Assessment and Accountability SAT and ACT

Running head: Assessment and accountability

Assessment and accountability 4

Assessment and Accountability

Abstract

Students with high scores and high school grade point averages have a high capability of succeeding in colleges, depending on their reservation and graduation rates. An institutions’ ability to attract better-prepared students increases its academic reputation. At the end of high school, externally set examinations, the SAT/ACT assessments tests get set to achieve this. These tests’ scores contribute to college performance prediction, but their admissions role varies across the colleges. Studies obtain the impacts these tests have on minor communities, such as African-American children. The test scores are the most critical admission factor. Still, some institutions see the test score requirements as a barrier to campus diversity due to their high socioeconomic and ethnic performance gaps. The results show that the SAT and ACTs create achievement gaps in the African American communities compared to the other organization. Alternative assessment tests get used to reduce the achievement gaps between the whites and the minor assemblies. The impact the assessments have on the educational practitioners and how to improve the community curriculum in general.

Table of Contents

Abstract 2

Introduction 4

Trends in the admission of students to schools 5

College admission procedures 5

Standardized testing and accountability 6

Progress towards meeting towards the ACT and SAT readiness in schools 7

Types of bias present in standardized testing. 7

Standardized testing and African-Americans 8

Test preparation and test scores 9

History 9

The factors impacting the Black-White SAT/ACT Gap 10

SATS, ACTs, and the top and bottom scores in black students. 12

Alternative methods of implementing assessments, accountability to African Americans 13

Affirmative action and test preparation strategies 15

Conclusions 16

References 17

Introduction

The curriculum is the basis of the teaching and learning process. The development of study programs, learning and teaching resources, lesson plans, and student and teacher education assessment are all part of the curriculum. The curriculum’s story appears to be the primary concern to educators, governments, and parents as it impacts society and community development. With the recent educational developments, there have been implications to the skills and understandings in the curriculums and assessments the teachers develop in onboarding and practice. The assessments measure a student’s performance and accountability systems. The policies implemented have asserted that the high standards apply to all students and the standards-based reforms focus on all children despite the ethnicity. Among Americans, equity is a social value that gets upheld. The public expects public schools to provide all students an opportunity (William, 2014). A cause of concern has get expressed by many parents, community members, and social groups voicing their concerns on academic learning achievements. The levels are measured using standard standardized tests such as the state-mandated tests used to direct the “No Child Left Behind program” (William, 2014), the academic Aptitude Test (SAT), and the American College Testing Program. College officials use the SAT or the ACT scores when viable alternatives determine admission rates to colleges and universities. There are many impacts of using SAT and ACT scores; the college and university officials use the standardized methods to admit students to universities even though there are other alternative methods.

Trends in the admission of students to schools

There is an increasing number of minority groups getting admitted to higher educations. The universities attract many nontraditional students such as older students, international students, and home-schooled students. Many communities have been undergoing primary and secondary reforms by including national, state, and district curriculum standards. In many states, the bars get used to determine the attainment of standards. Some tests used are the performance enhancement tests. The reforms change the students’ education and information (Burton& Ramist, 2001). The assessment tests enable the colleges and universities to know whether the traditional measures evaluate the students with different backgrounds and impressive credentials get evaluated adequately and fairly. Regulations and legal actions measure the change regularly due to acceptance to higher education facilities. Some of the states have forbidden the use of race, ethnicity, and gender as admission factors to the universities (Burton and Ramist 2001). The admissions of minority students decrease when they decide to admit them based on previous scores and admission test scores without considering the race and the ethnic group.

College admission procedures

All colleges and universities, except about 400 universities, require the SAT 1 and the ACT. Many colleges do not state that the applicants should meet the minimum SAT 1 or ACT score; the officials have advanced the minimum SAT 1 and ACT scores by including a range of SAT scores in the freshman class profiles. There is an excellent need to include the SAT or the ACT scores in the college brochures (Johnson, 2003). Most students get discouraged from applying to schools where their SAT or ACT scores fall below the recommended scores. Many officials do not include the socioeconomic range, the high school GPA, and the class’s geographical diversity.

