Changes Are Coming To the ACT Exam (cnn.com) 81
Major changes are coming to the ACT college admissions exam in the spring, the CEO of ACT announced Monday. From a report: The exam will be evolving to "meet the challenges students and educators face" -- and that will include shortening the core test and making the science section optional, chief executive Janet Godwin said in a post on the non-profit's website. The changes will begin with national online tests in spring 2025 and be rolled out for school-day testing in spring 2026, Godwin said in the post. The decision to alter the ACT follows changes made to the SAT earlier this year by the College Board, the non-profit organization that develops and administers that test. The SAT was shortened by a third and went fully digital.
Science is being removed from the ACT's core sections, leaving English, reading and math as the portions that will result in a college-reportable composite score ranging from 1 to 36, Godwin wrote. The science section, like the ACT's writing section already was, will be optional. "This means students can choose to take the ACT, the ACT plus science, the ACT plus writing, or the ACT plus science and writing," Godwin wrote. "With this flexibility, students can focus on their strengths and showcase their abilities in the best possible way."
Science is being removed from the ACT's core sections, leaving English, reading and math as the portions that will result in a college-reportable composite score ranging from 1 to 36, Godwin wrote. The science section, like the ACT's writing section already was, will be optional. "This means students can choose to take the ACT, the ACT plus science, the ACT plus writing, or the ACT plus science and writing," Godwin wrote. "With this flexibility, students can focus on their strengths and showcase their abilities in the best possible way."
Science (Score:5, Insightful)
When I thumbed through my son's middle school science textbook, I didn't see a single mention of the scientific method. I asked the teacher and she said that it isn't really used any more.
I guess science is just polls and surveys now.
Re:Science (Score:4, Interesting)
Haven't you been keeping up with the latest 'Science Journals?' Science is a popularity contest now. If even has a social score, er - I mean citation system.
Skeptical when the base of the data is 'fixed' (Score:1)
Whenever the basic statistics of a significant number are 'fixed', 'modernized', 'adjusted', 'made more fair', 'made equal', 'for the children', 'disadvantaged', ... and the dozens of feel good terms, the skeptic reason could be:
Who - Who benefits from this change?
What - What social or political viewpoints gain from this change?
How - How do the benefit?
In total: Who, what institutions, and what persons economically benefit from this? Where does the money flow?
A guess here is that, maybe someone could find
Detailed statistics (Score:2)
https://www.act.org/content/da... [act.org]
Competitive college appllications (Score:2)
I meant to say that given the large number of students applying to top Ivy League schools, this lowering of scores for men will reduce their chances of being accepted to a top university.
Whether or not this helps particular degrees: English Lit versus Engineering is another question and out of scope for this data set.
The "it's just a tiny difference" where men outperform women in the ACT science will be one of many steps to shave a half a percent off of men's scores here and a quarter of a percent of men's
Reasoned discussion (Score:3)
It should be possible to have a reasoned discussion on this topic without people resulting to trolling or troll ranking comments.
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When you say competitive degrees, do you mean the ones involving science? Admissions for those programs are going to favor people who take the optional science test then.
Some degrees very much don't use science. Which is why it doesn't make sense to hold someone back based on their skill in that area. Reading and English are very important to any degree and career because it's not just an area of study - it's basic communication.
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This is yet another way to fudge the numbers to knock down men's ACT test scores and boost women's ACT test scores. The reasoning behind the test change may be reasonable, but the net effect is to give yet another way men will be excluded from competitive college degrees.
Science ACT part - 0.9 Men ahead of women in 2010 and shrinking to 0.2 ahead of women in 2024
Of all the current sections, the difference between men and women is the smallest for science. There may be reasons to criticize this change, but framing it as a anti-men thing is hard to see. Now, if they excluded the math section ...
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Not just sex, but also race and ethnicity.
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Dark Matter Explained (Score:3)
I guess science is just polls and surveys now.
Indeed, it's a little known fact that Dark Matter is just made up of atoms that got so fed up responding to all the polls and surveys from physicists that they just decided to ignore everything and now almost never interact at all.
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"When I thumbed through my son's middle school science textbook, I didn't see a single mention of the scientific method."
You should have been looking for it your son's philosophy textbook. The "scientific method" is used by scientists, but is itself not a field of science.
Textbooks (Score:3)
Or any of my science textbooks from when I was in middle school or high school, because they all had a chapter on the foundation of the scientific method. Experimental methodology, controls, observer bias, double-blind trials, statistical relevance, etc... None of this is in my son's textbooks.
Ninth grade, chapter one, Introduction to Physical Sciences - The Scientific Method. We did an experiment boiling water with and without salt to test theories of evaporation rates. My son's first experiment was making
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This is all anecdotal. Is there any statistical evidence that science education is getting worse?
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Have you seen the news lately?
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Even Socrates thought children were idiots, that's nothing new.
Anyway it's the older ones who are rightists, the kids actually seem alright.
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When I thumbed through my son's middle school science textbook, I didn't see a single mention of the scientific method.
