The Upside of State Standardized Tests: A Student Speaks

A perceptive, reflective, high school junior in Denver wrote an opinion piece that appeared in the Sunday edition of the Denver Post yesterday.
In it, Jennifer Luo remarks that her years of taking standardized tests, filling out bubble sheets, thinking about pacing, reviewing and revising answers, and managing the stress of taking the state standardized tests (known as the Colorado State Assessment Program, or CSAP) have prepared her well for the realities of college admission.
She says that years of practice on the state tests have helped her to perform well on the SAT and ACT tests.

Some students see no motivation to take the test. I disagree. I think I learned something from taking the CSAPs. It teaches test-taking strategies. And it’s about learning to calm nerves and getting used to standardized tests, because there are scarier ones ahead. And for college-bound students, those ones matter.

…

And as I prepare for these important exams, I’ve realized that I’m actually lucky to have taken the CSAP six times. That’s six practice tests, all without costing a dime. I’ve refined my testing skills – relaxing, pacing, double-checking, remembering to bring the lucky pencil. With practice comes ease, and because of CSAPs, I’ve been preparing since I was 8. Whether my teachers or I knew it at the time, the test-taking strategies we practiced are now useful for vital high school tests.
Taking the CSAPs was like drinking eight glasses of water a day: awfully boring and mundane, but advantageous in the end.
And while I complain about standardized tests and the time I spend preparing for the SAT, I also realize that there’s no better way to compare students across the country. And since I can’t run away from tests and I’ll see more in college, I might as well get all the practice I can get.
And now, with the PSAT looming this month, I’m grateful for every bit of practice I had. Including the questionable CSAPs.

Now that is a reasonable view of the state tests.
I do find it ironic that some of the most vocal opponents of standardized tests in K-12 schools are sometimes the very same folks who want their kids to go to elite or name-brand colleges. They also shell out thousands for their kids to cram for the SAT and ACT, because they know that these “scary” exams really do matter in college admissions.
True, the SAT and ACT are only one measure of a student’s worth. They are not necessarily good predictors of future performance. But they are a perfectly acceptable way to compare “apples to apples” across the country, across school systems, and across racial and ethnic lines. What with grade inflation and the knowledge that some schools do a better job of preparing our kids for college-level work than others, we must have some way of comparing kids’ knowledge and aptitude fairly and consistently. This is what the SAT and ACT do. They “standardize” American education, because we still do not have a standard educational system across the country.
And young Jennifer Luo is perceptive enough to recognize that standardization is not necessarily a bad thing. She, for one, appreciates that the CSAP exams have prepared her for the realities of the college admission process.
Now that’s a mature perspective.
Mark Montgomery
Montgomery Educational Consulting

Common Application Retains Its Flexibility–A Victory for Students Everywhere

Today the members of the Common Application removed the straight jacket they had previously imposed upon students. This decision is a victory for students, in that it allows them to retain control of their applications and make slight modifications to the forms submitted to each college or university to which they apply. As such, it is a victory for the rights of consumers over the rights of producers of educational services. The move to lock down the system and prevent students from making these modifications can be likened to the economic behavior of a cartel–trying to limit consumer choice.
For those who have not been following this story in the past few weeks, here’s the jist in bullet-point form.

  • The Common Application was originally designed to increase convenience for both applicants and institutions of higher education by standardizing most aspects of the college admissions application.
  • The Common App system, until a few weeks ago, allowed students to make some changes to applications it submitted to each school. One oft-cited example is the ability to choose different majors for different schools. To use the example in today’s InsideHigherEd article, if a student was interested in environmental science, she might not be able to find that major at all her selected schools, and she might want to modify for those schools to select “biology” instead. Colleges might assume she was ignorant of their programs if the selected major was not offered at their schools, reducing her chances for admission.
  • The members of the Common Application (all colleges and universities that use the Common App) wanted to reduce the perceived “gaming of the system” by students and dampen down the admissions frenzy.
  • So they “locked down” the system to prevent the previously-allowed ability to applications to individual schools.
  • The decision was poorly communicated and hastily announced at the beginning of the busy college admissions season.
  • College counselors had a fit; the assembled multitudes at the National Association for College Counseling convention at the end of September gave the Common App representative an earful.
  • The leaderships of the Common App handled the controversy badly–with a tone of arrogance and defiance at first.
  • Finally, today, the Common App folks backed down and returned the functionality to its system.

So what led the Common App to revert to the previously flexible system?
Well, the lobbying of the folks at NACAC was undoubtedly critical. College counselors everywhere were fit-to-be-tied over the bungled change. At the convention in Austin last month, the halls were abuzz with strategies to circumvent the straight jacket, and by recommendations that if the Common App system was inflexible, then students may as well abandon the Common App altogether and go back to using individual college’s applications.
But other economic factors probably came into play, too. First is the rise of the Universal College Application, launched by the same consulting firm hired by the members of the Common Application. Nothing helps focus a business decision like good, old-fashioned competition. And the Universal Application is not the only new player in the online application world. A couple of new upstarts are lurking on the horizon, including one here in Denver.
In the end, there is and should be a free market in the world of higher education. This is part of the genius of American higher education. Of course, a free market can be chaotic. It can also foster a sort of “frenzy” that the folks at the Common App, which they thought they could eliminate or at least reduce. But if reducing the frenzy leads to a reduction in choice and control by consumers, then we have a cartel in which the producers (colleges and universities) call the shots.
Whether a response to pressure or to economic competition, the Common Application’s decision today to return to a more flexible online application system is a victory for students.
And isn’t that what it’s all about? Helping students select and matriculate to the college that is the best fit for them? That’s certainly my professional priority.
Mark Montgomery
Montgomery Educational Consulting
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Hillary Clinton's Plan to Expand Access to College

Did you see that Hillary Clinton unveiled more of her education policy platform?  It was reported in an article in InsideHigherEd.com.  Part of her plan is to make college more accessible to students of limited means by using some economic tools and expanding the student loan program.  Here’s an excerpt from the article.

Sen. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front runner for president in 2008, unveiled a college aid plan Thursday that would pour $8 billion a year in new funds into an expanded tuition tax credit, bigger Pell Grants, support for community colleges, and work force training, among other things. It would also require public colleges to set multiyear tuition rates to help families better plan to pay for college and compel them to publish information about the employment rates and earnings of their students upon graduation (proposals that even the Spellings Commission might love). And like the other leading Democratic candidates, Clinton calls for financing her increased spending in part by eliminating the guaranteed student loan program.

As a college counselor, it’s nice to see that access to higher education is being addressed in the campaign.  Perhaps it’s not as hot an issue as the Iraq War, and perhaps the folks at Ed in ’08 are not feeling that education is getting the attention it deserves.  But these issues of access are crucial in American higher education.
Mark Montgomery
Educational Consultant and Independent College Counselor
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