Standardized testing and accountability

Ensuring that all students benefit from public-funded education is a priority in many governments. The government’s basic hierarchy holds it accountable for utilizing public funds. The government’s necessary accountability scale holds the schools responsible for delivering high-quality education. The schools are held accountable for students’ knowledge, skills, and behaviors as they study. The joining of college or university of a person’s choice is every young person’s dream. But the impact the college entrance exams have on the admission process makes the stakes high (US Department of education, 2016). Due to these tests’ nature, many students and parents get prepared to pay vast amounts of money to prepare for classes. Many schools are implementing test preparation classes into their curriculum.

Many countries have implemented amendment policies for the accountability and assessment of students’ curriculum. The specialized test preparation raises questions of its effectiveness to raise scores and the ethics involved as many students get excluded due to the cost and the methods used. SAT/ACT are standardized tests designed to assess students’ readiness for college. It measures mathematics, reading, and writing with a combined score between 400-1600(US Department of education, 2016). They are high stakes taken as part of the application process, with most universities using them to make admission decisions. There are also high chances that being admitted to one university of choice is elevated with high scores, but the possibility is low. To get any financial aid, most universities use this way. The programs taught the students to familiarize themselves with the tests, introducing test-taking strategies by giving them specific instructions like the student should not guess if the answer is unknown(US department of education,2016). The programs are taught online or through a class set up in groups or individually.

Progress towards meeting towards the ACT and SAT readiness in schools

Administrators receive feedback from schools, district, and state levels that show how they are close to meeting the readiness benchmarks of the ACT. Administrators who wish to evaluate school performances in other subjects examine the subjects directly, and they also calculate the mean grades of the school in each grade level. To assess growth, administrators calculate the MPG for each school and compare it to each subject’s MPG. They also compare the gain scores for each subject and grade, with high gain scores showing more growth than those with low gain scores (ACT, Inc., 2015). The data obtained from these schools determine the achievement gaps that exist when there are different average scores through the student subgroups. The subgroups include the racial or ethnic minority subgroups from families with low income, students with disabilities, and those whose English is not their first language. The minority groups include African American, Hispanic, and Asian American students. There is no relevance of the tests in determining a person’s readiness, and that single assessments are not suitable for determining the tests.

Types of bias present in standardized testing.

Prejudice in standard testing gets analyzed through testing as labeling bias, content bias, and methodological bias. Labeling bias happens when a test claims to measure one thing but measures something. It occurs mostly in tests that measure intelligence or aptitude. Tendency and intelligence are natural traits, and they depend on the genetic make-up of the person, and environmental factors affect the tests. Content bias happens when a test claims to limit something, such as data that the researcher could have measured in equitable ways, but it fails to do so because the questions asked favor one group over another. It occurs when English-speaking Canadians and English-speaking Italian take vocabulary tests. The tests can undermine the Italian-speaking students. Methodological prejudice occurs when tests assess some skill or body information proficiency using a method that underestimates one group’s capability to another (Johnson, 2003). The bias takes place when multiple-choice questions are used instead of essays or tests under high pressure. Prediction prejudice occurs when a test gets used to predict future performance. The colleges use SAT to predict applicants’ grades. When an African American gets higher scores than the whites in the same SAT scores, many people probably conclude that the African American distorted the SAT.

Standardized testing and African-Americans

The academic performances of African American students continue to be of great concern to many researchers and the community. The issue gets seen in the students’ standardized test scores, where they score on average or below regarding other Caucasian and Asian American counterparts (Marrah, 2012). It leads to low academic achievements, educational attainments. Many of the statistics carried out on the standardized test scores show that policies which the government aims to implement nationwide will exclude many lacks from admission to the nation’s highest-ranked institutions because only a few of the black students score at the top of the SAT or ACT scale(Cross,2005). The College Board has used a 200-800 scoring scale of performance for the last years for the mathematical and verbal sections. With the implementation of a new assessment by the government, a writing component gets introduced. With the discontinuation of the old tests (Cross, 2005), the SATs and ACTs, there was an increase with about seven points on the black score, but the Whites also increased the scoring gap.

