Many colleges and universities have prolonged their test-optional policies for this past year's 2023-24 admissions cycle, and in certain instances, for an extended period. Harvard applicants have posted this related notice on application requirements website:
"For the College Classes of 2027-2030, students may apply for admission without standardized test scores."
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| From College Curators, 2022-23 |
It's so interesting, if not aggravating, to ponder why so many of our nation's universities are increasingly test-optional but our K-12 schools are not. What we do know is that increasing the numbers through diversity is a need for higher education institutions increasing drops in enrollment numbers (see previous blog: The Shrinking of Higher Ed In the past, colleges grew their way out of enrollment crises. This time looks different.)
Clearly, higher education is different from K-12 public education such that we can all surmise what's going on here. I have looked at high-stakes testing over the years and land on the view this agenda is not about truly providing our children and youth with opportunity, but about profits for the test companies, while disempowering our youth who test poorly so that they don't grow up to be critical and threaten the incumbencies of those in power. Tests are also about reproducing white privilege in society and serving the neoliberal ends of privatizing, marketizing, and corporatizing public schools.
If you know anything about how the Houston Independent School District (HISD) got taken over by Mike Miles' charter management organization, test scores are key. Accordingly, read this piece in Texas Monthly titled, "Welcome to Houston’s No-Longer-Independent School District."
What about "test-optional?" It actually sounds patronizing to me. How about grasping the bigger story here on how these tests are anti-democratic. To be clear, I totally believe in assessment, just not these offensive mind-numbing, disempowering, reductive, and objectifying tools we have to hurt some kids, while providing others with a false sense of superiority.
Eyes wide open. It all connects.
-Angela Valenzuela
Test-Optional Policies Now Dominate Higher Ed
Admissions policies that give applicants the option of whether to submit their standardized test scores have been growing steadily over the years, sparked by long-running concerns about how the tests can contribute to racial and socioeconomic inequality and more-immediate pandemic-driven logistical challenges.
Lately, a sea change has overtaken higher education: Over 800 institutions shifted to test-optional policies between the fall 2019 and fall 2021 admissions cycles, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Education. Only about 160 institutions still classify themselves as requiring test scores.
The change has become sufficiently widespread that the Education Department will incorporate choices for test-optional, test-blind, and test-required in its data collection, the first update to this part of its admissions table since it was created seven years ago.
Which institutions have made this change, and what effects has it had? See below.
Methodology
This analysis looks at over 1,400 institutions that reported their admissions data to the U.S. Department of Education’s Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (Ipeds) for the fall 2021 admissions year. The data set does not include institutions with an open-admissions policy. Only Title IV, degree-granting, four-year institutions that admitted more than 50 students in the fall of 2021 were included. For-profit institutions were excluded.
Ipeds presents four categories for universities to choose from when reporting their admissions considerations: “required,” “recommended,” “considered but not required,” or “neither required nor recommended.” Test-optional is defined as any institution that did not report that test scores were “required.” This includes all institutions that listed test scores as “recommended,” “considered but not required,” and “neither required nor recommended.”
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