A wise move
Colorado lawmakers voted put forward a plan yesterday to align state academic standards with the ACT exam.
This seems wise. Most states have struggled to implement high-quality academic standards in the major subject areas, and in the few states that have raised the bar across the board—California, Massachusetts, Indiana—an exceptional amount of political cooperation was required. Certainly that’s not something most states can count on.
So why not adopt a set of clear, ready-made standards that have received the seal of approval from top universities across the land?
UPDATE: It should also be noted that the bill “laid out a multi-year collaborative process for state education officials” to develop K-12 grade-level standards based on the ACT content.
Ah, the vaunted “multi-year collaborative process for state education officials.” Just when you think they’ve figured out a way to cut through the red tape they wrap themselves up again.
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April 18th, 2008 at 10:31 am
Aligning curriculum standards with the ACT and SAT seems a bit backwards. Shouldn’t college admissions processes be based on student achievement in their high schools, rather than the other way around? At best, ACT and SAT are mediocre predictors of first-year college grades, and at worst they reflect the social class of parents.
April 18th, 2008 at 12:25 pm
C’mon Sherman, you know that’s only true when the range of student ability is greatly restricted, such as at elite Universities where only students with a limited range of SAT scores are admitted. In general admission colleges, where the range of admitted students is not so restricted, SAT scores a far better predictor of grades.