SAT and ACT Scores: What you should know
Much to the surprise (or shock) of students, the SAT and ACT scores had actually started shrinking in significance, as a greater number of colleges and universities increasingly shied away from treating SAT and ACT scores as the yardstick for college admissions. However, it is too early to write these examinations off as the public schools have started cashing in on the significance that these tests have had enjoyed for so long.
More about SAT and ACT scores
Now, the testing companies are clearly vying for a place in the public schools. They have actually gone on to push heavily for the huge market (worth nearly $700 million) for federally required tests in the public schools. These companies have actually started offering ACT and SAT courses to students, who have no plans of going to the college. The recent changes in academics, imposed by the federal education law have not really found these companies struggling in their fight for significance. Instead they are blithely competing against the examinations sponsored by the Obama administration and winning the battle as well. There is fierce rivalry between these sets of tests administered by different establishments. And, it will not really be an exaggeration to claim that the companies offering the ACT and SAT examinations are clearly winning. This observation has been duly substantiated by Scott Marion (executive director of Center for Assessment), who opines that these companies are making nothing short of a “land grab”.
It was in the month of January that the state board of education declared that it would be using SAT as the yardstick of measuring quality of high school students. And, these students will no longer be required taking Smarter Balanced, which makes for one of the two national tests the federal government funded in order to find out how efficiently the States had been teaching the Common Core.
It was right in the next month that the University of Delaware declared that the in-state students no longer required to submit the scores earned by them in the SAT examination. These examinations, on the other hand, started proliferating in states where parents complained of their children being over-tested by Common Core tests. Most of the students who steered clear of Common Core tests belonged to the high school and many high school students had already started taking SAT and ACT. So, states are switching to those tests to witness higher participation rate.
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