In the poem “Directions for Resisting the SAT” by Richard Hague, he talks about how everyone in high school has their own struggles that they go through at some point. Especially as a junior or senior when preparing for your future. Family members have given advice about what you should do with your life, attempting to guide you whether it’s helpful or not. We are supposed to know what we want to do for the rest of our lives by the time we are seventeen. This poem is the complete opposite of that.
Over time, the SAT’s format has changed to better measure a student’s ability and potential. Excessive stress is put on students to do well on the SAT’s, and causes them unnecessary strain. As college admissions become more and more competitive, the need for higher test scores has increased, despite fatal flaws in the SAT test itself. Although the SAT is used by thousands of colleges and taken by millions of students, many students' scores do not reflect their true abilities, and therefore the SAT test is useless.
In a country that promotes the ideas of grit, innovation, resourcefulness, and growth, I find it curious that American universities are still using standardized tests as an indicator of future success in college. Although standardized tests are only one factor in admissions to many colleges, they should not be used at all because they do not accurately predict the success of students in higher educational environments. Instead of using the SAT and ACT, admissions officers should put more weight on written essays, cumulative high school grade point average, extracurriculars, and letters of recommendation when deciding admissions. Although some may argue that the SAT and ACT offer a way of ranking students without factoring in grade point average, their ability to predict the future success of college students has not been demonstrated.
Standardized testing has not improved education in America. Standardized tests have been issued in schools all across the nation for years now. Some people like them and some people don’t. They do not help the student learn more information than they would without the tests. The U.S. has dropped from 18th highest scores in schools in the world to be in the 30’s on almost all of the subjects on the test.
Test content varies greatly from greatly from nation to nation, and in some cases from test to test. In the U.S. in particular, individual tests differ exceedingly since applicants will be asked ten questions from a list of one hundred by an interviewer and there is no specified process for how the interviewer selects questions. As a result, some individuals may receive harder questions than others. For instance, “Who wrote the Federalist Papers,” one possible question, is much more difficult to answer than “Who is the current President?” The inherent difference between these questions raises concerns among some researchers and test takers.
As students start their senior year of high school there are many changes in their life. This is the time of a student’s life when they decide what they want to do after they graduate high school. Students can decide to join the military, work, or continue their education at a college or university. For the students who continue their education they have many things to do before they finally get accepted. A common step they take is taking the The American College Test (ACT) and the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT).
Standardized Testing: Making College Admissions “Fair” Every year , the daunting prospect of undergoing standardized testing brings anxiety to thousands of high school students, and for good reason: a student’s performance on standardized college admission exams - most importantly, the ACT and SAT - is a major determinant in deciding where they will go to college. For decades, such standardized tests have been universally accepted as part of the admissions process: proponents argue, as Syverson (2007) explains, that such tests are the only way of standardizing college admissions when students from different schools have such widely varying profiles. However, in the past several decades a growing anti-testing movement has begun to poke holes
In America, there is quite a lengthy history of standardized testing. It all began in 1838 when the American education system began to form ideas of having tests that would be transformed into formal measures of student academic achievement. They were originally created to hopefully show student improvement and academic knowledge, which is also their most common use up to today. The commonly dreaded standardized test, the ACT, was created in order to help more colleges improve their enrollment numbers, and colleges needed a new standardized test in order to do so. But lately, these forms of standardized testing seem to be causing damage to students.
SATS and ACTS have been used for numerous years as a way to gauge a student’s academic success while in college. Students have the choice which test they would prefer to take and most colleges do not prefer one test over the other. There are a few key differences between the SAT and ACT, which may make one test more suitable than the other for those taking the tests. Many studies have proven that the SAT and ACT are not the best judge of future success, and that colleges should focus their applications more on past grades and accomplishments to decide which students should be accepted to their university. SATs and ACTs are not an effective measure of college readiness and future academic success.
Ted Tran Ms. Yelton English III DC 11 April 2023 The SAT and ACT needs to be changed The SAT and ACT have made a considerable impact on students nowadays in society through college admissions. Although there are benefits to the test such as scholarships and ranking, some students have struggles and unfairness through the test, especially with low-income or minority backgrounds. In addition, students also have had test anxiety while taking the SAT and ACT which discourages them from the test.
Introduction Standardized tests may be used for a wide variety of educational purposes. For example, they may be used to determine a young child’s readiness for kindergarten, identify students who need special-education services or specialized academic support, place students in different academic programs or course levels, or award diplomas and other educational certificates. Thesis Statement Standardized tests should not be eliminated completely, but should rather be evaluated in addition to other factors such as grades, extracurricular activities, and volunteer hours. This would take pressure off of students during standardized tests, allow colleges to see how well-rounded the students are, and give students who are better in other areas
For years, standardized testing has been colleges’ favorite way to consider a high school student for admission. One of these tests, and possibly the most commonly known and taken, is the SAT. This school year, the College Board has decided to change the format of the SAT and administered the first round of the new SAT on March 5, 2016. When asked about whether the changes are really necessary, coordinator Olga Henderson stated that “it is difficult to say because this has been the second time that it [the SAT] has been changed.
The exam was formerly constructed in the 1920s to measure "American Inteligence", so that smart white males can be put into recognized institutions such as Harvard. Today the SAT is used in college admissions. Because of the time period,The Authors didn’t take account racial diversity. Not only is the SAT biased to non-white test takers, but also to the
The tests only ask for knowledge or facts that the student can barely recall and when taking these tests they are taken on a school day and they take 2-3 hours to complete. Standardized testing began in the 1920s to test students ability but was renamed to Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) (Livia). The American College Testing (ACT) and the SAT are both used in the United States for college admission. However Swope and Miner believe that, “Standardized tests will never answer the questions of what our children need to learn to be leaders and informed citizens in a multicultural, ever-changing world” (Cole, Hulley and Quarles 19).
This method will prevent students from gaining the knowledge they seek and will not work to their advantage later on in the future. Most high school classes are teaching students how to take tests rather than teaching them how to skilfully answer them and master them. This causes students to enter college and university unprepared as they develop little skill-making abilities. High-stake standardized testing, such as the SAT, is burdensome for students. The standardized test scores that a student receives determine which university a student can attend and this greatly impacts his or her future.
