"So, the usual bet?"
Posted on 09/30/2022 9:42:28 AM PDT by karpov
Standardized tests have been attacked for being biased against some groups of students. Is that true? Should we stop using them?
Exams like the American College Test (ACT) are supposed to assess how much information students learned in high school and, by implication, their preparedness for college. However, they’ve been criticized as being biased against female, minority, and low-income students.
As a biological psychologist, I’ve taught mostly in the fields of neuroscience, brain function, learning theory, cognition, and the like. But I also spent 12 years teaching high-school science, math, and ACT prep courses for a large, nonprofit tutoring center that drew students from about a dozen varied high schools.
To stay abreast of changes to the ACT, and to understand it from my students’ perspectives, I took all of the ACTs archived at the center and new versions as they were released. I know the test pretty well.
In 2021, approximately 1.3 million students took the ACT. The test has four sections, English, math, reading, science, and an optional writing test. The number of correct answers for each of the four main sections is converted to a scaled score from 1 to 36. The composite score is the average of the four scaled scores.
Last year, female students had a higher average composite score (20.6) than males (20.3) and outscored males in both English and reading. They virtually tied males in science (20.4 to 20.6), and differed by less than a point in math.
Among those who took the most rigorous series of science courses (general/Earth science, biology, chemistry, and physics), males and females differed by less than one point in their science scores (23.4 vs. 22.5).
(Excerpt) Read more at jamesgmartin.center ...
The reason the left wants to get rid of the ACT is because it is useful.
So, using the argument that act is useful is only going to encourage the left more.
I was not a great student in HS, but I exceled on the ACT, and even CLEP-ed out of first level English and science.
If it was that easy for me, a dumb white guy, I can’t imagine any other “group” should have any problem with it.
Standardized tests (ACTs, SATs, etc.) have been attacked because the ideology of those teaching within the education system from K12 to uni/college level has changed/evolved from actual teaching to indoctrination (i.e.: wokeism, etc., etc., etc.).
A ‘dumbed down’ student is easier to indoctrinate than an educated student who might know and argue otherwise. Hence, the attacks and the ultimate agenda to remove standardized tests.
They want to get rid because it exposes the failure of the education establishment to teach poor, inner city kids.
Both of my children got into elite universities only because they had good grades and excelled on the ACT and SAT tests.
They can’t compete with Kennedy kids, Biden kids or the legacy children of other elites when it comes to prep school resumes or exciting extracurricular trips and projects in exotic locales, and their parents’ and grandparents’ contributions to the schools, but they are darn well smarter, more disciplined and appreciative of their opportunity for an education than these spawn of the wealthy liberal snobs.
Is there a formula for figuring out an ACT score compares to an SAT score? I took the SAT exam but don’t know what that would translate to on the ACT.
Jews and Asians do better, Blacks do worse. Part of it is cultural, part of it is heredity. The establishment can’t deal with the facts honestly.
One of their points about “white privilege” is whites have set up a system emphasizing traits that benefit whites such as hard work. For that to be true, whites have to be lean toward working harder. Wouldn’t the corollary have to be Blacks lean toward working less?
Our son scored 32
See https://www.act.org/content/act/en/products-and-services/the-act/scores/act-sat-concordance.html
“Both of my children got into elite universities only because they had good grades and excelled on the ACT and SAT tests.”
Our grandkids aced the ACT and SAT and are terrific with math.
One was accepted here and the other by a major Eastern University. One was graduated and became an RN. The other has a nice job offer when he is graduated.
Our nieces/nephews all got into good colleges, were graduated and have good jobs. They aced the ACT/SATs.
It is superior to the SAT in that it is contextual (tests what you do know) vs. conceptual testing (testing what you might can learn$.
You could compare them via the “percentile” charts that allow you to see how your scores on each test component as well as overall, line up with others taking the same test (IIRC there were tables for regional performance as well as national, too). So if you score in, say, the 85th percentile on ACT, you are likely to score at close to the same percentile on SAT. The percentiles also correllate fairly well with IQ percentiles.
Ghetto don’t do math.
"So, the usual bet?"
I never heard anyone complain about the ACT.
They complain about the SAT.
The ACT is much more straightforward (or so I’ve been told).
The SAT has always been trickier.
I know of students who did poorly on the SAT but very well on the ACT.
The author’s point is that the ACT measures academic achievement, not innate intelligence. But that’s a circular argument, as higher intelligence students have higher academic achievement. You can’t just throw unprepared, low-intelligence students into higher level courses.
The solution to the SAT/ACT is to rid both as requirements for college admission but to allow them as an alternative metric. The UC system stupidly won’t even look at SAT/ACT scores, so now they have to evaluate feeder schools and zip codes in order to sort out the students, whereas if it allowed optional SAT/ACT review, they’d have a more accurate view of student ability.
But that’s precisely what UC does not want, as it wants to increase black enrollment (and will have to lower academic standards in order to prop up black graduation rates).
My GRE scores were similar to my SAT scores (almost identical on the math part, a little higher on the verbal). Those scores plus a high score on a subject test on the GRE got me a fellowship for the first year of graduate school.
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