Millennial Debate Standardized Testing Debate
Grades Best Predictor of College Success
Download 1.17 Mb.
|
- Navigate this page:
- High school grades are better predictors than newly designed tests
- High school grades are the most reliable predictor of college success
- SAT scores more closely associated with students’ socioeconomic background than grades
- Grades better predictors of 4 year GPAs and college graduation rates
- A2: Getting Rid of SAT Shifts to Achievement Testing
- A2: New (2005) SAT is Better
- New SAT does not add predictive power
- A2: Should Use AP Tests
Grades Best Predictor of College SuccessHigh school grades are the best predictor of academic successJoseph Soares, 2013, Joseph A. Soares is a Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University. His book The Power of Privilege: Yale and America’s Elite Colleges (2007) was instrumental in Wake Forest’s decision to go test-optional in admissions. An earlier book on universities in the United Kingdom, The Decline of Privilege: The Modernization of Oxford University (1999), won a national award from the American Sociological Association. For most of 2008, he was a member of the National Education Policy Group for Barack Obama’s campaign for U.S. President. Dr. Soares organized the national “Rethinking Admissions” conference held at Wake Forest University in April 2009. Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions, Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition, page number at end of the card The limitations of the SAT beyond its one-dimensional view of intelligence may also include racial, ethnic, and gender biases that are due to the mechanics of test design. Chapter 6, by Jay Rosner, Executive Director of the Princeton Review Foundation, explains how the test question selection process may penalize women, ethnic minorities, and racial minorities. The statistical case against the SAT (which also applies to the ACT) is that it does not significantly enhance the ability of admissions staff to predict the academic potential of applicants. Insofar as the SAT is a measure of analytic ability, it contributes little beyond what we already know from high school about cognitive performance. Lest there be any confusion about this, one should keep in mind that high school grade-point average (HSGPA) has always been the best single academic variable predicting college grades— that point has been repeatedly admitted even by the SAT’s sponsor, the College Board (Kobrin, Patterson, Shaw, Mattern, & Barbuti, 2008). Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions (Kindle Locations 228-230). Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition. High school grades are better predictors than newly designed testsJoseph Soares, 2013, Joseph A. Soares is a Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University. His book The Power of Privilege: Yale and America’s Elite Colleges (2007) was instrumental in Wake Forest’s decision to go test-optional in admissions. An earlier book on universities in the United Kingdom, The Decline of Privilege: The Modernization of Oxford University (1999), won a national award from the American Sociological Association. For most of 2008, he was a member of the National Education Policy Group for Barack Obama’s campaign for U.S. President. Dr. Soares organized the national “Rethinking Admissions” conference held at Wake Forest University in April 2009. Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions, Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition, page number at end of the card New in-depth studies described in Chapters 7– 9 by authors from Wake Forest University, the University of Georgia, and Johns Hopkins University explore the relative merits of the academic and demographic data available in an applicant’s file as predictors of college grades. We accept limited terms of debate about the SAT— the metric of first-year college grades— because this is the measure used by the ETS and the College Board to justify their test (Kobrin et al., 2008). The independent case studies presented here— from three types of selective institutions (liberal arts college, flagship public university, private research university)— offer similar findings that are dramatically different from the claims made by the testing industry. These studies show that the New SAT adds 1– 4 percentage points to a regression model’s ability to predict grades— and that is not a very impressive justification for the troubles and expenses endured by millions of America’s test-taking families. Furthermore, there are important variations in the effectiveness of the test among types of institutions and types of students, but not in the effectiveness of high school grades. Test scores, for example, tell us less about how well a black youth will do at a public university than they do about how the same individual will perform at a private liberal arts college; but high school grades work equally well at both. These three case studies show that test scores are unreliable and inconstant predictors, whereas high school grades are dependable and uniform— and that is a complete reversal of the conventional wisdom offered by the testing industry. If regression models predicting college performance typically explain 20– 30% of what matters to one’s grade-point average, then clearly admissions remain more art than science. Our best models fail to capture 70– 80% of what predicts grades, and that leaves a lot of room for the discerning judgment of admissions staff. There is nothing that can replace human judgment based on a conscientious examination of each applicant’s file and, whenever possible, face-to-face interviews. Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions (Kindle Locations 240-246). Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition. High school grades are the most reliable predictor of college successRichard Atkinson & Saul Geiser, 2013, Saul Geiser is a Research Associate in the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley. He is former Director of Research for Admissions and Outreach for the University of California system, Richard C. Atkinson is President Emeritus of the University of California and Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science and Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions, Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition, page number at end of card A first order of business is to put admissions tests in proper perspective. High school grades are the best indicator of student readiness for college, and standardized tests are useful primarily as a supplement to the high school record. High school grades are sometimes viewed as a less reliable indicator than standardized tests because grading standards differ across schools. Yet although grading standards do vary by school, grades still outperform standardized tests in predicting college outcomes: irrespective of the quality or type of school attended, cumulative grade point average (GPA) in academic subjects in high school has proved to be the best overall predictor of student performance in college. This finding has been confirmed in the great majority of “predictive-validity” studies conducted over the years, including studies conducted by the testing agencies themselves (see Burton & Ramist, 2001, and Morgan, 1989, for useful summaries of studies conducted since 1976). 