Silver Lining in Dark Cloud of COVID - End of Standardized Testing.

(This article authored by our CEO Reetu Gupta was originally published in Puget Sound Business Journal)

While COVID-19 has dramatically altered many aspects of our lives, the pandemic has also greatly challenged our education system. Prior to COVID-19, the American education system was stuck in the old practice of standardized tests and lack of technological advances. Thanks to COVID-19, we are beginning to revolutionize our education system. While the pandemic has been detrimental in many ways, there is a silver lining in this dark cloud: moving our college admissions to 21st century and making it equitable. 

In the blink of an eye, over 60 million K-12 students in the U.S. have transitioned to learning completely online. And with COVID-19 coinciding with the College Board’s annual spring exams, colleges and universities have been forced to reconsider their approach to standardized testing for college admissions. The practice of using standardized test scores in the college admissions process has always been questioned. For one, single test score to determine the future of multi-faceted, unique, and complex individuals is an archaic practice, especially considering the technology readily available today. 

More importantly, however, this practice leads to inequities in higher education. Today, the rate of at-risk youth going to college is almost 30% lower than that of their peers. And this gap is not primarily caused by finances because Last year, $2.6 Billion in Pell grant went unclaimed, according to NerdWallet. These kids never take the tests, preventing them from getting on colleges’ radars. 

Then, in early 2019, almost one year before COVID disruption, there was another disruption shook higher education – a college admission scandal, nicknamed as “Varsity Blue Scandal”. Rich parents were found guilty of bribing test centers and admissions officers in order to get their kids into highly selective colleges like Yale, Stanford, and USC. How was that possible? The rich parents only had one number to manipulate: their kid’s test score. 

Much standardized testing has been cancelled during lock-down, giving high school students very limited opportunities to the SAT or ACT. Could this pandemic, combined with the scrutiny standardized testing faced in last year’s scandal, push this old way of candidate selection into the history books? At Cirkled In, we conducted surveys of 1,100 students that indicated that students all over the country are currently rethinking their college plans. Colleges now have no other choice than to turn to new methods such as online portfolios for candidate selection. 

Paul Romer, Stanford economist once said – “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste”. The silver lining of this pandemic might be an education revolution that would have otherwise taken decades to reach. While these times have been trying for American families and our world, COVID-19 will be the push to develop a cutting-edge education system bundled with a robust health care system and healthy economy.

We will only come out of this pandemic stronger if we stand together for the change we wish to see.

This full article authored by our CEO Reetu Gupta and published by Puget Sound Business Journal can be accessed here.