Many years ago, there once was village in a rural region that was plagued with locusts. Desperate to solve this problem, local leaders asked scientists to intervene. No problem, said the scientists; there’s another insect that eats locusts, so we’ll just bring in a few thousand of them, even though they are not native to this region.
They bring in the locust eaters, who do their thing, and within a week, the locusts are gone. Trouble is, the locust eaters are still hungry, so they now began to eat their secondary diet.
Straw.
Soon, the entire village was homeless.
This story came to mind when I read the recent exploits of the SAT and ACT. You may recall this spring, when a number of popular colleges decided at the very last moment to reinstate their testing requirement for this year’s seniors. Many weren’t surprised they were bringing the requirement back, but doing so this year meant a lot of students were going to have to take the test this summer and fall, at testing centers that were sized to meet last year’s demand.
Summer came, and the scarcity became evident in a hurry. This was especially true on the coasts, where stories of students flying—on airplanes—to take the SAT became more common than they should have. Reports of shortages continue this fall—and, given that the poor pay for proctoring the tests has now reached a tipping point among school counselors, it’s unlikely to ease up this spring.
Once that news settled down, it was ACT’s turn. Starting this spring, and depending on which version of the test, the ACT will be shorter, and the Science test will be optional. This gives colleges only about 6 months to decide if they will require the Science test—which is actually a science reasoning test—so students can decide if they’re going to take it. If they do, the new, 2-hour ACT goes back to being closer to 3 for them.
To summarize, the two tests colleges once decided they could live without during COVID turn out to be indispensable after all—so much so that they needed to be required and/or altered with less than a year’s notice. This means students who dealt with COVID as seventh- and eighth- graders—during the time when the role of testing was up in the air—now get to deal with even more testing that’s up in the air. Is the test available? Will they need to use frequent flyer miles to pay for them? Will the college of their dreams still require the Science test—and, if so, when will they tell them?
I teach at a community college, and the big push there is assessment—every department has to assess student learning on a common topic. Trouble is, there’s no common required question or assessment method. If the subject is the Constitution, one class could be asked a multiple-choice question about its ratification, while another could be asked to write an essay on the Bill of Rights.
Member of the Classes of 2025 and 2026 have to be feeling the same way—they’re being measured on all kinds of things that, depending on who you talk to, have something or nothing to do with being successful in college. I used to feel they mattered, but this year, it seems to have more to do with if a student can afford plane fare, or has a counselor who knows a college’s testing policy before the college does. Here’s hoping this year’s juniors and seniors don’t end up homeless as a result.
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