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The Washington Post
SAT reclaims title of
most widely used college admission test
For first time in seven years, more graduating seniors took the SAT
than the rival ACT.
By Nick Anderson
October 23
The SAT has vaulted past the rival ACT to reclaim its long-held
position as the nation’s most widely used college admission test,
according to data provided Tuesday to The Washington Post.
Nearly 2 million U.S. students in the class of 2018 took the SAT during
high school, compared with 1.91 million who took the ACT. A surge in
delivery of the SAT on school days helped fuel the switch.
Counting international students, 2.1 million who graduated from high
school this year took the SAT. That was up more than 20 percent from
the previous year’s global total of 1.7 million.
The ACT had been the overall leader since 2012. But the College Board,
which owns the SAT, pushed to expand its market share in recent years
by revising the test and entering into deals with numerous states and
school systems to give students the exam. New contracts with Colorado
and Illinois, College Board data show, were instrumental in the SAT’s
growth.
There are stylistic and substantive variations between the tests. The
ACT includes a science section, and the SAT doesn’t. A perfect score on
the ACT is 36. On the SAT, it’s 1600. But those differences may not
matter much for most students.
Both exams claim to be aligned with the school curriculum. Both are
about three hours long, not counting breaks and an optional essay. Both
focus on math, reading and writing. Colleges will accept a score from
either.
David Coleman, president of the College Board, said the SAT’s growth
validated the decision to launch a new version in 2016 with less of the
tricky vocabulary that was long a hallmark of the test. The new version
also dropped the “guessing penalty,” a feature that deducted points for
wrong answers.
“It was essential for the College Board’s mission that the new SAT was
seen as more straightforward and approachable,” Coleman said. Too
often, he said, the older version was seen “narrowly as a test for
advanced kids.”
Even as the SAT has grown, the College Board has drawn criticism this
year over its centerpiece test.
In July, many students and parents erupted when they received math
scores from the June SAT. It turned out that version was somewhat
easier than previous exams. That affected the distribution of scores. A
few wrong answers can lead to a lower score on an easier test than on a
harder one. The College Board said the scoring process, known as
equating, “ensures fairness for all students.”
In August, a version of the SAT was given in the United States that
some observers said included questions previously seen in Asia. The
father of a U.S. student filed a class-action lawsuit on behalf of
those who took the August test, alleging that the College Board had
allowed a security breach that put many at a disadvantage. The College
Board said it has significantly bolstered test security in recent years
and will cancel scores for anyone found to have cheated.
Coleman, in a telephone interview, declined to comment further on those
controversies.
The SAT, first administered in 1926, was long the preeminent admission
test. The ACT launched in 1959 as an alternative to measure student
achievement.
ACT officials declined to comment on recent SAT gains.
“We’re not focused on competition,” ACT spokesman Ed Colby said. “We’re
focused on serving as many students as we can and on our mission.”
Within the past decade, the testing landscape has evolved rapidly as
many states have opted to pay the ACT or College Board to deliver exams
during school hours. Students can take those versions free of charge,
where available, or they can pay to take the tests on the weekends.
Illinois recently began offering the SAT to all juniors in public high
schools. As a result, SAT usage in that state spiked from 12,402 in the
Class of 2017 to 145,919 in the Class of 2018. ACT usage in the state
dropped by more than half, from 134,901 in the Class of 2017 to 62,626
this year.
Tony Smith, the Illinois superintendent of education, said the switch
was initially a “shock to the system." But he said parents and
educators are pleased with the results because the test lines up with
the state curriculum. Students are able to take a practice version,
called the PSAT, in 10th grade. Then, they can get help through free
online tutoring, Smith said, and measure possible growth when they take
the real SAT in 11th grade. “That speaks to the quality of the
experience,” he said, " and how student-centered it is."
Illinois officials said they are finalizing a testing contract with the
College Board that will cost $59.8 million over six years.
Some question the value of such contracts at a time when many colleges
have dropped requirements for admission testing. “Think about the
millions of hours of class instruction that are lost preparing for
standardized tests,” said Jon Boeckenstedt, associate vice president
for enrollment management at DePaul University in Chicago. The nation’s
largest Catholic university, with nearly 23,000 students, DePaul
dropped its testing requirement for the class that entered in 2012. The
elite University of Chicago went test-optional this year.
Whether a student sends in ACT or SAT scores, Boeckenstedt said, is “as
close to utterly irrelevant as you could describe. It makes no
difference to us.”
SAT usage also spiked in Colorado because of a contract with the
College Board. There, 58,790 in the Class of 2018 took the test, 10
times the total of the previous year. The SAT also recorded large gains
in California, New York and Florida, the College Board said, although
those states do not have similar statewide contracts.
The SAT has long been dominant in the D.C. region. The College Board
delivers SAT testing in D.C. public schools, and its test is more
widely used in Maryland and Virginia than the ACT.
The ACT has testing contracts with more than a dozen states, including
many in the Southern and Central regions of the country.
Read this and other articles at The Washington Post
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