Public school students - and schools - are being tested as never before. Whether the increased reliance on subject-matter and aptitude testing has paid off in better education is an open question, but officials charge ahead regardless. The latest foray is a proposal to require most 11th graders in North Carolina to take the ACT, a college entrance test.
Traditionally the ACT is relied on more by colleges and universities in the Midwest than along the East Coast, and it's not clear whether this test will substitute, for many college-bound students, for the more widely taken SAT. If not, the state Board of Education, which is expected to vote on the proposal soon, would be cramming in yet another exam. It would assess both individual students' readiness for college and schools' performance.
The latter objective is especially tricky. Individual schools' aggregate college-exam scores are more likely to correlate strongly with family income and education levels than with anything that goes on in class.
