Michael Bloomberg weighs in on the issue of college testing requirements

Parents Forum
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US Colleges Should Bring Back SAT and ACT Test Requirements - Bloomberg

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Is Bloomberg going to help pay for this?

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Yes. He is leading a $50 million fundraising effort for NYC charter schools to address pandemic learning loss.

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Is a drop in standardized test scores necessarily a crisis in and of itself? With these benchmarks becoming less important, maybe students are simply focusing on other things. I don’t think “declining scores on the ACT and NAEP” should be broadly interpreted as “declining student achievement.”

If students are scoring more poorly on the ACT and NAEP, all that shows is that they’re not as good at answering the types of questions asked by the ACT and NAEP. Maybe that’s an issue, maybe not, most likely it’s somewhere in between. In any case, excessive focus on the scores themselves won’t benefit students as much as focus on whether they’re learning what they need for success – and then we get to the question of what student success looks like today. Bloomberg’s definition seems to be “good test scores” but I disagree with that analysis.

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It’s important to understand who is taking the ACT tests in order to compare score trends. It’s also important to understand that the ‘college readiness’ benchmarks that ACT speaks about were created by them.

More details here:

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Most teachers seem to indicate student performance has cratered in many places since the pandemic.

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Decline in scores could also be due to the decline in college bound students taking the ACT due to test optional / blind admission policies. Since the ACT is taken by all, including non college bound, students in some states, the portion of ACT takers who are non college bound is likely higher than before.

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Opting out of testing was associated with an increase in average scores rather than decrease. For example, ACT scores of the top 6 highest averaging scoring states in 2019 are summarized below. There was generally a significant increase in average ACT scores among higher scoring states and other state where a notably larger portion opted out, likely due to selection bias in which students choose to take the test (more likely to be college bound high achievers).

Change in ACT among high scoring states between 2019 and 2022
1 . Connecticut – 22% took with average 25.5 → 9% took with average 26.3
1 . Mass. – 21% took with average 25.5 → 9% took with average 26.5
3. Rhode Island – 12% took with average 24.7 → 5% took with average 25.2
4. New York – 22% took with average 24.5 → 10% took with average 25.3
5. Illinois – 35% took with average 24.3 → 18% took with average 24.5
5. Maine – 6% took with average 24.3 → 2% took with average 25.1

The states that have required ACT testing tend to have lower average scores, and they dominate the full US average more, if fewer in the higher scoring states participate. However, beyond that, the required 100% participation states did have a statistically significant average decrease since COVID. Perhaps teachers felt less need to teach to the test and students felt less need to study, with it not being required for college. Remote teaching with COVID also likely has an important influence.

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This article also showed declines for 4th and 8th graders. It’s not just about the ACT.

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A graph showing the 4th and 8th scores you are referencing is at Fast Facts: Long-term trends in reading and mathematics achievement (38) . The NAEP scores have been gradually increasing for decades, then plummeted between 2020 and 2022. In the 2022 survey, 70% said they recalled learning remotely last year. I’m expect COVID including remote learning is the primary reason for the decline in 4th/8th grade scores between 2020 and 2022, rather than an increased portion of colleges going test optional.

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Thanks for this! The breakdown about resources available at the end of the article is illuminating.

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So, “by fund-raising efforts”, I guess he means, I should get ready for more glossy fliers in the mail.

I call b.s. Bloomberg likes standardized testing. Period. And he’s using underprivileged kids as stage props. He claims that without them colleges will have even less incentive to recruit students from poor neighborhoods:

If anything, removing objective benchmarks risks tilting the process even more toward students from wealthy families, by elevating the importance of “holistic” credentials like extracurricular activities, volunteering, letters of recommendation and so on.

Almost everything about that statement is counterintuitive. The tiny handful of colleges and universities that practice “holistic” admissions have done so, in large measure, in order to increase the number of First Generation Low Income (FGLI) students; they’re mostly doing fine in the upper 20% income zip codes of America.

I have nothing against standardized testing requirements, but first you have to make it safe for colleges to take chances on students who score lower with fewer enrichments and advantages. And maybe that starts with not penalizing them in their USNews rankings for doing so.

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Bloomberg has personally donated tens of millions of dollars to education. You may not like the current SAT/ACT tests, but his point that high schools have largely forfeited any accountability for how their graduates perform is valid. Many private/charter schools do advertise their scores as indicia of educational quality.
Interestingly, the homeowners I know still care deeply about high school SAT scores when comparing neighborhoods.

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Agree with this.

And again, the problem is the quality of K-12 education
not standardized testing, not college admissions, not the issue du jour.

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Except a large percentage of US adults, as many as 50% is many urban centers and rural towns are functionally illiterate. As in they read below 8th grade level and cannot do basic multiplication and division.

And this hurts people of color and low SES kids the most.

You should watch “Waiting for Superman.”

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Without benchmarking,

  1. How do you measure progress (success or failure)?

  2. Would students make their best effort in the absence of concrete expectations?

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I really struggle with the notion that high schools have forfeited accountability. How about students, parents, and elected officials who make educational decisions?

My own children go to a private school that advertises high SAT/ACT/AP scores. The students in that school almost universally come from college-educated high-income families. I work in a public high school that is actually pretty affluential but still has pockets of kids who struggle to get a 400 on the SAT reading.

The SAT scores of a public school tell you more about the socio-economic background of the other students who go to the school than anything else. You can change staff, curriculum, etc. You want to get parents fired up storming the school board meeting? Redistrict. Change the neighborhoods that feed the schools.

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I agree completely that students and their parents are ultimately responsible for their educational achievements, or lack thereof. High schools are doing them no favors by awarding social promotions and diplomas to those failing to meet standards.

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Many students do not make their best effort even with concrete expectations. There are so many other factors. I am not opposed to accountability or benchmarks. I am the first to criticize the “fluff” teachers, but it is really short-sighted to think that kids aren’t doing well because the bar is low. It is really such a complex issue, and I don’t pretend to have answers. I know anecdotally that the students who perform well, for the most part, have support systems outside of the school that hold them accountable.

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