College Board Takes a Giant Leap Towards Fairness and Equity

From College Board website

Last week the College Board released examples of the new SAT questions, sans the obscure words previously found only in 19th-century English literature. This is part of their effort to redesign the SAT to be more aligned with college-readiness, based upon Common Core State Standards. The College Board also has forged a partnership with the Khan Academy to provide free test-preparation programs and resources that will be available to all students.  

The combination of these two announcements is good news for our vulnerable youth. The old system of SAT and its costly SAT prep gave advantage to higher income students. Even worse, it was a slap in the face for high-achieving students who had overcome great barriers only to encounter a future-shaping test that wasn’t based on what they had learned in school.

Now, teens in foster care can access SAT prep to improve their competitiveness in the college admissions race. Youth in low-performing high schools will be more competitive in college admissions by having access to free online skill-building that is aligned with the Common Core and college admissions. Given that the origins of the college admissions process was designed to exclude students, the redesign of the SAT and universal access to SAT prep are indeed wins for fairness and equity.

We also need to consider what this means for over-age, undercredited students. Perhaps we should integrate SAT prep into our alternative schools’ core, since it is going to be aligned with the Common Core? Does it make sense to work towards policies that make specific scores on the SAT equivalent to competency on the Common Core? New Mexico’s Alternative Demonstration of Competency for students who fail the high school exit exam sets the cut scores on the SAT at 450 for reading, 450 for math and 450 for writing. Students are much more likely to put their best learning forward when the test gets them out of high school and opens doors to their future.

The SAT also has workplace credibility. An article in the New York Times, How Businesses Use Your SATs, describes some companies use the SAT for early screening as well as a proxy for “what psychologists call ‘g,’ or general mental ability – how well a person might respond to an unspecified challenge. In this age of rapidly changing technology and constantly upgraded skills, ‘g’ may be a better predictor of success than expertise in a specific software package.”

Whether you think the old or redesigned SAT has any predictive power in the workplace, it can’t hurt youth, especially youth of color facing micro-aggressions or straight-out institutional racism, to be able to announce that they have scored 500 or higher on the SAT.

Personally, I would like to see Khan Academy work with ACT, as I think they have stretched themselves to have a richer understanding of college- and career-readiness by offering Work Keys along with the ACT. Given the geographical trends of these tests, with ACT being more popular in the Midwest and the SAT more popular on the coasts, perhaps Khan Academy will forge another partnership with ACT to provide free preparation for their set of tests.