School Entrance And Placement Test Of The Midwest

With college admissions relying so highly on these tests many bright and capable students are getting left with little options (Sternberg 7). These students are facing this because the ACT and SAT primary focus on a narrow segment of skills that are needed to become a person that makes significant differences to the world (Sternberg 7). College’s argue that the admission test give them a quick glimpse of what the students potential is because they do not have to time to individually evaluate each potential student. This may be true but we need a better way to distinguish a person’s abilities than just a simple score on a test.

Currently, there are around 37 thousands schools in the United States. Each year, there are more than a million students that applying for college institutions (National Center for Educational Statistics). As an university admission office, it is often difficult to select students based on numbers and words that show up on their application without knowing the applicant. Since there are many factors and can impact a student’s high school experience and performance, it is unfair to be comparing every student in the United States with a same standard. In order to minimize these differences, standardized tests were invented along with the No Child Left Behind act in 2001 which enforced all students to participate. Ideally, standardized tests are objective and graded by computer. The test is expected to be evaluating all students with the same standards. While the educators and designers of the standardized tests focus on generating a test that allows them to compare all students fairly, they abandon the fact that all students’ resources and backgrounds are inevitably different. Assuming that all elements of an educational system serve to benefit students’ learnings, standardized testing is an inadequate method of evaluation due to its negative impact on students and teachers’ mindsets, inaccuracy in evaluation of students’ abilities, and the

Standardized testing has been around since the early 1900’s. Today, it determines a high school student’s future. Every year juniors in high school start to prepare months in advance for the SAT’s and ACT’s. Along with the test itself, comes stress that is not necessary. The debate of standardized tests defining a student’s academic ability or not has become a recent popular controversial topic. Many colleges and universities are starting to have test optional applications because they are realizing that a single test score does not demonstrate the knowledge of a student. There is more value in a student that should rule an acceptance or rejection. In the article, “SAT Scores Help Colleges Make Better Decisions” Capterton states, “The SAT has proven to be valid, fair, and a reliable data tool for college admission” (Capterton). Capterton, president of the College Board, believes that the SAT’s and ACT’s should be used to determine a student’s acceptance because it is an accurate measure. What Capterton and deans of admissions of colleges and universities don’t know is the abundant amount of resources upper class families have for preparation, the creative talents a student has outside of taking tests, and the amount of stress they put on a 17 year old.

Student achievement is one of the driving factors in education and, quite possibly, the most important. Educators strive to help students improve achievement through quality instructional practices and safe and effective learning environments, but this does not always correlate to adequate performance on standardized testing used to evaluate college or career readiness. One of the measures utilized to evaluate student achievement is the ACT test. Historically, the ACT has provided a measure of college readiness and one that became very serious for Kentucky schools as it is now part of the state accountability

A young girl is excited about graduating high school and attending her first year at college. She tries hard at school and receives above-average grades. She is an active student involved in student council, band, the drama team, and peer tutoring, but her ACT scores are extremely low, disqualifying her from many universities. The young girl represents many students who are not successful at taking standardized tests because they have not developed the advanced skills required to take a test like the ACT or SAT. An academically motivated and responsible student should not be prevented from attending college because a "standard" test is not his or her standard. The current methods of testing for the ACT or SAT should be abolished and

Standardized testing has been ruling over the lives of students, making or breaking them in their education without fair judgement. Tests like the SAT and the ACT count for way too much when applying to colleges, which in turn limits the student 's capabilities to thrive in an environment that would benefit them. There are many problems within a standardized test that deems them to be unreliable as a true test of knowledge. Although designed to test groups of students on intelligence, standardized testing neglects to fairly acknowledge the abilities of each unique student which reflect their true capabilities.

For many years, standardized tests have been a pillar of college admissions. Students are persuaded to take the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) or the American College Test (ACT) because colleges believe the scores can predict an applicant’s academic success after high school. However, an increasing number of colleges have made reporting test scores optional due to inconsistencies with the tests, many of which have been emphasized by students. These inconsistencies and other problems with test distribution have led to increasing demands for standardized testing to be reformed or become optional in the admissions process. Standardized testing should be eliminated as a criterion for college applicants because the tests have made education less significant, have made scores vary among students with similar academic abilities, and have not contributed a noticeable improvement to children’s intelligence.