Test preparation and test scores

Due to the student scores’ persistent racial gaps, the relationship between test scores and the test preparation chosen by students is critical in objectifying the racial differences in the preparation methods. Looking closely at private and public use shows racial inconsistencies in the preparation methods. Students with low test scores utilize personal preparations more than those with high scores (Alon, 2010). The black utilization of the private practice lowers as the test scores increases. For Whites, high school courses and self-preparation diminishes as the test scores increase. The investment in test preparation varies with the student’s social context, individual capacities and interests, market-level costs, and the benefits of pursuing higher education. The racial gap in test preparation exists from the racial differences in students who have well-off parents who are most likely to be college-educated.

History

Analysis of the College Board’s racial difference scores was published showing the racial differences in the academic Assessment Test scores in 1976. The average score was about 240 points, which was 20 %( Cross,2005) lower than the whites’ average score. Later in the 1980s, when researchers examined the racial gap had shrunk to 200 points showing that the black scores were 17 %(Cross,2005). As the years continued, the racial scoring had dropped, giving many specialists the racial gap would disappear. In 1989, stopping the scoring gap stopped and began to later open up between 2000 and 2005 as the SATs expanded. In 2005 the average lack score had increased to about 17% higher than the previous years. Small improvements get seen in the scores for the last years, but the gap between the black and white scores has increased (Cross,2005). The African-American scores on the SAT are below the whites’ score and other minorities such as the Asian American.

The factors impacting the Black-White SAT/ACT Gap

Using the SAT/ACT assessment and accountability method has a significant impact on the curriculum. There are diverse reasons that explain the high scoring gap between the African-American and the white. A relationship occurs between family income and the low SAT scores in the African-American community. The family background, family support influences many of the scores. The income levels in white families with less income had a mean SAT of 993, which is considered higher than the mean for all blacks. They had a higher SAT score of 61 points higher than middle-class black families (Cross,2005). The higher class, African American families, had a mean SAT, 85 points below the mean score for all income families.

Another factor that may lead to the gap existing between the African American scores and the White scores is the social-cultural factors such as the cultural attitudes, racism, different social privileges which impact students social and cultural practices (Anderson,2010). Many of the factors that explain the SAT scoring in African American students are that the schools they attend are underfunded, have inadequate staff, and have little to no equipment to provide the same quality of education offered in other schools. There are cases where the African American children face racism from the school where most of the teachers have low opinions on black children’s abilities even before they come to know them. The teachers despise the students, considering them to be academic inferiors. They lack the motivation to challenge the students to achieve the necessary skills to perform well on the tests(Cross,2005).

The society at large among blacks, such as the commitment to learning, the work ethics, and the parental styles, influence the educational gap. The African-American students in high-income households look at rappers as their role models. They have talks on who is a good student, but few put any effort into getting good grades (Anderson, 2010). The blames are not only on the students but also on the parents who do not place enough effort to guide them; they do not spend enough time with the children helping with home and lack the attention required on their children’s educational progress.

African-American students may not have followed the same academic track as white students. Most of the students take subjects such as algebra in high school, but it’s found that many of the white takers had taken advanced classes of mathematics such as calculus and trigonometry. Most white test-takers have finished coursework in the SAT’s English major components than the black test-takers (Cross,2005). It’s seen that there is a high possibility that most whites take honor courses in science and social studies.

The one with the most critical impact is the student characteristics. The grade point averages, their course work, the number of courses they have taken determine the SAT scores and the ACT scores. Course work, grades, students and high school characteristics, and educational plans affect ACT performance (Anderson,2010). It may be hard for the students to study when they face a lot of peer ridicule. Their experience makes it hard to learn the peer ridicule having a dragging effect on the African American SAT scores. They face pressure from society as the community expects them to study to invalidate how people view the black community. From the social anxiety to the peer ridicule in school, most guidance and counselors school administrators often believe that they are less capable and less able to learn. They encourage most African American students to vocational training institutes or into curriculums that do not prepare them for college. They have rarer recommendations to go to advanced programs ( Cross,2005). Suppose an African American child shows a slow academic track. In that case, it is hard for her/him to compete with their white counterparts in the critical subjects necessary for the standardized tests. It leads to no hope of ever matching the white’s scores on the SAT. Most students get taught the curriculums to increase awareness of the black culture, but the curriculum introduced does not help the SAT subjects.

SATS, ACTs, and the top and bottom scores in black students.

