Education Week - August 24, 2016 - 9

PARTICIPATION OVER TIME

Fewer Test-Takers Opt
For SAT Subject Tests
By Catherine Gewertz
A lot of attention has been heaped
on the fact that more and more students are taking the SAT or ACT.
But little notice has been given to
an opposite trend: the quiet slipping
away of the SAT Subject Tests.
Once known as the SAT IIs, and,
before that, the SAT Achievement
Tests, these single-subject, multiple-choice exams were long a staple
of many high school students' college applications, especially to the
country's more selective set of institutions. But an examination of reports from the College Board, which
owns and administers the tests,
shows a steep decline in the number
of students taking them, especially
in the past five years.
Across the five most recent graduating classes that the organization has published data about-
t he cla sse s of 2 011 t h r ou gh
2015-the number of subject tests
given has dropped by 25.7 percent. Since the class of 2006, it's
dropped 17.4 percent.
By contrast, 1.7 million students
in the class of 2015 took the SAT, up
from 1.65 million four years earlier.
About 1.9 million students took the
ACT, a 19 percent increase from 2011.
Why are the SAT subject tests
fading?
Many colleges and universities no
longer require them. The University of California system's 2009 decision to stop requiring SAT subject
tests put a big dent in the number
of tests taken and likely sparked
others to make them optional, too.
The beginning of the big decline
in subject tests coincides with the
entry of the first UC classes that
didn't need to submit SAT subject
tests, about five years ago.

The UC system is huge-in 2015 its
freshman class pushed 200,000-but
it isn't the only one that's dropped the
SAT subject tests. Columbia University and Dartmouth College recently
decided to make them optional, and
many others have done the same.
In dropping the SAT subject-test
requirement, the University of California said the tests created difficulty for low-income students. Unlike
their wealthier peers, low-income
students often hadn't been advised to
prepare for those tests, so they found
themselves at a disadvantage when
it came time to apply. UC leaders
also said that on top of high school
transcripts and the SAT, the subject
tests didn't add much value to the
process of evaluating applicants.
The College Board's introduction of
an essay to the main SAT exam in
2005 might also have fueled a downward trend in the use of the subject
tests: The organization dropped its
subject test in writing in 2006. The
College Board made the essay portion of the main SAT optional when
it redesigned the exam for 2015.

Which Tests Are Better?
Some view the decline in the use
of the subject tests as ironic, since
many academics see them as better
indicators of students' true academic
accomplishments than the main
SAT, which has been widely criticized as coachable and a proxy for
socioeconomic advantage.
A 2008 report by the National
Association for College Admission
Counseling, or NACAC, found that
the subject tests were better predictors of first-year college success
than the SAT or ACT. But Harvard
University's dean of admissions,
William R. Fitzsimmons, told In-

Statistics point to the declining popularity of the SAT Subject Tests-both in the numbers of tests being given
each year and in the numbers of students who are taking them.

813,803

Number of SAT subject tests given

25.7% drop

731,788
604,286
17.4% drop

Number of students taking SAT subject tests

312,228

22.6% drop

279,428

241,429
13.5% drop

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

2013

2014

2015

SOURCE: College Board

side Higher Ed in 2010 that his institution dropped the subject test in
writing because the new SAT essay
filled that role.
Many colleges and universities still
require-or consider-SAT subject
tests, however, so counselors and
test-prep providers often advise students to take them.
"SAT subject tests can often be
a great way to show your depth of
knowledge and present yourself as a
more competitive candidate," Revolution Prep, a for-profit test-preparation company, says on its website.
Even institutions that no longer require the subject tests don't exactly
discourage students from taking
them.
"While SAT subject tests are not required, some campuses recommend
that freshman applicants interested
in competitive majors take the tests
to demonstrate subject proficiency,"
the University of California says in
the admissions section of its website.
"Remember, these are recommenda-

tions, not mandates. You will not be
penalized for failing to take the SAT
subject tests. On the other hand, submission of these test scores (just like
submission of [Advanced Placement]
and/or [International Baccalaureate]
scores) may add positively to the review of your application."

