High School Juniors Should Take ACT, Not SAT

Respected Pennsylvania pubic education activist, author, slightly acerbic blogger and dedicated teacher, Peter Greene, warns parents of 11th grade students (of which I am one) about the new SAT:

"I've looked at the marketing and the samples and I feel comfortable saying that every failure of true educational assessment that we've seen on the Big Standardized Tests is right there in the New! Improved! SAT. This test is a crapfest-- and not just a crapfest, but an untested, unproven crapfest from a company that just rolled out the first part of its new suite of tests and now can't get the results back to students on time."

He continues:
 "The New! Improved! SAT has the potential to be a disaster of epic proportions, and that might be an occasion for schadenfreude if not for one thing-- a whole host of eleventh graders are counting on those scores to help them get into college. Yes, we can talk about how screwed up that whole business is, but in the meantime it's the world our students have to live in, and in that world, this spring, the ACT is their best shot."

Student protesters against standardized testing.

"This will be a real wrenching change for some folks. In many schools, taking the PSAT and SAT is just something you do, and students believe these issue forth from the same immutable government authorities as vaccine requirements and rules about how many courses one must complete to graduate. But as always, folks need to understand that the College Board is a company that makes a living selling a particular product, just like Ford Motor Company and Coca-Cola. That means it's caveat emptor time, and this time around, the smart emptors should avoid the SAT, and those of us who teach juniors have a responsibility to say so."

"You don't have to take the SAT-- and this year at least, you shouldn't. "

And besides, your child can attend one of the outstanding colleges on this incredible site that is test optional.

Consider ourselves warned. Thanks, Peter.