Recently in The Atlantic, David Coleman, CEO of the College Board, reflected on the hoops that students are jumping through to get admitted to college and recommended a renewed focus on what really matters. Excerpts of his piece appear below: The crazed pursuit of college admissions helps no one thrive. And while the Varsity Blues Read more about Coleman: Applying to college has become an endless chore[…]
Preston Cooper, writing for Forbes, has reviewed a new article by Matthew Chingos of the Urban Institute that finds high school GPA to be a better predictor of college completion than SAT score. For excerpts from the article, see below: For obvious reasons, students who exhibit better academic preparation in high school are more likely Read more about What Predicts College Completion? High School GPA Beats SAT Score[…]
A first-of-its-kind study has found that students who score at the “college-ready” level on the PARCC exam are well-positioned to earn good grades in college. The findings provide early evidence that the assessment does what it was designed to do: measure college readiness. The Massachusetts Department of Education commissioned Mathematica Policy Research to do the Read more about PARCC’s ‘College-Ready’ Score Reflects Rigor of College Work[…]
In the past few weeks, Colorado dropped PARCC for the SAT at the high school level, and Delaware and Montana have dropped Smarter Balanced for the SAT (Delaware) and ACT (Montana). New flexibility under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) makes the use of college readiness exams for high school accountability easier than ever. States Read more about Consequences of Using College Readiness Exams for High School Accountability[…]
While there are certainly shortcomings of the SAT and ACT exams, they are still a benchmark to evaluate the American education system because millions of students take these tests across the nation. The results from 2014 are not good: Only 28 percent of 2015 ACT-tested high school graduates met college-readiness benchmarks in each of the Read more about Stagnant ACT and SAT Results Demand Educational Improvements[…]
The revised version of the SAT college entrance exam won’t be offered until March, but students can start preparing for it with a new, free online study program affiliated with the test. The College Board and Khan Academy are announcing a new partnership offering free online test preparation resources for students looking to take a Read more about College Board, Khan Academy team up to offer free SAT prep program[…]