Chronicle of Higher Education
By ERIC HOOVER
In some circles, criticizing the College Board has become like sneezing — an automatic response that often proves contagious. The most recent fit of scorn started last summer, when the College Board announced that it would soon allow students to choose which of their SAT scores to report to colleges (admissions offices now receive the results of every SAT a student takes). College Board officials tout the option, called Score Choice, as a way to ease test takers' anxiety. After all, students would know that if they earned higher scores the second time they take the exam, they could — poof! — erase their scores from the first testing date. What's wrong with that?
Everything, say some prominent admissions officials who have publicly described Score Choice as a sales tactic that will encourage more students to take the SAT multiple times, unfairly benefiting those who can afford test-preparation classes. Those dire predictions were echoed in a December 30 New York Times article, which described concerns that Score Choice "will aggravate the testing frenzy and add yet another layer of stress and complexity to applying to college."
Lost amid the brouhaha is the fact that the College Board's rival, ACT Inc., has long allowed students to decide which of their scores to send to colleges. That policy has prompted few, if any, complaints.
Perhaps that's because the controversy involves more than just the intricacies of test-score reporting. For one, it affirms that the College Board has an image problem among some admissions deans and high-school counselors, who assume the worst about its every move. Moreover, the debate reveals fundamental questions about who has control over the admissions process.
That process has evolved into a three-way tug of war among students, colleges, and testing companies. And that's one reason Michael Barron thinks Score Choice is a good idea. "Students should own their scores," says Mr. Barron, associate provost for enrollment services and director of admissions at the University of Iowa. But some colleges, he explains, are used to seeing all SAT scores. "Now that's been taken away, and that's what's caused the hubbub," he says. "Colleges don't want to be the bad guy."
That is, the bad guy who requires students to submit all their scores despite the College Board's new policy, which in no way supersedes the admissions requirements at individual institutions. Georgetown University is among several highly selective colleges that plan to ask students for all their standardized test scores.
Charles A. Deacon, Georgetown's dean of undergraduate admissions, believes colleges can and should get all the information they can, so as to make informed evaluations. "We hope that students trust us to use test scores correctly," says Mr. Deacon, who knows that some students do not.
It's not always clear what variance in an applicant's SAT scores can tell admissions officials. At some private colleges, admissions officials convert all scores into an average for each applicant. In some cases, simply knowing how many times an applicant took the SAT might provide a clue about his or her background. "Asking for all the scores is a philosophical position for us," says Mr. Deacon, whose university encourages students not to take the test more than twice, in the name of their own sanity. Slightly more than half of all SAT takers take the exam a second time, and a majority stop there, according to the College Board.
Some high-school counselors see Score Choice as no big deal. "The new policy will increase the stress level for only about 10 percent of students," says Robert T. Turba, chairman of guidance services at Stanton College Preparatory School, in Jacksonville, Fla., "the ones who are programmed to get into Harvard and are strategizing all the way."
Whatever happens, the College Board is hardly the only player in the debate. After all, colleges have helped create the very dilemma that Score Choice presents. The recent Times story asked what would happen when students tried to use Score Choice to send just some scores to a college that "requires" all of them. The answer: Not much. A "helpful reminder" about that college's policy would pop up on their computer screens, says Laurence Bunin, a senior vice president at the College Board who oversees the SAT.
That said, the College Board has no plans to become the testing police by reporting students who do not comply with colleges' policies. "The trust to send a complete application is between the student and the college," Mr. Bunin says.
Indeed, the onus will be on young adults to decide whether they should ignore a college's rules, just as they already decide whether to write their own admission essays or cheat on tests. And that is a lesson in what "choice" is all about.
http://chronicle.com
Section: Guide
Volume 55, Issue 20, Page A4
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