Lobbyist: Boost SAT testing to gain merit scholars
Posted on Friday, March 21, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/News/220354/
Former state Rep. Joyce Elliott asked a legislative task force Thursday to “stretch their minds” about the SAT collegeentrance exam and consider ending the dominance of its rival test, the ACT, in the state.
“I hear a lot of people saying ‘ Why don’t we have more National Merit Scholars ?’” said Elliott, a registered lobbyist for the New Yorkbased College Board, which administers the SAT and its secondary version, the PSAT. “You know why they’re not there ? They have to take the PSAT.”
About 4, 500 students statewide — most of them in Little Rock — took the PSAT, the standardized test normally taken by high school sophomores and juniors as practice for the SAT.
The PSAT is a prerequisite for the National Merit Scholarships.
The ACT and SAT are nationally standardized tests commonly used by colleges to evaluate potential students in the admissions process.
Elliott, a Little Rock Democrat who left the House because of term limits, is now running against incumbent Sen. Irma Hunter Brown, D-Little Rock, for the District 33 Senate seat.
Elliott presented her case for the SAT to a panel of higher-education leaders and legislators on the Task Force on Higher Education Remediation, Retention and Graduation Rates, which will recommend to the Legislature measures to improve the number of Arkansans who graduate college. The report is to be released in July.
Task Force Chairman Rep. Johnnie J. Roebuck, D-Arkadelphia, said before the meeting that the panel’s mission is to develop broad parameters to improve college-readiness and graduation rates from pre-kindergarten through college.
“It’s not for legislators to dictate” specific steps for the state’s public schools, colleges and universities to take to improve education in a state where 25 percent of the adults over 25 have no high school diploma or GED, she said.
Since the early 1960 s, Arkansas has been an “ACT state” with almost all high school graduates bound for college taking the college-entrance exam administered by ACT Inc., an Austin, Texas-based company.
Last year, 21, 403 Arkansas students took the ACT compared to 1, 044 who completed the SAT. About 75 percent of the state’s graduating seniors took the ACT, compared to 42 percent nationally, according to Elliott and the Department of Education.
Karen L. Pennell, assistant vice president and Southwest regional manager for ACT Inc., said the ACT has been successful in Arkansas because it aligns with the state’s curriculum.
“It’s always been a test about what students know and can do,” Pennell said after the meeting. “If you’re enrolled in high school and taking your classes seriously, you’ll do well on the ACT.”
The SAT, Pennell said, is philosophically an aptitude test.
Elliott disagreed, saying the College Board has a full curriculum that prepares students for Advanced Placement classes.
That the SAT is merely an aptitude test is “mythology,” said Elliott, a former school teacher.
Ken James, commissioner of the Education Department, told the panel it is up to each of the state’s 245 school districts to decide if they want to offer the ACT or SAT.
He said the two tests are “comparable.”
Rep. Betty Pickett, D-Conway, a former member of the state Board of Education, said she had heard that some school districts reserve the PSAT and SAT tests for their gifted and talented students.
Elliott said such policies were “wrong-headed” and a “misuse” of the tests, adding that the state might enroll more members of minority groups and low-income children in Advanced Placement courses with greater use of the College Board’s Readiness System, which offers curriculum options geared to preparing for the company’s Advanced Placement courses and college-entrance examinations.
Roebuck, the task force’s chairman, said ACT representatives would address the group at its April meeting.