Dream Crusher

Many high school juniors, including myself, took the ACT yesterday. The atmosphere of the classroom before the exam was like nothing I had ever experienced.  Most of the kids were nervously twirling their pencils, sitting in their seats quietly, trying to recall grammatical rules or math formulas they hadn’t studied in years. I was beyond nervous. I just sat there like all the other students, trying to prepare myself for possibly the most important test I had ever taken. Most of us felt, I’m sure, that this test would have be a huge factor in deciding our futures after high school.

            Although this may seem a bit extreme, there is a lot of truth in saying that the ACT decides one’s future. It can open or close educational opportunities and determine whether or not a student gets to go to a college. Colleges claim that the ACT is an essential because it allows them to compare students from different high schools. But in the eyes of many, including myself, the ACT has many flaws. In fact, I think Emily talked about how the ACT plays a part in setting up kids who do not get good scores to be at the bottom of society.

            I read an article this morning, titled “The ACT: Biased, Inaccurate, and Misused” (http://www.fairtest.org/facts/act.html). It talked about how standardized tests, specifically the ACT, are geared towards certain students and how it gives these students an unfair advantage. Kids who come from wealthier families usually have more opportunities to study for the test, and because of this they usually perform better. Their parents are able to give them tutors and pay for prep courses. In many North Shore families (including those of my friends and myself), parents will even pay for their kids to retake the test if they did not get a “satisfactory” score the first time around. Colleges usually are only able to see the test scores you want them to see, so naturally this gives the kids who took the test multiple times an advantage.

            The ACT is also designed for a particular type of student. In the article I read, the author said that the test format “favors males over females.”

This is a table I found comparing the ACT scores of different races and genders. Even though girls have, on average, higher GPAs than boys, guys generally do better on the test (if you compare the dark blue line to the pink line, you can see this). This directly contradicts the purpose of the ACT; colleges use the scores to predict what students’ grades will be like in college. It seems very reasonable to assume that the kids who got the better grades in high school will continue to be successful in college, but I guess the ACT creators, as well as college administrators, do not agree with this.

            Standardized tests, especially the ACT, are an unfair way of deciding who should have the opportunity to go to college. These tests really only tell colleges how good of a test–taker a student is; it does not tell them how intelligent students are.  It reduces kids to a degrading number, and a student’s dreams can be crushed in a matter of hours with the ACT. Therefore, standardized tests need to be replaced with a fairer, more accurate way of evaluating students.

            Is the ACT really necessary? Do you agree with me that it should be abolished? If you agree with me, what are some possible alternatives?