Who Put the SAT and ACT in Charge?
In the early years of the Classic Learning Test’s existence, we believed that our fight for acceptance as a college entrance exam nationwide would happen in admissions offices. We were wrong. The legacy tests have lobbied to weave themselves into myriad state government mandates nationwide, making the college entrance exam business as political as it is academic.
Knowing this, the SAT and ACT are lobbying aggressively to try to maintain their political moat. In several states — including Georgia, Oklahoma, Texas, and more — they’ve hired lobbyists, even if one or both had not previously had one, and worked side-by-side to oppose bills that would merely make CLT legal. Thus, what would otherwise be a relatively mundane conversation between admissions officers and the makers of a newer standardized test is instead a pitched political battle.
Thus, what would otherwise be a relatively mundane conversation between admissions officers and the makers of a newer standardized test is instead a pitched political battle.
It wasn’t always this way. When the SAT and ACT launched in the 1920s and 1950s, respectively, they competed in a free market. Both sought to answer admissions offices’ need for an objective measuring stick to assist them in sifting through the rising flood of college applicants in those decades. The SAT took the approach of trying to measure aptitude. The ACT, on the other hand, sought to provide universities with a measure of how much a student had mastered the typical public school standards. Students and admissions offices sought one or the other based on their preference between the two distinct products.
The end of this relatively free and competitive marketplace began in 2001. That year, Congress passed the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act. With that law, the federal government enforced nationwide accountability on public schools via testing requirements, including an English and math test in 11th grade. At the same time, Colorado and Illinois became the first states to require all public high school juniors to take the ACT, paying for the mandate through the state budget.
