On testing, don’t make it hard for students
You’ve likely seen the headlines lately about a few highly selective institutions that reversed the test-optional admissions policies they had adopted during the pandemic. These moves are enough to make any leader rethink testing, whether their current approach is new or longstanding.
For advice on how to handle standardized testing beyond hyper-selective institutions, I spoke last week with Marjorie Hass, president of the Council of Independent Colleges and a former president of Rhodes College and Austin College.
The bottom line, she said, is that we now live in a world where requiring applicants to submit test scores no longer makes you a better institution.
“That correlation has been weakened in people’s minds, which I think is good,” she said. That led her to two main points:
1. When you’re thinking about testing requirements, she said, first put yourself in the shoes of students and families.
This year’s applicants have faced an unusual amount of chaos and confusion, due to the Supreme Court’s decision on race-conscious admissions and the delays and technical glitches in rolling out the new federal financial-aid form. Until the FAFSA is functioning as intended, Hass said, think twice about any changes that students could see as making it harder to apply to college.
“This is the moment for institutions to be cautious about putting up any sort of barrier to the application process for students,” she said.
2. Colleges need to make testing decisions for themselves, not by imitating the elites (even if Raj Chetty advocated for such moves, as covered in this newsletter).
If test scores meaningfully inform admissions, placement, or scholarships, then they could have a role, she said. If not, they’re likely just a barrier. For open- or wide-access campuses, she said, test scores may not correlate with student success.
“My hope is that institutions are making these decisions looking at data and looking at their missions and not just sort of saying, ‘Well if that institution is doing it, then we should have to do it,’” she said.
A few more points she brought up:
Colleges don’t have enough data yet to know if test-optional policies paid off. Students who graduated from high school with those policies in place haven’t finished college yet, Hass pointed out. So it’s still too soon to know how the change might have affected graduation rate.
Don’t forget nontraditional students. How relevant are standardized tests to the growing population of adults or returning students?
Check your own SAT bias. It can be almost automatic to think that the test score is translatable to academic success because many people who work in higher education did well on the SAT, she said.
Remember that academic struggles rarely mean a student isn’t smart. When faculty or staff members raise concerns about a student’s performance, it’s much more often about character, learning style, drive, commitment, or curiosity, none of which are measured by the test, she said.