1 Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions (Kindle Locations 517-523). Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition. SAT scores more closely associated with students’ socioeconomic background than gradesRichard Atkinson & Saul Geiser, 2013, Saul Geiser is a Research Associate in the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley. He is former Director of Research for Admissions and Outreach for the University of California system, Richard C. Atkinson is President Emeritus of the University of California and Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science and Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions, Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition, page number at end of card However, correlations of this kind can be misleading because they mask the contribution of socioeconomic and other factors to the prediction. Family income and parents’ education, for example, are correlated with SAT scores and also with college outcomes, so much of the apparent predictive power of the SAT actually reflects the proxy effects of socioeconomic status. Berkeley economist Jesse Rothstein (2004) conservatively estimates that traditional validity studies that omit socioeconomic variables overstate the predictive power of the SAT by 150%. 2 High school grades, on the other hand, are less closely associated with students’ socioeconomic background and thus retain their predictive power even when controls for socioeconomic status are introduced, as shown in validity studies that employ more fully specified multivariate regression models. Such models generate standardized regression coefficients that allow one to compare the predictive weight of different admissions factors when all other factors are held constant. Using this analytical approach, the predictive advantage of high school grades over standardized tests is more evident (Geiser, 2002; Geiser & Santelices, 2007). 3 Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions (Kindle Locations 528-537). Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition. Grades better predictors of 4 year GPAs and college graduation ratesRichard Atkinson & Saul Geiser, 2013, Saul Geiser is a Research Associate in the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley. He is former Director of Research for Admissions and Outreach for the University of California system, Richard C. Atkinson is President Emeritus of the University of California and Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science and Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions, Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition, page number at end of card The predictive superiority of high school grades has also been obscured by the outcome measures typically employed in validity studies. Most studies have looked only at freshman grades in college; relatively few have examined longer term outcomes such as 4-year graduation rate or cumulative GPA in college. A large-scale study at the University of California (UC) that did track long-term long-term outcomes found that high school grades were decisively superior to standardized tests in predicting 4-year graduation rate and cumulative college GPA (Geiser & Santelices, 2007). The California findings have been confirmed in a recent national study of college completion by William Bowen and his colleagues, Crossing the Finish Line, based on a sample of students from a broad range of public colleges and universities: “High school grades are a far better predictor of both four-year and six-year graduation rates than are SAT/ ACT test scores— a central finding that holds within each of the six sets of public universities that we study” Why high school grades have a predictive advantage over standardized tests is not fully understood. It is undeniable that grading standards differ across high schools, yet standardized test scores are based on a single sitting of 3 or 4 hours, whereas high school GPA is based on repeated sampling of student performance over a period of years. In addition, college preparatory classes present many of the same academic challenges that students will face in college— term papers, labs, final exams— so it should not be surprising that prior performance in such activities would be predictive of later performance. Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions (Kindle Locations 545-549). Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition. A2: Getting Rid of SAT Shifts to Achievement TestingThat is goodCharles Murray, 2013, Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, DC. He is a co-author (with Richard J. Herrnstein) of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994). Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions, Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition, page number at the end of card Getting rid of the SAT will destroy the coaching industry as we know it. Coaching for the SAT is seen as the teaching of tricks and strategies— a species of cheating— not as supplementary education. The retooled coaching industry will focus on the achievement tests, but insofar as the offerings consist of cram courses for tests in topics such as U.S. history or chemistry, the taint will be reduced. A low-income student shut out of opportunity for an SAT coaching school has the sense of being shut out of mysteries. Being shut out of a cram course is less daunting. Students know that they can study for a history or chemistry exam on their own. A coaching industry that teaches content along with test-taking techniques will have the additional advantage of being much better pedagogically— at least the students who take the coaching courses will be spending some of their time learning history or chemistry. The substitution of achievement tests for the SAT will put a spotlight on the quality of the local high school’s curriculum. If achievement test scores are getting all of the parents’ attention in the college admissions process, the courses that prepare for those achievement tests will get more of their attention as well, and the pressure for those courses to improve will increase. Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions (Kindle Locations 1687-1688). Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition. A2: New (2005) SAT is BetterThe new, 2005 SAT did not improve predictive powerJoseph Soares, 2013, Joseph A. Soares is a Professor of Sociology at Wake Forest University. His book The Power of Privilege: Yale and America’s Elite Colleges (2007) was instrumental in Wake Forest’s decision to go test-optional in admissions. An earlier book on universities in the United Kingdom, The Decline of Privilege: The Modernization of Oxford University (1999), won a national award from the American Sociological Association. For most of 2008, he was a member of the National Education Policy Group for Barack Obama’s campaign for U.S. President. Dr. Soares organized the national “Rethinking Admissions” conference held at Wake Forest University in April 2009. Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions, Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition, page number at end of the card Chapter 2 is an extensive essay on a century of experience with standardized tests in admissions by Richard Atkinson, former President of the University of California, and Saul Geiser, who is affiliated with the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley. Atkinson and Geiser’s critique of the SAT in 2001 was a turning point in the national discussion of testing. California made the SAT a successful nationwide test in the late 1960s when it decided to require it, and in 2001 California threatened to pull the pillars out of the very testing edifice it helped to create by abandoning the SAT. California found high school grades and subject tests to best predict college performance, and to do so without as many disparities between social groups as are found with the SAT. In reaction, the Educational Testing Service (ETS) offered to create a new test that would address California’s concerns about fairness and predictive power, if only California would give it another chance. California accepted ETS’s proposal, which, like the second-marriage cliché on the triumph of hope over experience, brought sad results. The New SAT, which was released in 2005, has been widely judged a failure. Relative to the older SAT, it is longer and more expensive, it has no more predictive power, and it has higher test-score disparities between racial groups. Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions (Kindle Locations 195-198). Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition. New SAT does not add predictive powerRichard Atkinson & Saul Geiser, 2013, Saul Geiser is a Research Associate in the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley. He is former Director of Research for Admissions and Outreach for the University of California system, Richard C. Atkinson is President Emeritus of the University of California and Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science and Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions, Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition, page number at end of card Nevertheless, as an admissions test, the New SAT still falls short in important respects. The New SAT has three sections: Writing, Mathematics, and a third called Critical Reading. Not surprisingly, given the University of California’s earlier findings, research by the College Board shows that writing is the most predictive of the three sections. Yet College Board researchers also find that, overall, the New SAT is not statistically superior to the old test in predicting success in college: “The results show that the changes made to the SAT did not substantially change how well the test predicts first-year college performance” (Kobrin et al., 2008, p. 1). This result was unexpected, given the strong contribution of the writing test and the fact that the New SAT is almost an hour longer than the old test. 8 A possible explanation is provided by a study by economists at the University of Georgia (Cornwell, Mustard, & Van Parys, 2008). That study found that adding the writing section to the New SAT has rendered the critical reading section almost entirely redundant, so that it does not add significantly to the prediction. The critical reading section is essentially the same as the verbal reasoning section of the old SAT I. It appears that the College Board was trying to have the best of both worlds. The College Board could and did tell admissions officers that the critical reading and math sections of the New SAT were comparable to the verbal and mathematical reasoning sections of the old SAT I. If admissions officers disliked the New SAT, they could ignore the writing exam and then for all practical purposes the old and New SATs would be equivalent. 9 Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions (Kindle Locations 617-629). Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition. A2: Should Use AP TestsAP tests not a useful alternativeCharles Murray, 2013, Charles Murray is the W. H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, DC. He is a co-author (with Richard J. Herrnstein) of The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life (1994). Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions, Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition, page number at the end of card The College Board also administers 1-hour achievement tests in English literature, United States history, world history, biology, chemistry, physics, two levels of math, Chinese, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Latin, and Spanish. These are now called “subject tests” or SAT II (more labels I will ignore). I do not discuss the College Board’s advanced placement (AP) tests that can enable students to get college credit, because they cannot serve as a substitute for either the SAT or the achievement tests. Not all schools offer AP courses, and the AP’s 5-point scoring system conveys limited information. Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions (Kindle Locations 1501-1505). Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition. National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). (2008). Report of the Commission on the Use of Standardized Tests in Undergraduate Admission. Arlington, VA: Author. Soares, Joseph A. (2011-09-30). SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional College Admissions (Kindle Locations 111-112). Teachers College Press. Kindle Edition. Directory: uploads uploads -> 587 Return function, r i(X) r i(0) r i(1) r i(2) r i(3) 1 0 2 4 6 Thermal Station, I 2 0 1 5 6 3 0 3 5 6 10 uploads -> Department of science and humanities department of mathematics part-a questions and answers uploads -> The Case Against the nypd’s Quota-Driven ‘Broken Windows’ Policing What Is It? uploads -> For want of a nail uploads -> Ownership Models There are two different types of ownership models uploads -> Police Militarization uploads -> City of rising star regular meting thursday, july 14, 2016 uploads -> Township of winfield uploads -> Stop Militarizing Law Enforcement Act of 2014 uploads -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten-Point Program What We Want Now! Download 1.17 Mb. Share with your friends:
|