Nicholas Lemann, former dean of the Columbia Journalism School and author of the definitive work about standardized testing in America (The Big Test), has written a new book titled Higher Admissions: The Rise, Decline, and Return of Standardized Testing (Our Compelling Interests). The book will be published on September 17, 2024.

[Excerpts from an article in Harvard Magazine about the new book:]

Nicholas Lemann ’76, dean of the Columbia Journalism School from 2003 to 2013 (“The Press Professor,” September-October 2005, page 78), has, among other works, written the definitive history of standardized testing, The Big Test: The Secret History of the American Meritocracy (1999). A succinct new work, Higher Admissions: The Rise, Decline, and Return of Standardized Testing (Princeton, $22.95), puts the SAT and ACT and their use in a different perspective. If the ubiquity of standardized tests has come under challenge, he writes, “that isn’t a sign that the country has ‘turned against meritocracy,’ but that the tests, rather than representing an opposing force to the existing class system, by now, on the whole, reinforce it.” From chapter five, “Testing without Meritocracy”:

The question of who should get the slots in highly selective colleges and universities…is not the primary issue in American higher education, especially from the point of view of enhancing democracy and opportunity.…Only about 1 percent of American undergraduates attend the 25 or so colleges that accept fewer than 10 percent of their applicants. Only 3 percent attend the 50 or so colleges that accept fewer than 25 percent of their applicants.….

The most obvious problem in American higher education today is…its failure to produce a more widely successful experience for most students. Only about 40 percent of entering students get a bachelor’s degree in four years, and only about 60 percent in six years.…[T]he current low degree completion rate is a glaring gap in the American opportunity structure, and bringing it higher ought to be an urgent national priority.

The Evolution of Standardized Testing

The United States made an idealistic bet on universal elementary education in the nineteenth century, and a similar bet on universal high school education in the early twentieth century, and a similar bet on universal higher education in the late twentieth century.… Today…our progress in this long-running project of demonstrating a commitment to ordinary people’s potential has stalled, because the massive higher education system we have built is not delivering the results it should for so many of its students.…What would most enhance opportunity for most Americans would be a successful passage through [public sector] institutions.

Could testing serve as an aid in that project? Yes, potentially, if it were testing of a different kind from what we have become accustomed to over all these years. The system of higher education testing built around the SAT and similar tests—aptitude tests aimed at selection—was not designed with the primary aim of distributing educational opportunity widely.…

The SAT…was designed to help elite colleges select a small handful of students.…It wound up having a far broader effect, because of its use by many more colleges and universities than the original group, and because of its large impact on the high school experience of millions of students who don’t go to highly selective colleges, in addition to the thousands who will. If, today, we define the problem…as improving the too-low graduation rates and…the student learning experience at a large number of relatively unselective universities, we would be drawn to diagnostic rather than predictive tests, to achievement rather than aptitude tests, and to criterion-referenced rather than norm-referenced tests. And these…would have to go along with larger structural changes: a much greater emphasis on teaching and advising in higher education, and a strengthening of the curriculum in high school. This ought to be a national project on the scale of the project that brought us the current higher education admissions system, or on an even grander scale.

 
The decision by Illinois to abandon SAT testing (after 8 years) and reinstate the ACT (for 6 years at a cost of $53 million) has significant commercial impact in the battle between the two exams, but the switch also has educational ramifications, specifically due to the recent alignment of high school curricula with the SAT. The Record of Chicago's North Shore has details:

[Excerpts]

Incoming juniors and seniors are in for a big change as Illinois is returning to the ACT in spring 2025, leaving the SAT by the wayside.

The Illinois State Board of Education’s contract with College Board, the nonprofit that administers the SAT, lapsed on June 30, which led ISBE to open the bidding and solicit proposals from testing companies during its routine procurement process.

In May of this year, ISBE awarded a six-year, $53 million contract to ACT as the official provider of the Illinois accountability assessment required for graduation.

Dr. Peter Tragos, the assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction at New Trier, told The Record that ISBE’s decision is “unfortunate” and “disappointing” as it undoes a lot of the work and professional learning that districts across Illinois have done to align their curricula with the SAT suite of assessments.

“In terms of standardized tests, I’m not so wedded to only the SAT or ACT,” Tragos said. “It’s much more, to me, about consistency so that districts have longitudinal data on which to build and design curricula, and we lose that longitudinal data when we go back and forth between standardized tests. … Consistency benefits students the most, [and] test familiarity is a real advantage in standardized test-taking.”

Tragos and Dr. Paul Sally, New Trier’s superintendent, were among the educators who wrote letters to Dr. Steven Isoye, chair of the Illinois State Board of Education, and Dr. Tony Sanders, state superintendent of education, advocating that the state renew its contract with the College Board to maintain consistency and preserve the work districts have done in making the progress toward curriculum alignment, particularly through the aforementioned longitudinal data available to them with the SAT suite of assessments.

Districts across Illinois will now have whole swaths of students who are unfamiliar with the ACT.

The SAT served as the official state exam for eight years, meaning schools were using the full SAT suite of assessments to help students build familiarity with the test format, administering the PSAT (or, Preliminary SAT) to ninth- and 10th-graders. The class of 2026 took the PSAT 8/9 in ninth grade, the PSAT 10 in tenth grade, and will now take the ACT in spring 2025 having never seen ACT prep in the classroom.

