic success than high school grades,” Brown University President Christina Paxson wrote in a letter published in June.
Standardized tests for college admissions have come under intense scrutiny, especially after the COVID pandemic. Monkey Business – stock.adobe.com
MIT Dean of Admissions Stuart Schmill told the Times that grades do not tell a student’s entire story. “Simply getting A’s is not enough information for us to know whether students will be successful or not,” Schmill said.
Schmill has also argued that MIT, one of the few elite institutions in the United States to maintain its testing requirement, actually increased diversity on campus.
“Once we brought back the testing requirement, we admitted the most diverse class we have ever had in our history,” Schmill told The Times. “Having the test results was helpful.”
Some administrators at top universities agree that the SAT and ACT are valuable predictors of academic success. WESTOCK – stock.adobe.com
“Test scores have much greater predictive power than is commonly understood in popular debate,” said Brown University economics professor John Friedman.
Friedman was one of the authors of a study on the importance of testing at highly selective colleges in the United States.
Liberals have led the protest against standardized testing, alleging that the tests discriminate against black and Hispanic students, who tend to score lower than white and Asian students.
Leonhardt, however, objected to the argument that “racial and economic gaps in SAT and ACT scores” prove that the “tests are biased.”
“After all, most measures of life in America—income, life expectancy, homeownership, and more—show gaps,” he wrote for the New York Times. “It is not surprising: our society suffers enormous inequalities. However, the problem is not usually in the statistics. The relatively high poverty rate for blacks is not a sign that the statistic is biased. Eliminating the statistic would not alleviate poverty either.”
“When you don’t have test scores, the students who suffer the most are those with high grades at relatively unknown high schools, the kind that rarely send kids to the Ivy League,” said Harvard economist David Deming. “The SAT is your lifeline.”
Liberals have claimed that the tests discriminate against black and Hispanic students, who tend to score lower than white and Asian students. SNEHIT PHOTO – stock.adobe.com
Other professors advocate a totally revolutionary higher education admission system. Eddie Comeaux, a professor at the University of California, Riverside, told the Times that “[h]Saving a Lottery” would force the education system to “radically rethink what it means to gain access and also learn, rather than accept the status quo.”
Some school administrators said the conversation about standardized testing is highly political. For progressives, supporting tests like the SAT and ACT can be dangerous.
“It’s not politically correct,” Georgetown University admissions dean Charles Deacon told Intelligencer in a 2022 interview.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn