Presumably schools are compensated by CB and ACT to use their facilities as testing centers, so I assume they wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to make some money.
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I said above in our area (and I expect many others) schools decreased the number of seats during covid and have stuck with that. Schools continue to also have difficulty getting people to proctor tests as well (talking about weekend sittings)…many school counselors still say this is the case. For more granular info one would have to talk to the schools’ testing coordinators and/or principals.
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I wonder if it is a blue state/city phenomenon – there could be ideological differences of opinion about testing – amongst schools conducting testing …
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I hope it isn’t, because that would suggest the access problem was created artificially.
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CB and SAT pay the testing coord/proctors/monitors (but the HS has to find these people). CB also says they may reimburse schools for ‘some test related expenses’, but I’m not sure what’s included in that. AFAIK, CB does not pay for the space a HS opens up on test day.
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As @Twoin18 has pointed out, boys tend to mature later than girls and have lower GPA on average, especially in the first couple of years in high schools. They also tend to have higher test scores (mainly as a result of the math section) on average. However, averages don’t really tell the whole story. The distribution of test scores for boys is known to be wider than for girls (i.e. fatter tails at both ends of the distribution). As a result, for the highly selective/rejective schools, boys are likely affected more significantly than the averages would suggest, when test scores become a less important part of admission evaluation.
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Certainly atleast staffing availability may have been correlated with ideology. In some states teachers were unwilling to even come in and teach for long periods with help from the unions, let alone proctoring exams conducted by a private company. California and New York being prominent in this regard.
And I suspect post covid the overtime schools may be giving teachers to proctor these tests may not have kept up with inflation. So fewer people may be proctoring.
Definitely seems like fewer people proctoring. Proctoring tests is a completely separate gig from one’s teaching job and has nothing to do with the unions (at public schools on weekend testing days). Some Private and parochial schools require staff to proctor X number of tests per year. Proctor pay is around $20 per hour and is paid by the testing agencies, not sure if that amount varies regionally. Overtime is not an issue if it’s not a contractual part of the job (I don’t think I’ve ever seen a public teachers’ contract require weekend proctoring, of course that could exist somewhere)
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I am really surprised that it is that hard to find teachers, retirees, college students or tutors to work for 5 hours on a Saturday. It does not have to be the same group each time-proctors can do it once a year if they prefer. Our schools too have plenty of activities on the weekend. But this is a priority so they work around it. I have to think it is on school admins-if they wanted to offer it for their kids, they easily could. They chose not to do so.
Surprised that in SF that private schools apparently don’t offer it for their students, but like another poster said, that’s probably ideological. Parents put up with different things in different places.
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Many teachers/admin see test day as a hassle/headache that they’d rather not deal with. I’m not saying that’s right, but it’s more pronounced since the pandemic.
There are many burned out teachers and administrators who have no desire to show up on the weekend for little money. Perhaps they also have limited understanding of what test optional really means, particularly for the students in whatever local community they serve.
Running tests is not as easy as it seems logistically either….schools are responsible for background checking proctors (the hurdle is higher for jobs working with minors) so they won’t bring in outsiders, and there need to be different rooms/equipment setup for those schools that offer seats for students with the many types of accommodations out there, just to take two examples.
Aside from some rural areas and California, it does seem that most students who want to test are able to…it might not be at their most desired site though or on the date they want.
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Here in WA state, most test sites are community colleges. There are still a few in high schools, but not the majority. Our large local school district (30,000 students k-12) might offer little SAT/ACT testing, I can’t say for sure, I know a neighboring district does but seats fill up within minutes. Some religious schools (Adventist) seem to be sites. My kids’ private school offers the PSAT and a practice ACT only.
Many kids at their school still are taking the tests, counselors still recommend them, it just seems to part of the overall culture that the location may be far away. Honestly I’m not sure why that is, and it’s not something I became aware of until my second child was a junior in HS (older child was of testing age during height of pandemic closures). I am not pushing the behemoth of my local PSD to offer tests because my kids are no longer enrolled in the district, and honestly, seems like wasted energy in the era of TO. Highly educated, affluent suburb.
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Please don’t bring out the knives for these observations and crazy ideas (and yes I’m as off-topic as the rest of you re: not much connection to Columbia).
Here’s what I’ve seen:
Kids who do remarkable poorly in the SAT/ACT-style test who get great scores on APs across math, science, humanities.
Kids with near-perfect ACT/SAT and decent grades who have a surprising absence of both common sense and worldly knowledge.
Myself, a high math achiever, showing no improvement between 5th and 10th grades on PSAT math section (both near-perfect, got the perfect in 11th), despite learning a sh*t-ton of math in between.
And here are my ideas:
A combo of certain AP results should be allowed as a stand-in for the ACT or SAT, as the latter play some weird role somewhere in between an IQ test, an income test, and a test-taking test. Perhaps the combo has to sample from math (has 4 choices, and maybe also include physics), sciences, and history/English? Yes, I know many kids don’t have these ready by junior year, but with this new “AP precalculus” (another topic…lol) it is certainly a combo many of my older kid’s peers would have had. IMO a better objective measure of scholastic ability than SAT/ACT, certainly in my kid’s case.
Maybe add more granularity to the AP test score, in service of the above.
Re SAT/ACT - Less multiple choice on the math, and harder problems (along with some easier problems), for more differentiation.
That’s my two cents.
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I don’t know about the nuance, but you need a mechanism to adjust for wide variations of rigor and grading standards across different schools. Otherwise the system will fall apart and become very unpredictable.
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That is exactly the purpose of the standardized tests, to provide one uniform admission factor across thousands of schools with different grading scales and rigor, and why dropping it entirely makes little sense. I still think that a number of selective colleges will use the revamped SAT as an excuse to go back to requiring testing in a few years.
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According to ACT/SAT Optional List - Fairtest, there are over 1800 colleges that are test optional. Columbia is just one of them now.
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I’m talking about the AP exams.
It doesn’t seem that many VPs of enrollment (or presidents and trustees) are concerned with this…do you hear they are?
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Not that I am aware.
And @UnsentDementor, the APs are very very coarse grained
Separately, not all APs are offered in many schools.
Are you saying that different AP exams are administered at different schools? I know there are “versions” but I thought college board kept them at the same level of rigor even if the questions or question order varied slightly to prevent cheating. To be clear, I’m not advocating for the GRADE to be the replacement, but the AP test score.
As another poster pointed earlier, people’s views on standardized testing are often affected by they, their kids, or others they know, did on those tests.
Are AP exams really that different? AP exam scores are the best predictors of how students do in college, according to Harvard’s Dean of Admissions, but they’re even less accessible.
I agree with that, but I bet there would be even more complaints against these tests.
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