FairTest

Peter Greene affirms that the SAT/ACT are not required for admission to the vast majority (over 90%) of colleges. Outsized press for the few schools that have reinstated requirement despite new study showing elite, highly rejective colleges "not unearthing many rough diamonds" with the SAT. https://ow.ly/zBhF50UcjOn

Historical data rejects the premise that standardized tests needed to find qualified low income students for elite colleges. Study found the SAT did not increase low income student representation in elite schools. Diamonds in the rough argument a myth. https://lnkd.in/euQu_UsN

Thanks Stephen Burd for setting the record straight. Despite the rank advocacy of the NYT, the vast majority (over 90%) of colleges have maintained test optional and test free policies. Enables greater diversity at no cost to quality. https://lnkd.in/ecE8EEgh

Thanks Stephen Burd for setting the record straight. Despite the rank advocacy of the NYT, the vast majority (over 90%) of colleges have maintained test optional and test free policies. Enables greater diversity at no cost to quality. https://lnkd.in/ecE8EEgh

Here's what we learned about test optional and free admissions policies at the NACAC conference this September: they're working! https://ow.ly/95sA50TXyJU #CollegeAdmissions #TestOptional

#FairTest visited the Anaheim Union High School District (#AUHSD)and saw the dynamic approach to scaling #performanceassessments across schools and subjects. Read about Anaheim's work and success in engaging students and getting them college/career ready. https://ow.ly/wGgP50U5o7R

Excellent analysis of EdTrust report advocating doubling down on ESSA (maybe even NCLB) accountability measures to get states and locals to place of equity. This strategy has been an abject educational and social justice failure. Definition of insanity? #ESSA #EdPolicy https://lnkd.in/ewfwYkks

FairTest Board Member Linda Nathan co-authored piece on potential for MA to develop better, more authentic assessments after repealing MCAS for graduation. Work already being done in NY and MA can pave the way. https://lnkd.in/gJYuhvQg

Thanks Stephen Bird for setting the record straight. Despite the rank advocacy of the NYT, the vast majority (over 90%) of colleges have maintained test optional and test free policies. Enables greater diversity at no cost to quality. https://lnkd.in/ecE8EEgh

At the start of 2024, we were told that, like it or not, the SAT was making a comeback. And we were told that the only reason colleges were sticking with test-optional admissions was because they were overrun with "politically correct" progressives who were ideologically opposed to standardized testing. The source of this news was no less than the New York Times’s influential journalist and columnist David Leonhardt, with his article “The Misguided War on the SAT.” In the weeks and months that followed, nearly two dozen articles, op-eds, and newspaper editorials called on colleges to make the submission of test scores mandatory again. In many of these publications, supporters of the SAT and of its parent company, the College Board, essentially took a victory lap, forecasting the collapse of the test optional movement. https://lnkd.in/gukqiV6q With the end of the year quickly approaching, it’s a good time to revisit these forecasts to determine how accurate they were. Did the SAT make a triumphant return? And is the test optional movement on the verge of collapsing? Hardly. After all the sturm and drang, only a little more than a dozen colleges and universities dropped their test optional policies in 2024, according to FairTest, which advocates on behalf of test-optional schools. Nearly 90 percent of the nation’s 2,275 bachelor’s degree granting institutions remain either test optional, leaving it up to students to choose whether or not to submit scores, or “test blind,” meaning that they do not consider test scores at all. https://lnkd.in/eUaY-A5W To be fair, the list of institutions that stopped being test optional is made up of some of the biggest names in higher ed, including Brown, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, the University of Texas at Austin, and Yale. But many big-name schools, such as Columbia, Emory, the Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin, and Vanderbilt, chose to extend their test optional policies or make them permanent this year. And despite Leonhardt’s contention, the leaders of these colleges did not stick with these policies because they are liberals or politically correct. Many have remained test optional because they have found that their institutions are attracting a larger and more diverse set of applicants than they previously had, in keeping with their institutions’ strategic goals and mission. https://lnkd.in/ep9tWkrR The challenges of the past year have shown the test optional movement’s strength and resilience, as well as the widespread appeal of these policies to the majority of four-year colleges.