Act And SAT Persuasive Essay

Many believe that minority students will not have access to higher education if affirmative action programs are not in place. For example, if admission to higher education institutions was solely based on the Scholastic Assessment Tests (SATs), minorities would be dramatically underrepresented (Glazer 17). In 2003, the average African American combined SAT score was 857, while the average Caucasian combined score was 1063 (Blum). It’s important to remember that many minority students do not have access to the same K-12 education as many Caucasian students do. Is it fair to punish the minority students for a below average high school

     The SAT are standardized tests, formally called the Scholastic Aptitude Tests and are used by most colleges

A lot of colleges and Universities believe the score of a student’s SAT and ACT will help them make better

The ACT is the only fair way to compare students from all across the country that come from different educational backgrounds. The ACT shows how you rank among other students, however, if you are a bad test taker, this will not be an accurate ranking. The ACT is the single most important thing that colleges look at before giving acceptance, but why is that, when studies have shown that GPA is a better indicator of how successful students can be in college?

In the data collected by College Board that shows the relationship between family income and the average test scores, students from a family which has a income of lower than 20,000 dollars per year would get a score around 1326, and students from a rich family which has a income of more than 200,000 dollars can get a score around 1714. It reflets that fact that

Schools need to find ways to evaluate students which do not discriminate on race, gender, or economic status. By using tests like the ACT and SAT, colleges are unintentionally showing favoritism to groups like Caucasians, males, and the upper class. "Standardized tests are biased in favor of those whose culture and upbringing most closely resembles that of the test makers- typically, white middle-class males" (Facts). FairTest: The National Center for Fair and Open Testing did a study

“The sale of a whole range of screening, intelligence, readiness, and other tests generates in excess of $100 million in revenues in the U.S. (Meaghan and Casas 44)”. Companies that administer these tests like the ACT are making hundreds of millions of dollars to make these tests. These are large corporations that are making money from distributing the test and then once again making more money from grading it. Governments look into ways to save money with education so why don’t they focus on abolishing standardized tests and just focus on a student’s grade point average. A student’s high school transcript gives a college enough information for them to make their selection, doing this may take them longer to choose their potential students. However, the students that they do administer would be better represented because they would have that student’s record of the past four years. Showing how they did in certain classes and even what they struggled in.

Einstein once said, “If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will spend its whole life believing that it is stupid.” Likewise, if a poor test-taker is judged by their SAT score, they could be forced to attend an inadequate institute of higher education. For decades, the SAT has been “the test” that makes or breaks a student's chances of getting into their top college. Generally, the privileged populace do well, but minorities and women do not come out as strong and are therefore limited to college choice. The SAT has proven to be an unsuitable, biased method for predicting success of students in college.

If the test truly showed the academic potential of students to colleges, it would not be discriminatory based on any factors besides those relevant to college admissions, such as intelligence and passion. It is very difficult to effectively showcase a student’s potential with standardized tests, because they “focus only on cognitive dimensions, ignoring many other qualities that are essential to student success” (NCTE). These cognitive dimensions are very limited in scope, and are not effective in portraying all of the skills that a student may have. On the SAT, these focuses are reading, writing, and math. On the ACT, these focuses are english, math, reading, and science.

The ACT standardized test measures what students have learned while in high school is an achievement test. The SAT standardized test with testing for students verbal abilities and reasoning is more of an aptitude test. While guessing is not recommended during the SAT for wrong answers are penalized. The ACT does not penalize and its score is

The SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test), created by Carl Brigham of Princeton University, was introduced in 1926 by the College Board [1]. The SAT is an attempt to predict how well a student will perform during their first year of college without measuring past academic achievement. The Educational Testing Service (ETS) was

“The SAT in recent years has become the main assessment used in some states to measure how much high school students have learned” (Zinshteyn), it is big step into becoming a college a student since the year it was enacted in 1926. The SAT is a standardized test that measures your skills in both math and english, along with your writing, it is mainly taken between junior and senior year of high school and is a major impact on deciding your college admittance depending on your college. A new SAT was enacted recently claiming to level the playing field for all students who deserve and are willing to work hard for en education, “The overall topics have not changed the SAT still quizzes you on math, english and writing. The only difference is that the new SAT combines reading and writing into one section within the SAT”

Sitting on the computer, signing up for the SAT, I envisioned myself taking the standardized test that so many dreaded. I saw myself kicking butt on the exam, exceeding my expectations, and earning myself admission into the college of my choice, which I had not yet decided on. When the day had come to take the test, junior year of high school, I was terrified, not because of the test, but because of the circumstances I now found myself in. School had always been tricky for me – waking up and getting ready in the morning, forcing myself onto the bus, the worst parts. My grades were amazing though, considering my fear of school. I earned mainly A’s in college prep and honors classes.

Low scores are equivalent to fewer opportunities, and high scores tend to open more doors. Tests like the SAT are not effective because they are unfair to people with certain disadvantaged backgrounds, overly emphasized in the admission process, and do

Analysis, synthesis, evaluation, and creativity are all factors that are not included in tests like the ACT and SAT. The primary goal of standardized testing isn’t to measure how well you think through problems, analyze information, or to apply learning to new situations, it is ultimately to see how much you were able to memorize. Ultimately, “it is easier to measure efficiency than effectiveness, easier to rate how well we're doing something than to ask whether what we're doing makes sense,” (Hudlow). This issue is also another main defect associated with standardized state-mandated tests. Apparently, the more irrelevant details you were able to imprint in your mind, the smarter you appear to be to colleges.