Of all the indignities we’ve been forced to endure during the past year while living with a pandemic that’s well on its way to killing half a million Americans, the hardest may be the inability to properly remember and say goodbye to the people and things we’ve lost.
A good friend from college passed away last spring after a long bout with cancer, and his funeral was private and live-streamed. By the time a memorial service was able to be held socially-distanced in late summer, I couldn’t attend because I was in quarantine following a potential exposure to the virus. Two of my closest friends in the profession have lost spouses in the past four months, and trying to express my deep sympathy via telephone and e-mail seemed woefully inadequate.
Recently the college admissions world lost two long-time mainstays. Since we can’t have a proper funeral or even a wake, please indulge me as I try to offer a eulogy or sendoff.
In case you missed the obituary:
“SAT Subject Tests, beloved member of the College Board family, departed this earthly existence suddenly on January 19, 2021 at the age of 83 after a long period of declining health. Death was hastened by recent complications due to COVID-19.
Subject Tests, also known by childhood friends as Achievement Tests, devoted its life to the college admissions assessment and testing industry, most recently as a member of the SAT Suite of Assessments. Compared with its more popular older brother, Subject Tests never sought the spotlight, leading family members to use the affectionate nickname “SAT II.” Subject Tests was efficient, not demanding as much time from students as other assessments, and it had special concern for the plight of international applicants and students who were home-schooled.
SAT Subject Tests is survived by an older brother, SAT (AKA Scholastic Aptitude Test or Scholastic Assessment Test) as well as a younger cousin, Advanced Placement (“AP”). Coincidentally and perhaps ironically, another close relative and suitemate, SAT Essay, passed away on the same day.
No memorial service is planned. In lieu of flowers the College Board requests that contributions be made to Advanced Placement.”
In words borrowed from a famous orator, I come to bury, not to praise. The College Board’s announcement that the Subject Tests were being discontinued, effectively immediately, with the essay to follow in June, was unexpected but also not surprising. 2020 was not a good year for the testing industry, and last week Inside Higher Ed reported that the CB had reduced its workforce by 14%.
A confluence of factors ranging from the pandemic to the College Board’s and ACT’s difficulties in bringing their products to customers to the rise of test-optional and test-blind policies has called into question whether college admission testing will ever return to the prominent role it once played. While the College Board is, repeat after me, a non-profit organization and not a business, it is only natural that it would look to consolidate by shutting down un-(non)-profitable product lines.
It would be a mistake to lump together the Subject Tests and the essay, even though there is an interesting connection between them. The Subject Tests were once valued and vital. From its beginning the essay (which could have been branded as “Essay-T”) was flawed.
We have always known that the ability to write is an important academic skill for college. The challenge has been how to measure that. The most common way has been through the application essay, but it is perhaps the most curated part of a student’s application, involving multiple drafts and multiple editors.
The College Board has tried a number of ways to measure writing skills as part of both the SAT and Subject Tests. For years that was done in a multiple choice format, both with the Writing Achievement Test and also with the Test of Standard Written English (“Tuss-we”), a short-lived appendage to the SAT with a top possible score of 60+.
If it is a mistake to provide essay answers to short-answer questions., something long-time readers of this blog know is my specialty, then so is using short-answer questions to measure the complexity and sophistication of thought that requires an essay. A Writing Achievement Test where the student doesn’t do any actual writing is really an Editing Achievement Test.
The Writing test was the star of the Golden Age heyday of Achievement Tests, the test that most colleges sought, often requiring two others as well. That ended in 2005 when the College Board decided to add a third section of the regular SAT that would take the place of the Writing Achievement Test and would include a required 25-minute essay. That decision was made to mollify the University of California system, the College Board’s biggest client. The irony, of course, is that the University of California is now at the center of the test-blind movement that threatens the College Board’s long-term business, er, non-profit model.
The essay never caught on for several reasons. Teachers of writing argued that the 25-minute essay encouraged formulaic but not necessarily good writing. The essay prompts were unimaginative, and essays were not graded for accuracy, such that a student a student could argue that the War of 1812 took place in 1950 without penalty. Most important, the essay scores, graded by two readers on a 1-6 scale, seemed to have little correlation with what I knew of my own students’ writing abilities.
The decline of Subject Tests is partly practical and partly philosophical. The practical consideration is that the number of colleges requiring (or even “strongly recommending”) Subject Tests had declined precipitously down to one hand, and a recent Forbes article reported that overall Subject Test usage had declined 45% in the past decade.
On the philosophical front, admission testing has increasingly been seen as a barrier to equity and access. That’s an important lens through which to view all admission requirements, but the admissions process should be not only about access to college but also readiness for college. Subject Tests were designed to be a tool to measure what students actually know and what grades actually mean.
Last fall NACAC released a report on standardized testing, and it made me think back to an earlier NACAC report from 2008, a report from a Commission on the Use of Standardized Tests in Undergraduate Admission chaired by Harvard Dean of Admission Bill Fitzsimmons. I thought about doing a blog post comparing the two reports, and may still do that at some point. The 2008 report recommended that the future of admission testing be more closely aligned with high school curricula and measure content required for college coursework.
The College Board announcement suggested that the void left by the death of Subject Tests will be filled by AP exams, stating “the expanded reach of AP and its widespread availability for low-income students and students of color means the Subject Tests are no longer necessary for students to show what they know.” I’m not totally convinced. I know that the CB wants AP to be its showcase product line moving forward, but it’s hard to make an argument for widespread equity and access at $95 per exam.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that Subject Tests rise from the dead, but want to make sure that someone says a few words of remembrance and appreciation before they are buried.