High school juniors will begin taking a series of high-pressure tests next year that would affect their Illinois college admissions and even their car insurance rates under a plan being put into final form by state education officials.
The seven-hour series of mandatory tests, scheduled to begin next spring, will include the traditional ACT college entrance examination as part of a larger package, called the Prairie State Achievement Examination.
The Prairie State tests will replace the controversial high school Illinois Standards Achievement Tests, which educators felt were a poor measure of students’ achievements because there was no incentive to do well.
But there will be much riding on the new tests, which would make Illinois a pioneer among the states in high-stakes high school testing.
The State Board of Higher Education voted Tuesday to recommend to Illinois colleges and universities that they use the tests’ results as an element in determining undergraduate admissions and placement decisions.
The results of the tests will appear on transcripts sent with college applications.
In another wrinkle, officials of the Illinois State Board of Education have been talking to auto insurance companies about using the Prairie State tests for student eligibility for lower car rates instead of the grade-point averages now used.
The state schools board also is working on a system to reward school systems that have students who do well on the tests, possibly involving some sort of special recognition for top schools, according to Lynne Haeffele, deputy state schools superintendent for testing.
Because the ACT will be included in the tests, thousands of students who would not have considered going to college will be forced nonetheless to take one challenging step toward getting there. About two-thirds of Illinois high school students currently take the ACT, which is nationally recognized but used most often in the Midwest.
But compelling students to take a test that they haven’t been prepared for and isn’t relevant to their goals is likely to raise protests.
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“What about the kids who are going to lay hardwood floors with their dad or work on the farm with their parents?” said Benjamin Thonar, a Lockport High School junior who is on the state schools board’s student advisory group. “Forcing them to take a high-pressure college entrance exam is unfair and a waste of time.”
Officials of the State Board of Education, which is developing the test package, said it should be given over the course of two days during school time, making it far more of an endurance run than the ISATs, which lasted for a little more than three hours each year.
The new exams also will include workplace-related ACTs in math and reading as well as a separate Illinois-standards section including a written essay and content questions on science and social studies.
Some students with disabilities and some bilingual students will be exempted from the tests.
Haeffele said the program will be instituted as soon the state schools board hammers out the last details of a contract with Iowa City-based ACT Inc. The contract is expected to be signed and approved by state schools Supt. Glenn “Max” McGee by the end of this month.
The program could make Illinois the first state in the nation to require a college admissions test of high school students, and it is sure to be to be watched closely by education policymakers around the country.
“The idea is excellent of not having different tests for college admission and for the state [standards],” said Michael Kirst, a Stanford University education professor and former head of the California Board of Education who is a leading researcher on education policy.
“It sends a clear signal to students, and if it works, other states would be paying a lot of attention,” he added.
The tests are certain to confront high schools with new opportunities and problems and reshape the curricula in some schools. It also could have a strong impact on state colleges and universities in the form of increased applications.
State education officials acknowledge that including the ACT may bring adverse reactions from some school districts where low scores are likely.
Initially, “students will be taking the tests who haven’t been prepared,” Haeffele said. But she added that the tests would be a wake-up call for schools that all students have to be readied to meet the same standards.
The Illinois approach is designed to solve a problem that has bedeviled states trying to hold high schools accountable by testing student performance. Unless the tests are required for graduation–and in Illinois they are not–there is no real incentive for many students to do well or even take the tests.
In state after state, high-performing students have boycotted the tests because they regard them as meaningless annoyances. They are already taking college entrance exams such as the ACT and SAT, and so they believe they have nothing to gain from a state test with no real consequences to them personally.
David Conley, an education professor at the University of Oregon who studies state testing programs, said the Illinois program could be particularly helpful to poor and minority students who haven’t been thinking about college as an option.
But he cautioned that the program could reshape high school curricula toward test preparation.
Conley also said the program could result in a 10 percent rise–beyond already projected increases–in the number of high school students applying to college. That’s a bulge that could well strain facilities and require greater state outlays on higher education.
But Keith Sanders, executive director of the state higher education board, said state schools are now operating below capacity. He added that he believed the legislature would respond positively should more funding be needed because of a spike in college application.
Some area school officials reacted to the plan with caution.
“It very clearly makes the [Prairie State] a high-stakes exam, meaning that it … has a role in determining life’s future options,” said Evanston Township High School District Supt. Allan Alson.
Paul Swanstrom, assistant superintendent of Joliet School District 204, said he is not opposed to merging the ACT with the Prairie State, but he voiced concern that the state is moving the target for schools and students.
“A lot of us have spent a lot of time aligning our curricula to the standards the state gave us a long time ago, and if they are now going to give our students a test that measures something else, well, that deeply concerns me,” he said.
Richard Deptuch, director of instruction for Oak Park-River Forest High School, noted that the logistics, monitoring and security of giving 700 students the ACT at the same time could create problems.
Chicago Public Schools chief Paul Vallas was more enthusiastic, saying that Chicago school officials had been urging the state for months to scrap the ISAT.
“The ACT is a nationally recognized exam, so we’ve been strong advocates for using it as the official state test,” Vallas said. “Adding the [Prairie State] component simply gives the state a way to measure whether the state standards are being taught, and we think that’s a good idea.”
Vallas said Chicago schools will phase in ACT prep tests for freshmen and sophomores to help prepare them for the Prairie State in their junior year. The new tests will replace the Test of Achievement Proficiency that Chicago public high school students now take.
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