Sounds like the problem is far, far worse than the headline suggests:
> The College Board and ACT have lobbied state lawmakers for decades to secure a monopoly or duopoly position in every state. Besides the tests’ usually optional use for college admission (though 80 percent of applicants still take the exams, and usually only low-performing test-takers choose to withhold scores), test scores are often tied to state-funded scholarships, required for high-school graduation, used to fulfill federal K-12 testing requirements, and more. By setting policies that disallow competition, lawmakers mistakenly tie a consistent mandate to an exam that changes dramatically.
> Worse, this means in practice that students, high-school administrators, and college admissions staff who’d like to make use of a college-level exam have no choice but to accept the changes each company makes, even if policymakers had a stronger version of the exams in mind when writing the law.
It'd be nice to imagine that the leading private colleges (less subject to political whims?) could severely downgrade the weighting they put on the standardized tests. And not mince words about why.
bell-cot•7mo ago
> The College Board and ACT have lobbied state lawmakers for decades to secure a monopoly or duopoly position in every state. Besides the tests’ usually optional use for college admission (though 80 percent of applicants still take the exams, and usually only low-performing test-takers choose to withhold scores), test scores are often tied to state-funded scholarships, required for high-school graduation, used to fulfill federal K-12 testing requirements, and more. By setting policies that disallow competition, lawmakers mistakenly tie a consistent mandate to an exam that changes dramatically.
> Worse, this means in practice that students, high-school administrators, and college admissions staff who’d like to make use of a college-level exam have no choice but to accept the changes each company makes, even if policymakers had a stronger version of the exams in mind when writing the law.
It'd be nice to imagine that the leading private colleges (less subject to political whims?) could severely downgrade the weighting they put on the standardized tests. And not mince words about why.