To have admission to a nation-ranked college and university, a student needs at least 700 points for each SAT portion. The graduation rates of Black students are lower than the graduation rates of White students. Many institutions try to eliminate the gap by encouraging enrollment patterns between black and white students. Very few African American students attend selective institutions with a higher graduation rate(Nicholas&Evans-Bell,2017). To close such a gap requires addressing the institutions’ prejudice, changing the enrollment patterns so that particular institutions can enroll more black students.

The institutions that black people mostly attend should be improved to increase the students’ competition rates. Non-profit institutions provide after-high school access to students who do not get accepted to their chosen universities. The graduation rates for for-profit organizations are lower than those of private non-profit organizations and public organizations. Profit institutions have low enrollment rates than public institutions, and they have gaps in the number of students who complete between the black students and their white peers (Nicholas& Evans-Bell, 2017). Many justifications exist from many institutional leaders showing the students’ insufficiency they choose to enroll. Some students have better preparation than others. It may be a reason that explains the graduation difference, but the wide variation comes from what the institutions provide to the students and what students they serve.

For admissions in high-ranked schools such as MIT, the scores considered for admission are about 750. Very few black test takers achieve such scores (Cross,2005). Institutions will not admit black members with these high-ranking colleges trying to implement the new government policies of race-sensitive entries; no blacks get admitted to such institutions. Most top performers institutions have a completion gap of below 5.0% (Nicholas&Evans-Bell,2017) between the blacks and whites with a graduation percentage of about 10% (Nicholas & Evans-Bell,2017) above the other institutions. Historically black universities and colleges play an important role in providing Black students access to four-year course studies. The enrollment in these universities has increased, with many people opting to have cultural enrichment, have academic support, and have a unique community sense.

Alternative methods of implementing assessments, accountability to African Americans

Despite the improvements being done to improve the SAT and ACTs and institutional practices, African Americans continue to have low-quality services. Learning disabilities and emotional disorders have continued to occur due to the low services. Learning disorders occur when children learn at a slower rate than expected. Emotional disorders include anxiety disorders that get responses of individuals in school different from those of their acceptable age group, ethnic or cultural practices that affect performance in various areas (Frankson & Lindsey, 2013). With all these occurring to the children, the only solution to offer an exceptional education to them. There is continuous scrutiny of African Americans’ educational status in urban schools due to their despicable quality. The schools have low test scores, poor grades, and unreasonable representation of minorities. The community can try other solutions rather than place them under special education. Attempts to address and modify African-American students’ over-presentation in special education have failed as many African Americans who get placed in the programs get regarded on their abilities rather than their actual skills.

Most of these referrals to the unique education systems get done during the elementary school years. They are based on the informal and formal assessments and the teacher’s misunderstandings of the student’s cultural needs (Frankson& Lindsey,2013). They display more expressive, verbal, and dependent, relational behavior when expected to perform tests in cultures with little to no knowledge of and expected to meet the same expectations as their peers from different cultural backgrounds, which leads to frustrations, self-doubts, stigmas, and intimidations when they have the SAT and ACT exams. To change this part of the solution is to change the teacher’s and school’s views on the minority students, particularly the African American students. Schools should develop alternative tests to meet students’ needs who continuously fail tests (Fore et al., 2006). Genuine assessments, commonly known as performance-based assessments, allow students to take part in real-world tests and problem-solving tests rather than paper-based tests.

Such tests are mainly open-ended and get answered using different approaches as they take various forms of projects, writings, demonstrations, debates, presentations, and open-ended tasks (Frankson &Lindsey, 2013). Alternative tests include: first modifying the urban schools by adding a comprehensive school implementation of the culturally responsive practices. The practices involve introducing dialogue between the teachers and the students, involving the parents, and applying tutelage that is relatable to the minority the high poverty populations that focus on the curriculum, assessments, teachers, and monitoring systems. Institutional practices such as a comprehensive curriculum in which the goals, objectives, and parents’ inputs involve getting situated with the heterogeneousness of the student’s cultures and the learning methods suitable for providing quality education to the African American children a higher risk for special education. The schools use standards to design curriculum and instruction, assess student work, and evaluate teachers’ work. They lengthen the time in studying reading and mathematics to increase the number of students who meet the standards.