This could be because there is no "the scientific method."
I suppose next you'll claim that true journalism, "just the facts," "doesn't exist anymore," too, right?
Method (Score:5, Interesting)
This could be because there is no "the scientific method.
1. Observe something
2. Make a hypothesis about the observation
3. Test the hypothesis
4. Draw conclusions from the test
You know, science. You were never taught this?
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I am sitting here wandering around at score: 1 comments and I saw yours and I felt like crying. What the hell is wrong with the person you are speaking to? Where has their mind gone? I could weep for the lost. Thankfully, you appear to be hard and rational. Very well said. (I don't have mod points currently; otherwise, you would have received one)
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When I thumbed through my son's middle school science textbook, I didn't see a single mention of the scientific method. I asked the teacher and she said that it isn't really used any more.
I guess science is just polls and surveys now.
But they still have a few science questions, never fear!
12. Sex is determined by:
A. 'X' and 'Y' chromosomes.
B. Your choice of pronoun.
Science!
If you can't meet the standards (Score:5, Insightful)
Lower your standards....
sigh...
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It's interesting that several "name schools" have recently re-introduced standardized test requirements. Several links popped up, this is one from a relatively credible media source that is not paywalled: https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/... [csmonitor.com]
I always tested very well, so for me SAT/ACT requirements were an advantage.
It's official (Score:5, Insightful)
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"With this flexibility, students can focus on their strengths and showcase their abilities in the best possible way.""
Re: Participation Trophy (Score:1)
It's called the Electoral College.
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Snowflake? Don't you keep up? We've moved on to "woke" now.
On a serious note... I never knew the writing section was optional. Had I known that at the time there's no way in hell you would have been able to get me to sit through that portion of the test. I, like I suspect a lot of people on here, am a technical person. Math and science were my highest scores on my ACT. English and Reading were average. Writing was by far my worst. The only thing taking the writing portion did was lower my score. Who know
What STEM practitioners do (Score:2)
is largely writing. Journal papers, grant proposals, progress reports.
I have wondered if the better Engineering PhD candidate is an English Major you tutored in math in place of an Engineering major you tutor in writing?
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Re: What STEM practitioners do (Score:2)
Different talents for different aspects of the job. It helps to be able to write well, but what helps better is having a designated Writer on the team who's responsible for converting the gobeltygook and shorthand in your comments into readable prose. Implicit in that is that this person understands your code.
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As it turns out Christofascism was the real DEI all along. But sure, let's blame the LGBTees and the scary colored peoples instead, the groups who overwhelmingly value facts and embrace the scientific method.
The alphabet soup gang, values facts? The group who attacked the concept of human biology in one gender-fluid generation, who now cannot define what a “woman” is? The group destroying all women’s ability to compete in sports? The ones suffering from gender dysphoria looking for bravery awards as treatment, insisting that pre-pubescent minors should be eligible for life-altering procedures without a parents knowledge or authorization? THAT is the group you claim embraces facts and scien
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As it turns out Christofascism was the real DEI all along. But sure, let's blame the LGBTees and the scary colored peoples instead, the groups who overwhelmingly value facts and embrace the scientific method.
Then why are there so much research coming out saying puberty blockers are actually bad if you don't need them, and that the affirmative care model is being phased out of their origin countries in Europe due to lack of any evidence that it helps (and evidence that it might hurt).
No matter how hard you wish, no group has a monopoly on stupid.
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You have to remember the goal of the ACT is to evaluate how well a student will do in college, so it may be it wasn't effective in that goal. If a student is a smart, hard worker but went to a school that didn't offer advanced science classes, they might do worse on the ACT but do better in college than a student that went to a high school with lots of science classes and tutoring available.
Re:It's official (Score:5, Insightful)
Guess who will, over the long term, do better in life?
The students with wealthier parents, obviously.
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There's no guarantee of that though and there are plenty of idiots who had intelligent parents just like there are plenty of intelligent people born to poor families.
not everyone should go to college. (Score:2, Insightful)
failure to realize that leads to... this.
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Problem is, we don't really have enough well-paying jobs to go around for the folks who don't go to college. Sure, people here on /. love to shout "go into the trades!", but those careers only pay what they do because they're rough on your body and most people don't want to do them. When you've got a situation like here in Florida where there is an oversupply of labor, you can't even be assured of earning a decent paycheck.
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Capability is partly inherited and partly the result of education. Having rich , capable parents helps with both.
We also need the lower paid jobs to be done so it is not in the interest of a capitalist society to try and bring the poor up with investment of extra resources into their early childhood education..
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We gotta keep the rich kids busy, else they snap and blow politicians' ears off.
the only test will be can you get an loan and the (Score:2)
the only test will be can you get an loan and the bar is very low on that.
