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Two Decades of Options (Released to the web December 17, 2006) In this day and age, preparing and taking a standardized test in order to apply to a college is an American rite of passage. Many colleges demand SAT or ACT scores as part of the package of information prospective students must submit. Yet, a growing number of institutions of higher learning are jumping on a bandwagon that was thoughtfully launched by just a handful of people over two decades ago. That bandwagon is an initiative to make the submission of standardized test scores an optional part rather than a required part of the admissions process, and to seek alternative means of evaluating candidates. Bill Hiss, who is now the Vice President for External Affairs at Bates College, is one of a handful of people who originally questioned the wisdom of using a standardized test as a primary means of student evaluation. Unlike some authors and commentators who have not been in the trenches, Bill has direct experience with college admissions and he has spent over two decades at Bates College studying how making test score submissions optional affects student outcomes. In a January 2005 radio broadcast, Bill noted: "...A third of our classes enroll with no testing, and when we compare the submitters and non-submitters, their accomplishments are stunningly parallel. The difference in grade point averages between submitters and non-submitters is five one-hundredths of a GPA point. The difference in their graduation rates is one-tenth of one percent. Five one-hundredths of a GPA point, and one-tenth of one percent in graduation rates? On this most Admissions offices decide who can go to college?" Today hundreds of colleges have made test scores optional, and largely due to the data from the long term study at Bates. The study is truly fascinating and it helps put into perspective some of the debates about standardized testing on the K-12 level too. With the gracious permission of Bill Hiss, readingtonparents.org has made available the Powerpoint slides and speaker notes of a November 2004 presentation about the 20 year study. The files are in Adobe PDF format: This long term experiment has helped Bates College double its applicant pool and make the student population more diverse. More importantly, perhaps, it has helped many students to realize potential that was always there but that was not necessarily captured by bubbles and a number two pencil. Of course, incoming college students can often face more testing down the line. Another point made by Bill during that radio broadcast: "Over the past twenty years, we’ve seen fascinating patterns in career choices and graduate degrees. Where success does not require further standardized testing, submitters and non-submitters are equally represented, in executive management, investment banking or finance. But in four fields where another standardized test is required—medicine, law, M.B.A. or Ph.D.—there are two to three times as many submitters as non-submitters. Does testing shape admission at the graduate level? Are graduate schools admitting the best students, or only the best test-takers?" If graduate work and therefore career choices are being shaped by testing, then how does it shape the efforts of students before college? The NCLB law and the accountability culture has put great emphasis on norm-referenced standardized testing. The results of such testing is the now the basis of funding, of curriculum, and of time on task in classrooms across our country. Addressing that issue, Bill minces no words: "Let me be blunt. We are heavily reliant on standardized testing at all levels—K-12, college and graduate school. But what we have seen at Bates indicates that this may be a monumental trip up a blind alley for America. It is based on a largely unexamined assumption: that these myriad tests, many of them quite new, will accurately and uniformly measure achievement or potential. But they won’t, at least based on Bates’ 20-year experience. Human intelligence may be so fluid, so multi-faceted, that no standardized test can 'capture' it. " The Bates study is worthy reading for anyone interested in coming to grips with how "accountability" and a reliance on so-called "objective" testing is concentrating public and private educational resources and potentially distorting progress. It may well be that we are eliminating the chance for large portions of new generations to reach their full potential--all in the interest of assigning an easy to read number to each individual being. Can human potential be summed up in a few digits? We may learn the answer the hard way.
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