Why testing still matters
According to an article in InsideHigherEd.com, a recent study shows that from 1998 to 2016 the percentage of high school students with an A average jumped from 39% to 47%. Think about that for a moment and then think about your own child. Are you proud of your son or daughter’s A-average in school? Congratulations. Grade-wise, he or she in the top half of all high school college-bound students. Is that by itself going to impress a college?
Now take into account all that’s happened since March, 2020. Most high school students, including yours, went from full-time in-classroom participants to kitchen table (or still-in-my-bed) Zoom observers in a matter of weeks. For many, learning new material stopped completely when school districts scrambled to find a way to simply keep in touch with their students and, at best, review material taught earlier in the school year.
As a result, high school grades across the country were grossly over-inflated. In short, everybody got an ‘A’. As documented in The Washington Post article, “The Year of the Easy B”, at a particular school district in VA, teachers could “boost a student by a full letter grade if the student submits ‘artifacts of their learning that would demonstrate proficiency with concepts they were unable to demonstrate earlier in the school year’.” In other words, students could simply complete some worksheets or online learning sessions, at home, allegedly unsupervised, and raise their grade from a B to an A. So that 47% number mentioned above for 2016 might be a little low. And this scenario probably happened in school districts in your state and well as most districts all across the country.
How does your child’s college application, filled with A-grades earned through late nights of diligently completing homework and long hours studying for tests and midterms, differ some another student’s application, from a different state, with different grading guidelines, filled with A-grades achieved by completing math worksheets, at home, possibly without the help of the internet? An A is an A, right? At least that’s what shows up on high school transcripts sent to colleges.
On top of this, many colleges have made the ACT and SAT optional at exactly the wrong time. Everyone is getting A and B grades, yet they’re not going to require standardized test results to help differentiate between two similar students. Thankfully, they’ve made these tests ‘optional’, which means students can still submit good scores and show that their academic performance is based on hard work, not worksheets.
Standardized testing isn’t perfect, but it provides yet another data point - along with grades, essays, extra-curricular activities, and teacher recommendations - to help colleges and universities get a holistic view of their applicants. The more data points they have, the better the applicant can look. If it’s possible to get a good score on the ACT or SAT, submit it!
