A recent New York Times op-ed detailing the ongoing fallout from the University of California’s dropping the SAT and ACT was a little like hearing an echo of our own shouts for help. Validating in one sense, devastating in the larger perspective. We wish we lived in a world where Wake Up Call NJ wasn’t necessary. But wishful thinking is precisely what got us here.
While elite institutions have a reputation for being slow to change, UC (and others) rushed to eliminate standardized assessments under the banner of equity. To do so, Regents had to ignore the evidence from internal reviews. Standardized tests are strongly predictive of college success. The scores don’t create inequity, they only reveal its extent.
When we abandon objective measures, we are hiding a problem, not solving it. As the op-ed notes, throwing out the SAT and the ACT because they show demographic gaps is akin to canceling the government’s publication of the unemployment rate because it shows similar disparities.
Professor Jelani Nelson says UC simply “succumbed to the fad of the moment.” True academic standards do not shift with cultural trends or pressures. Reading fluently, writing cohesively, and mastering numerical logic are foundational skills that children must achieve to thrive in the real world. This has been, and will be, true for generations.
While the university level's blind eye to testing may be a fad, K-12 school systems have consistently inflated grades and ignored test results. Learning gaps do not suddenly materialize in high school; they grow from the earliest ages. Recent research demonstrates that kindergarten testing can accurately predict a student’s academic achievement in the third grade.
Learning is a compounding sequence. Math is particularly cumulative. It’s better to know about a missing skill or misunderstanding of a core concept than to pretend - or blindly hope - a student is on track. It’s best to know as soon as possible. Timely assessment data gives us the power to intervene with resources before that gap becomes an uncrossable chasm blocking a student from their future success.
Yet in NJ, we have some of the most delayed state assessment results in the country. If scores show students aren’t gaining the skills they need to succeed, it seems we’d rather not know. This general dismissal of the value of standardized tests is also reflected across NJ’s higher education system, as many of our colleges remain test-optional. Too often, we’ve chosen to follow education fads to look good, rather than focus on actually doing good.
