[Lmresearch] New Achieve report--Aligned Expectations? A Closer Look at College Admissions and Placement Tests

[Russell W. Rumberger]

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           Aligned Expectations? A Closer Look at College Admissions and Placement Tests

            College admissions and placement tests play a crucial role in the American education system. More than 2 million students each year take admissions tests (the ACT or SAT), and the results help postsecondary institutions make critical decisions about who will go to college, where they will be admitted and the likelihood of their success in a broad range of college courses. College placement tests, meanwhile, are used by a majority of the nation's colleges and universities to determine which courses young people are prepared to enter.

            Now, as many states seek to raise high school standards to ensure that more students graduate prepared for the demands of college and the workplace, college admissions and placement tests are being called upon to serve new purposes for which they were not intentionally designed. Some states, for example, are using the SAT and ACT as their official statewide high school graduation exam, incorporating these tests into their state assessment and accountability systems. Other states are considering whether college placement tests could be given to students while still in high school to provide early feedback on their level of readiness. Still others are developing end-of-course tests that align with their high school curriculum and tap college-ready content or modifying their existing high school tests to make them better measures of college readiness.

            Achieve launched this study to help inform the decisions states are making about high school assessments by providing greater insights into the world of college admissions and placement testing. Achieve analyzed more than 2,000 questions from college admissions and placement exams to determine how these tests compare to one another and how well they measure the college and work readiness benchmarks created by the American Diploma Project (ADP). These benchmarks are being used by 29 states to align high school standards, curriculum, assessments and accountability systems with the demands of college and work.

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