Small but Stable Role
Such advice might explain in part
why the NACAC, which surveys its
college and university members
about the factors they consider in
admitting students, hasn't seen as
steep a drop in their use of the SAT
subject tests as the College Board figures suggest they might.
A small but stable proportion of
institutions consider the tests important. Between 2006 and 2014,
4 percent to 7 percent of NACAC's
members said they attach "considerable importance" to the SAT subject
tests, a range that held steady in
2015.

There's been a bigger rise, however,
among those who don't consider the
subject tests important. Between
2006 and 2014, 55 percent to 60 percent of NACAC's institutional members said the subject tests have "no
importance" in admissions, but in
2015, that number rose to 70 percent.
"I would like to see another year
of data before declaring a trend,"
NACAC's associate director of research, Melissa E. Clinedinst, said
in an email, "but this increase in the
percentage of colleges rating SAT II
tests with no importance is certainly
consistent with a decline in usage."
Zach Goldberg, a spokesman for
the College Board, said preliminary registration figures for 201516 suggest that more students took
SAT subject tests last year than in
2014-2015, but he declined to provide an exact number.
Visit the HIGH SCHOOL & BEYOND blog, which
tracks news and trends on this issue.
www.edweek.org/blogs

States to Partner on Social-Emotional Learning Standards
By Evie Blad
In a step that organizers call a
"critical moment for the movement,"
eight states will work together to
create social-emotional learning
standards and plans to encourage
schools to embrace teaching students about the growing field.
The Collaborative for Academic,
Social, and Emotional Learning,
which is also known as CASEL, announced the joint effort last month
and will assist the states through
consultation with its own staff and
a panel of experts.
Organizers hope the effort will
help school and district level educators deepen their emphasis on
building students' social and relational skills in addition to traditional academic work.
"We have amassed so much research by this point that we're now
ready, I believe, to really be helping to inform education through

things like policy and learning
standards," said Linda Dusenbury, a senior research scientist
at CASEL. "And what's really exciting is that the states seem very
eager to partner in that effort."

Unique Plans
The participating states are California, Georgia, Massachusetts,
Minnesota, Nevada, Pennsylvania,
Tennessee, and Washington. Additional states that originally applied
to join the collaborative will have
access to the materials it develops.
Each participating state has a
unique plan for teaching socialemotional skills. Many of those
plans include creating age-appropriate standards that show how
social and emotional skills are
demonstrated at each grade level,
developing materials to infuse traditional classroom subjects with
social-emotional learning concepts,

building strategies for state-level
support, and figuring out how to
prepare teachers and principals
to emphasize those skills in the
classroom.
"Having state standards helps
inform districts, central offices,
and boards of education what
might be prioritized," said Roger
Weissberg, the chief knowledge officer for CASEL.
The work comes as the Every
Student Succeeds Act, the new
federal education law, places a
greater emphasis on nonacademic
concepts and "whole child" issues.
ESSA also requires states to add
an "additional indicator" to their
school accountability systems beyond traditional factors like student test scores. While the law lists
examples such as school climate
and student engagement, some
advocates and educators, including a coalition of California districts, have suggested that includ-

ing measures of social-emotional
learning in accountability might be
an effective way of spreading it to
more schools. But some prominent
researchers in the field say measures of social-emotional competencies are not yet reliable enough
to be used for judging how schools
are performing.

Going Deeper
CASEL is not encouraging states
in the collaborative to measure
students' social-emotional skills
for accountability, Weissberg said.
To this point, the most comprehensive work in social-emotional
learning and noncognitive skills has
been done at the school and district
levels. The state collaborative was
inspired in part by CASEL's work
with a group of large, mostly urban,
school districts that have committed
to using districtwide SEL plans and
allowing researchers to study their

results, Weissberg said. That project receives some funding from the
Novo Foundation, which also helps
support coverage of social-emotional
learning in Education Week.
Just three states currently have
state social-emotional learning
standards that span all grade
levels: Illinois, West Virginia,
and Kansas, CASEL researchers
found. Twenty-six states applied
to join the new collaborative, and
eight were selected based on outlines of their plans and CASEL's
capacity to work with them.
State education leaders in participating states said the collaborative will give them a chance to
build on existing work and develop
more formal strategies.
"We really feel a responsibility to create some tools to give to
schools," said Mona Johnson, the
director of student support for the
Washington State Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

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