When I directed the masters program in my department, administrators higher up the food chain told us that we had to require the GRE, the admissions exam for graduate school. We read all the fine print but could find nothing about when students had to take it. We'd then look people in the eye when they came to our office to inquire about admissions and tell them that yes, they'd have to take the GRE before graduating and that we often just forget to look at the scores before someone filed them. Our bad.
High school students applying to colleges with competitive admissions get very different messages about the importance of the SAT and ACT in admissions decisions, and often feel considerable pressure to score well.
Brookings has compiled an interesting summary of the research on test prep programs for college admissions exams, looking both at who enrolls in these programs and how participation affects eventual scores on the ACT or SAT.
It will surprise no reader of this site that the clients paying for test prep programs are overwhelmingly higher-income and higher-educated families.
It may surprise you, reader, to learn that there is little evidence that these programs are effective.
As the authors write,
Test performance is determined by the quality of education that students receive over the course of many years, both in and out of the traditional classroom—arguably more so than the weeks or months spent specifically “prepping” for the SAT or ACT.
And still, families invest in these forms of "shadow education" from the private sector, in the hope of eking out just a few more test points after being coached in test-taking strategies.
Some highlights from the report:
- Admissions test prep is now a multi-billion dollar industry.
- "Test prep" can mean anything from free online, self-paced programs available to students who qualify for testing fee waivers to private tutoring that will cost parents hundreds of dollars an hour.
- The number of tutoring centers offering test-prep support has tripled over the past 25 years, with most growth concentrated within affluent communities with highly educated community members.
- Because students may begin but not finish test prep programs, because these businesses have a clear interest in discouraging research into their effectiveness, because working through a practice test workbook is not the same as having a Harvard graduate privately tutoring your child, there is little systematic evidence that students benefit from any of this.
And yet, many parents pay for whatever competitive edge they can find for their children. And yet, the"equity" response cannot just be that low-income kids get better access to admissions test prep.
The equity response has to instead be providing the same access to highly qualified teachers, advanced curriculum, small class sizes, and college counselors, regardless of what school someone attends.
Of course, a lot of parents pay whatever they can to buy homes in school districts offering a litany of competitive advantages for their children, and then also oppose policies that might level funding for schools attended by other families' children.
The irony is that in the end, these tests don't really predict who will and won't do well in college, so over 2100 colleges and universities have either test-optional or test -free admissions and most, if not all, do a great job of educating students.
And I want to weep when I think about how those billions of dollars now chasing higher test scores could otherwise be invested in schools and colleges.
