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Link: https://blog.prepscholar.com/the-complete-guide-to-sat-optional-colleges
Many schools have made it optional during the Covid years due to lack of availability of test prep and test anxiety. The CA State system by its own admission is using the approach for equity reasons.
My daughter is looking at schools right now and I haven't seen one that isn't test optional. It will be interesting to see how many schools adopt the policy long-term.
He gets great grades but has a hard time with standardized tests. My wife is in higher Ed and part of it is Covid but for many schools, it’s enrollment & $. There’s also a significant decrease in young men wanting to go to college.
"Belasco's advice to schools that really want to reach underrepresented students:
"Put your money where your mouth is ... You need to make college affordable, and you need to find these students where they are."
Two big tests for schools that, if they want to diversify, are not optional."
Link: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2015/09/03/436584244/why-are-colleges-really-going-test-optional
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There’s a reason many US companies offshore science, tech and math jobs and leave customer service and the soft skill work to the Yankees. It’s about all our grads are capable of.
Google "standards-based grading." First objective from meetings this past week: "train parents to stop focus on grades and instead focus on learning."
Behavior and attendance. We’re speeding to a Brazil 80/20 society.
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They are idiots themselves.
It’s almost like they are saying that minorities can’t do well on the tests regardless, so just scrap the tests. Kinda patronizing. I’m sure someone will point out how the tests suffer from inherent bias. BS of course.
because the recommended areas of study are coming from the authoritative source itself. It was well done also.
I am no fan of the SAT/ACT companies who have mistreated their customers for decades as a business, but they do serve a necessary function, and have achieved a fair level of refinement of the product.
as far as economic backgrounds go.
Students generally perform better who are from higher income neighborhoods that can afford better facilities. The quality of educator
is better and these schools tend to be better all around. Using standardized testing has always come under attack
when there's a clash of economic backgrounds. Better neighborhoods pay for better educators better
facilities and have a focus on creating better test takers. Lower economic neighborhoods have the opposite.
At least that's what I've read. I'm sure there are stats that could prove either way.
Personally, I don't think it dumbs down the student, I think it just shows off the better student.
tests. I have two girls.... both went to the exact same elementary, middle, and high schools. Both had many of the same teachers. One scored a 33 on the ACT without studying for it, the other scored a 20. The lower score daughter has much more common sense than the higher scoring daughter, but struggles more with school work in general. We have helped them both the same. Guess what, that is just how they were made. Another example of libs trying to create a problem that doesn't exist so they can propose a solution for a contingent of the population that will fall prey to the gamesmanship and give them more votes.
a common metric to compare aptitude evenly across all demographics.
To now say removing it levels the playing field is farcical.
Our country grows weaker by the day and weaker with every political correct policy put into place.
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selection? Are we going to do a lottery to see who gets admitted to the strong universities and who gets to prove the worthiness of attempting careers in medicine, law, engineering, accounting and fields which require great study and effort to succeed.
by the ignorant. We spend enormous amounts per student in these schools. In reality, spending per student in poor schools is only $500 less than in wealthy public schools, with an average per-pupil spending of $13K nationally. So, you're wrong there. You also don't realize that the low-performing urban schools typically pay higher salaries and often attract some of the best teachers in the business. They're about the only ones who can make it long-term in these schools because the schools mirror, and actually magnify, the social pathologies of the communities in which they're located: zero value placed upon education, little value placed on human life, complete hostility to authority and authority figures, rejection of all the social norms that bind together a functional, healthy community, and acceptance of grift and corruption. Grift and corruption aren't tolerated elsewhere, while they're expected and accepted in these schools. The teaching environment is thus abysmal, and usually dangerous. You know it's bad when AFT and NEA have actually been forced to publicize complaints from their members about student assaults on teachers. The teachers in poor urban schools really aren't any worse than those in other places. Like any corporation's manager class, the teaching profession and our education system are not made on the exceptional teachers, they're made on the average teachers, and average teachers will not fare very well in that type of environment. Very few Americans have a real understanding of how chaotic and divorced these schools are from anything approaching education. Our national averages are pretty bad compared to other nations. If we subtracted the top 10% of high-performing districts, you wouldn't want to know with which ones we'd be comparable, and if we took our bottom quarter, we'd be comparable with what used to be called "third-world countries." A few years ago, a Philly news journalist investigated school performance in the city. He found five...five...entire elemntary schools where not a single kid was reading at grade level. Not one. That had zero to do with funding because Philly schools are generously funded like in most all of our big cities. We've known for over thirty years that more funding does not equal better academic performance, anyways. Pointing to funding is a way for guilt-ridden white liberals to avoid confronting the causes that do not comport with their basic assumptions about human beings and how "systems" actually function, or, in this case, do not function. Their solution to every social problem is to spend more money on it. Rarely does the research support this instinct. Certainly not in education. You can increase spending 25% tomorrow and it won't improve a thing. Things will continue to get worse because the social pathologies in these places continue to grow and worsen.
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"Better neighborhoods pay for better educators better facilities and have a focus on creating better test takers. Lower economic neighborhoods have the opposite."
The use of pay implies funding, and that would imply funding is unequal.
I guess you mean that rich parents pay for things like tutors and donate for facilities to be improved? I can agree with you on that. I think MAS would too.
One neighborhood affording better teachers and better facilities doesn’t mean the poorer neighborhood schools are under funded.
You again mention one neighborhood "affording." This implies that the poorer neighborhood cannot afford it, it being better teachers. Teachers are part of funding, which implies that poorer neighborhoods are not funded to be able to afford better teachers.
If you meant something different, then by all means expand upon your thought and tell us. I tried to take a guess at what you might have meant.
Rich areas are always going to have a money advantage, you cannot legislate that away.
If you thought I was being a smart ass then my apologies, that was not my intention, was merely trying to show how your comments could be taken.
Eliminating them virtually prevents fixing the preparedness root cause which is what you described. Also, putting kids into colleges and universities they aren't prepared for is probably doing them a disservice.
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Right, because California politicians are sober, data-based chaps and chapettes, doing what is right, rather than what satisfies their unique constituencies and donors.
Where is the evidence that the ACT/SAT are biased and where is the evidence that eliminating them will benefit the groups allegedly oppressed by them?
All joking aside, I do seem to recall seeing multiple articles before about how standardized tests are not fair and disproportionately go bad against people of color, except for the mostly white Asian peoples, who are always the exception to the white supremacy rule.
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institutions.
Pathetic.
Given the grade inflation rampant in the country and so many school starting to also leaning away from GPA’s and class ranking, the decisions will come down choices based on anything but who is worthy academically.
Another of the few avenues for poor kids born without amazing athletic ability, size, or the proper gender or melanin or sexual orientation to make their way up in this world.
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