Colleges should reassess their standardized-testing policies because of the “extraordinary hardships” the novel coronavirus will pose to the next round of applicants, especially low-income students.
That’s what the National Association for College Admission Counseling, or NACAC, urged institutions to do in a forceful written statement on Wednesday. Many longstanding admissions practices, the statement said, “take on different meaning in the alternate reality in which we find ourselves.”
NACAC — whose members include more than 15,000 admissions officers, high-school counselors, and independent educational consultants — expressed deep concerns about testing companies’ proposals for at-home administration of the ACT and SAT later this year, as well as the revamped Advanced Placement exams that high-school students will take online in May. If high schools do not reopen this fall, the association said, requiring online college-entrance exams would “further jeopardize educational equity and raise legitimate questions about the fairness of admission practices in this cycle.”
Jayne Fonash, NACAC’s president, told The Chronicle on Wednesday that she was worried about challenges that applicants on the wrong side of the digital divide are confronting because of Covid-19. “Not every student has a computer at home, a network that’s stable, or a quiet place to take a test,” she said. “Many counselors are concerned about the impact of all those variables on students’ access to standardized testing.”
As colleges and universities have struggled to devise policies to respond to the quickly evolving situation, here are links to The Chronicle’s key coverage of how this worldwide health crisis is affecting campuses.
Like many big-tent associations, NACAC has never been an industry watchdog. As such, it has long avoided barking concerns at the world. That made Wednesday’s sharply worded statement even more striking to some longtime members who welcomed the group’s urgent tone. In its statement, NACAC contended that ACT Inc. and the College Board had “failed to communicate openly and fully” with admissions officers and college counselors about recent or proposed changes in their tests: “NACAC and its members have felt blindsided by recent testing-organization decisions, and are left to answer questions from students, families, and other stakeholders on the behalf of the organizations with little to no solid information.”
Fonash said many members of the association are concerned about this year’s Advanced Placement exams. Previously, most of the exams lasted two to three hours and included multiple-choice questions and a few short-answer questions. This spring, exams will be 45 minutes long, with just one or two free-response questions; for the first time, they will be “open-book/open-note.”
“On the college side, there’s very limited information about the reliability and validity of these tests,” Fonash said. “Will they really represent that student’s mastery of the material covered in that course? How much can we count on those scores as being a true, fair representation of a student’s ability to do well on a standardized test?”
Since March, many selective colleges — though far from all of them — have dropped or temporarily suspended their ACT/SAT requirements as a result of disruptions caused by Covid-19. Cornell University is among a handful of institutions that cited concerns about the possibility that students would take online versions of the ACT and SAT this year. “This method of testing can’t yet be validated as an indicator of college success during the upcoming cycle,” the university said in a statement announcing a one-year suspension of its testing requirements. “It seems likely that differences in access to technology and timing will mean some students will have less chance to succeed through these online testing opportunities than others.”
NACAC sent copies of its statement to ACT and the College Board, according to Fonash, who said she welcomed discussion of the association’s concerns.
In a written statement on Wednesday, the College Board said it would make Advanced Placement exams and the SAT “as widely available as possible for students who wish to test, regardless of the economic or public-health circumstances.” In the unlikely event that high schools remain closed this fall, the organization said, “we would work to ensure that at-home SAT testing is accessible to all students who want to test. We know no educators can close the digital divide completely, but we will continue to build partnerships to address the challenge.”
The College Board also said it had sought input from its members about adjusting to Covid-19, including hosting more than a dozen webinars and emailing “hundreds of thousands” of educators. ACT declined to respond to NACAC’s statement.
NACAC, which recently nixed its list of mandatory practices following an antitrust investigation by the Department of Justice, isn’t trying to tell colleges what to do, Fonash said: “We’re just asking them to make an ethical consideration of what’s in the best interests of students.”
The association’s statement concludes with a thought about trade-offs. “If the potential cost to students and families outweighs the benefit of having access to test scores, NACAC asks that institutions consider the effects of their testing requirements on disadvantaged students in this unprecedented admission cycle, and consider pursuing policies that advance the interests of equity and fairness.”
