The SAT and ACT have long been regarded as college admissions staples and reliable metrics of student proficiency and so-called “college and career readiness.” But the SAT’s subjugation to what many have called “the most comprehensive facelift in the last 10 years” has generated warranted alarm from education advocates throughout the country, not least because of an apparent alignment to the Common Core State Standards contained within this facelift. A sponsored product of College Board, which is otherwise known for its ownership of the Advanced Placement (AP) Programs, the redesigned SAT saw its debut just last month.
Tested students witnessed the revival of the 1600-point (as opposed to 2400-point) scoring scale, wherein there is no penalty for guessing and scores correlate directly with number of correct responses. Other changes to the assessment include the elimination of the notorious vocabulary section, the reclassification of the test’s essay portion from “required” to “optional,” the allowance of calculator use on certain math sections, the provision of only four answer options instead of five, and a markedly denser style of “text-based” questioning.
Such changes are speculated to be a response to criticism that the SAT and ACT aren’t comparable since the former measures aptitude (one’s ability to master the workings of the test itself, content notwithstanding), whereas the latter measures achievement (knowledge of actual content). Of greater controversy than these changes in content, scoring, and procedure is the SAT’s apparent alignment to the Common Core Standards.
This alignment comes as no surprise given the expressed intention of College Board President David Coleman, an original CCSS co-author, to adapt College Board products and programs to the same “21st Century Model” that inspired Common Core.
Though alignment of the SAT to Common Core was not widely publicized by the College Board, it is evident in a provision of the recently-passed Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), which drastically expands the powers of the Education Secretary and erodes local control while allegedly “replacing” No Child Left Behind. Specific language contained within ESSA allows states to gain permission from the Department of Education to use the SAT as their official high school graduation test. The possession of such a test is one of four requirements for states participating in the Race to the Top Program, an Obama Administration educational grant initiative which awards funding to any state that would adopt (1) a set of “college-ready” standards (Common Core), (2) an assessment aligned to those standards, (3) a disaggregated, longitudinal student data collection system, and (4) a teacher evaluation system tied to affiliated test scores. The incorporation of the SAT into this framework such that it can function as a state’s Race to the Top-mandated assessment demonstrates its necessary alignment to the Common Core Standards as confirmed by Coleman’s rhetoric: An alignment that is, in many ways, a last-ditch effort by the Department of Education to save Common Core after grassroots assessment opt-out movements compelled many states to terminate their partnerships with PARCC and Smarter Balanced, the two testing consortia created specifically to test to the Common Core Standards in accordance with Race to the Top.
If the value of the SAT was questionable before, its alignment to the woefully insufficient Common Core Standards and its replacement of prior Common Core testing confirms its being arbitrary. Should the college wish for all of its admission requirements to be of substance and worth, and should it wish to clearly and consistently advocate for freedom in education, it would do well to re-evaluate its acceptance of SAT scores — indeed, of all standardized test scores — in light of this change.