shinealight via Compfight "With spring fast approaching, many American high school seniors are now waiting anxiously to hear whether they got into the college or university of their choice. For many students, their scores on the SAT or the ACT will play a big role in where they get in.
That’s because those standardized tests remain a central part in determining which students get accepted at many schools. But a first-of-its-kind study obtained by NPR raises questions about whether those tests are becoming obsolete.
On a drizzly Saturday in Belmont, Calif., high school students are walking out of the Belmont Library looking a little frazzled. They’ve just spent four hours communing with paper, chair and pencil.
Mara Meijer, a junior who wants to be a veterinarian, is among them.
“A lot of my teachers have said that if you don’t have these scores, [colleges] won’t even look at your applications,” Meijer says. “I have tons of books at home that I practice over the weekend and after school, so I can work on upping my score.”
“Upping my score” is a mantra for teens across the country. But Meijer questions — as do a growing number of students and parents — why America remains addicted to these standardized tests in the first place.
“They’re not exactly a fair way to show our skills,” she says. “I wish they could find some way to really show what we can do.”
http://blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/02/students-question-whether-sat-fairly-measures-academic-skills/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+kqed%2FnHAK+%28MindShift%29
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