What Is A FairTest?

I wanted to comment this week on a recent WSJ article on the SAT.?

The article highlighted that applicants to Indiana University are no longer required to submit standardized test scores for admission consideration. However, high school students in the state must still complete the SAT. This policy shift occurred in the spring of 2022 when Indiana's leading educational institution adopted The College Board's SAT to assess school performance in line with federal educational regulations.

The article goes on to state that "Indiana's experience illustrates the foothold that the SAT and ACT have maintained in America's education system, despite the tests' waning influence in college admissions. Although colleges place less value on the tests as predictors of academic success, many states still use them to evaluate their high schools to meet federal testing requirements. This disconnect is raising questions about how well the exams align with what students are expected to learn in high school."

The article and the authors are misinformed, as the SAT is making a strong comeback. This week, Dartmouth announced the end of its optional test policy. MIT instituted SATs last year. We spoke recently with an admissions officer at Carnegie Mellon who said they had made several poor decisions without the tests over the previous several years.?

Test-optional is a failing policy and we will see more and more universities move towards standardized testing. The idea that standardized tests are "biased' is increasingly challenged. Recent articles and podcasts in the New York Times make the point that the tests reflect our education system and our society - the tests themselves are still the best indicators we have for predicting a student's performance in a university or graduate school.?

FairTest, a nonprofit organization that advocates for more limited use of standardized testing in schools, advocates a system where trained teams of judges are used to rate performance in many academic areas. Advanced Placement essays and their Studio Art assessment are scored entirely by teams of trained educators. Sampling from classroom-based evidence can provide richer information, be adequately reliable, and help stop teaching to the test. Unfortunately, this system does not exist and likely will not in the near future. Nor does it consider the issues of grade inflation and student classroom work increasingly augmented by LLM's.