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 Every Student Succeeds Act is a reauthorization of the “50-year-old Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA)” . The purpose of the Every Student Succeeds Act is to “provide all children significant opportunity to receive a fair, equitable, and high-quality education, and to close educational achievement gaps.” In order to accomplish this purpose, Federal Government requires that the state test students each year in the grades 3 through 8 and at least once in grades 9 through 12, in the subjects of math and reading or language arts. The Federal Government also requires that states test students “not less than one time” in grades 3 through 5, grades 6 through 9, and grades 10 through 12. This form of standardized testing is to

The College Board and ACT nonprofit organizations, known for developing and administering the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and American College Testing (ACT) assessment respectively, represents higher education’s widely accepted college readiness determinant for prospective students. These examinations empirically measure a student’s grasp of reading, writing, and mathematics – subjects taught every day in high school classrooms. As a result, they typically constitute a significant proportion of the total entrance requirements for prospective students to relevant institutions of higher learning and denote a serious endeavor unto itself. Students commonly take one or both of these examinations during their junior or senior year of high school as dictated by an institution’s administrative guidelines, although most colleges now allow either test as part of their proprietary admission formulas. And since it turns out there exists subtle differences in the tests themselves, students should review research concluding certain individuals may be better candidates for maximizing performance on one examination versus another.

The next alternative recognizes the fact that a “one-size-fits-all” approach to standardized testing does not reflect the abilities of all demographics taking the test (NACAC, “Standardized Tests In Admission”). Despite this fact, the National Association for College Admission Counseling believes that to some degree, “Standardized tests are important predictors of students’ academic success” (NACAC, “Standardized Tests In Admission”). While the Commission supports the use of standardized tests, they believe that all students should be provided with the necessary preparation before taking the test.

Have you ever stopped to wonder why students across the globe must forfeit valuable time in class to take nationally mandated tests? With these dreadful clouds that always seem to be blocking out the light of success, one might stop to wonder. Why? These well-known tests began in the early 1900s, when the S.A.T. made its debut. This test, the Scholastic Assessment Test, was originally used to help the government gauge how schools were handling their educational practices. In the 1940s the test began to hold weight in the academic community as colleges began requiring one’s score before admission. Then in the 1960s, the government began to try to provide more ways to properly grade school districts. For a time, these costly tests worked very well. But now in present day, as times have

Advocating is a necessity that can help make people aware of the injustices with these tests and help recommend better and fairer evaluation tools. Advocating for the removal of college entrance exams also needs to be increased as well. Currently, there are over 800 colleges that are SAT/ACT optional. The research has shown that these schools still admit the same level of quality students and that their graduation rates have remained the same since they have dropped the SAT/ACT requirement. The statistics from these colleges need to be disseminated

The domain of study I chose to research was how high school students feel about having to take standardized aptitude and achievement tests, specifically the ACT exam. My problem statement is ‘do high school students believe that the ACT is an effective indicator of their capacities to learn?’ I chose focus on the ACT exam because it’s what a majority of students in the Midwest region have to take in order to get into college. The discussion of the validity of standardized tests has caught my attention in recent years being a predominant figure in the news and on social media sites. Consequently, our most recent discussion question for Module 4 had me contemplating the key issues associated with the use of achievement tests

From the time that children begin school, standardized tests have been used to gauge their intellect and evaluate how they stack up amongst their peers. Since the initiation of the No Child Left Behind Act, under the Bush administration, standardized testing has seen a sharp increase. The immense emphasis placed upon standardized tests has acquired several opponents and received backlash from various parties involved. Although the tests are implemented with positive intended results, there are several negative aspects surrounding their use that should be taken into consideration. The advantages or disadvantages of these tests depend on the individual, therefore standardized testing should be optional within the college admission process.