 
Inside Higher Ed looks at the new version of the ACT, which came about due to changes in the rival SAT:

[Excerpts]

The ACT announced two major changes to its eponymous exam last week, four months after the former nonprofit was acquired by the venture firm Nexus Capital.

Starting next spring, the ACT science section will be optional for students—just like the writing section, which has been optional since 2005. The test will also be a full hour shorter, with 44 fewer questions and truncated reading passages. An ACT spokesperson said the changes will make the test cheaper, though he did not say how much cheaper.

Unlike the SAT, which relaunched as a shorter, fully digital exam in March, the ACT will continue to be available both online and in pencil-and-paper form.

In an exclusive interview with Inside Higher Ed, ACT CEO Janet Godwin said the company’s main goal is to provide students with a more personally relevant exam and reduce stress and time demands on test takers.

“That is something we’ve heard loud and clear from students and in stakeholder research: more flexibility, more choices,” she said. “We want to support students where they are.”

Godwin said the ACT’s internal research showed that the score for the shortened exam without the science component is comparable to the composite score for the traditional exam; both are scored on a 36-point scale.

The new test won’t be available to everyone at once. Students taking the ACT online will have access to the “enhanced” test, as the spokesperson called it, next spring, and international students will get the new test in fall 2025. But for students taking it in person on specific dates sponsored by school districts, it won’t be available until spring 2026.

Godwin said ACT wanted to “phase in” adoption and implementation and give state partners and school districts time to adjust to the changes. But the gap means that, at least for one application cycle, colleges will receive ACT scores from two “fundamentally” different exams, as the company’s own press release put it, which admissions offices will have to evaluate as essentially the same test.

When asked about the potential challenges of comparing the two, Godwin again cited internal research.

“We’re confident in the research that we’ve done, the research that we continue to do, that those scores mean the same thing,” she said. “These changes are validated by research.”

When Inside Higher Ed asked to see the data, the ACT spokesperson wrote by email that the company’s research team is still in the process of “conducting a linking study so the scores of the enhanced test can be compared to the current test” and promised to forward the findings once they are “ready for publication.”

Akil Bello, director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing and a standardized test critic, said the supposed psychometric comparability of the two tests was “hard to swallow.”

“Essentially, the statement from the testing industry appears to be, ‘As long as it has bubbles, it’s just fine,’” he said.

Michael Nettles, professor of psychometrics at Morgan State University and the former senior vice president for policy evaluation and research at the Educational Testing Service, said he believes it is possible ACT’s research shows a strong correlation between the two versions. But “it would be great to see the data,” he added.

“Even when it’s based upon evidence, there are questions about how representative the data are of the populations taking the test, which is why they need to be much more transparent,” he said. “Instead it’s like the old days, where we all have to place a lot of blind trust in the assessments.”

 
An article from CBS12 offers insight into the new, adaptive SAT:

[Excerpts]

National Test Prep Association director of outreach, David Blobaum says this is the largest re-design in test history.

“The new test is going to be shorter. It's going to be 46 minutes shorter. It's going to be taken on a computer instead of on paper. There's now no longer any long reading passages with multiple questions on that reading passage," said Blobaum.

There will also be an on-screen calculator that students can use instead of bringing one with them.

Besides going digital, the biggest change is adaptive testing, which means the test questions change based on a student’s performance.

“The first section will start out with hard, medium and easy questions. If a student does well, they're going to go towards a section that's now hard and medium questions," said Blobaum, “But if a student doesn't do as well, it'll give them medium and easy questions.”

The math and reading section of the test follow the adaptive model.

Blobaum says this will allow students to get their highest possible score.

“That's going to be especially nice for the test takers who get lower scores, because it's going to adapt to their performance, give them easier questions," said Blobaum.

But in order to possibly get the max score of 1,600, students need to be on the harder question track.

 
The City of Baltimore will continue to pay for SAT exams for all juniors and seniors:

[Excerpts]

The Baltimore City Board of School Commissioners unanimously approved increased funding Tuesday night to continue paying for Preliminary SAT, SAT and Advanced Placement testing for all students.

The cost of a three-year contract starting July 2023 with the College Board, which administers the tests, has risen from the original $1.3 million to more than $2.5 million.

Last school year, 10th and 11th graders each took the PSAT while 11th and 12th graders took the SAT on a school day, according to board documents. Next school year, the district plans to administer the PSAT to ninth graders.

In June 2022, the University System of Maryland Board of Regents voted to remove the SAT requirements for applicants. At the time, University of Maryland, College Park President Darryll Pines said the SAT traditionally has been biased against students of color. In 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic when in-person testing was not available, all the schools within the system shifted to a test-optional model.

Eric Jefferson, the district’s executive director of secondary success and innovation, told the board the PSAT and SAT are important steps for students to secure scholarships, while the number of students taking AP courses has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.

“The value of the SAT is coming back,” Jefferson said. “The University of Maryland system, they put a consent decree up until 2025, and the Board of Regents will be revoting in this current year to reinstate the SAT.”

Jefferson added that the PSAT is used to determine National Merit Scholars, which opens doors to scholarships and also raises the district’s profile in many national rating systems.

In the original $1.3 million contract, the district budgeted over $1 million for PSAT and SAT testing and $270,000 for AP tests, and the increased funding provides “flexibility in the contract,” as well as training for teachers, according to board documents. Jefferson said the increased funding will mostly go to offering more AP exams.