Bloody Karens. (Score:2)
Why are you all complaining about the changes of a test that is totally optional? Ok, sure I took the SAT back in the 90s just for the heck of it, even though I knew I wasn't going to a real college. The fact that colleges are still something that they're trying to shovel kids into after high school is ridiculous. I know plenty of people who have gotten degrees and never went on to use them in a real job. So what's the point, just to dump a bunch of unnecessary debt onto people? Thanks, no. Kids should b
Re:Bloody Karens. (Score:5, Interesting)
I know plenty of people who have gotten degrees and never went on to use them in a real job.
You may not need it for the job, but you get the degree because the first thing a hiring manager is going to do if most of the applicants for a position have a college degree, is shitcan all the applications from the applicants who don't have a college degree.
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I'll agree college can be useless for some people, treks in college might be useless... but others benefit and it helps either their career or other life goals.
My degree allowed me to have that first post-college job, it was a requirement. I made more in the first year (yes before taxes) than the entire college tuition and expenses cost me. Adjusted for inflation, I know make 2.3 times per year what the whole college package cost.
Clearly worth the money for me.
( No, I didn't go to Ivy League school, ha!)
IOW, turning it into useless garbage (Score:3)
Adopt the Indian System (Score:3)
In XI and XII people are split into streams - Pre-Engineering (PCM+English+1 Elective), Pre-Medical (PCB+English+1 Elective), Pre-Commerce (Stats+Accounting+Economic +English+1 Elective), Arts (English+2nd Language+History/Geography/Civics/Economics+1 Elective).
Dont need a separate ACT or SAT test. The school leaving exam will be enough.
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Shoe strengths are a weird metric, but I'll allow it. That generation is into absurdism.
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let's be clear (Score:2, Insightful)
In the US we let the left take over public education since the 1970s, and the result is is an educational system that is a laughingstock vs the developed world. Our kids know there are 72 genders and believe the US invented slavery, but can't read, math, name 2 countries in North America or make change.
This is in a place where we spend $20k PER STUDENT per year.
That's right, that class of 30 kids has a budget of $600,000 every single year, can't pass basic benchmarks. By the end of their high school caree
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Name the false conclusion.
The left dominates education since the 1970s.
The US school performance metrics are terrible compared to the rest of the developed world.
The US spends bigger piles of money per student than the highest performing developed countries (Germany spends $10-12000, depending on which website you believe).
Please, let me know which of those are false?
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"In the US we let the left take over public education since the 1970s, and the result is is an educational system that is a laughingstock vs the developed world."
How does that work when it's Republicans cutting funding for schools and has been since I've been alive?
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"In the US we let the left take over public education since the 1970s, and the result is is an educational system that is a laughingstock vs the developed world."
How does that work when it's Republicans cutting funding for schools and has been since I've been alive?
At the last high school graduation I attended, something like 80% of the students were “honor” graduates. That didn’t scream “Holy Shit, look at all the smart kids”. It more whined “No fair! Why does Johnny get an A and not meee?!?” I’m sure they’ll finally learn what a bell curve is during the first round of layoffs.
If Republicans are cutting funding, it’s because current funding is creating an ignorant moron of a product. And that’s ha
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Did you bother reading my post?
Do facts matter?
The US spends roughly 1.5-2x per student as comparable developed countries with worse student outcomes.
How do you spin that to be Republicans fault?
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Because that money doesn't go into actual education - it goes into SPORTS.
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This might be the second most disingenuous political statement I've ever seen. While that may be true, on average, it turns out that, if you eliminate the scores of underprivileged schools from that average, we still have the best public schools in the world. I wonder how much is spent on those underprivileged students and who's cutting their budgets, every chance they get?
I'd also wonder whose hurt feelings are influencing
Opportunity! (Score:3)
This is a fantastic opportunity for a new college entrance exam that actually tests the students academic abilities with the goal to predict success in academia.
Putting low performing students in high performing schools is bad for everyone and turns an 'A' student in a lesser school into a 'C' student in a high performant school.
Is there a GoFundMe project going already?
So what value does the ACT have now? (Score:2)
Now with colleges wising up and going back to using those scores I see some places wanting those different ones, so I wonder if students will have to take all three of the ACT tests depending on the school they want to
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Back when I had to takes the SAT or ACT, this was back before the writing portion, the reason to take the ACT was it had the science portion. So if you had stronger knowledge in science then pure reading, writing, and math you would take that to get a better score then the SAT would provide. Now with colleges wising up and going back to using those scores I see some places wanting those different ones, so I wonder if students will have to take all three of the ACT tests depending on the school they want to go to.
Will there be an additional ACT test developed to validate one’s capacity to be indoctrinated and brainwashed with liberal politics? Democrats under massive pressure to close off a border and curb the flow of illegal voters for an upcoming election, would like to know.
(Harvards President was forced to resign. Certain employers have sworn off hiring from Ivy League schools. Endowment donations pulled. Every sanctuary city requires ID for every other major service in life EXCEPT voting for a Democra
Challenges Educators and Students Face (Score:2)
And why not (Score:3)
Not a non-profit for long... (Score:1)
As of April 2024, ACT will be converting to a for profit company since it was bought by a private equity firm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]