VOA慢速英语20060427b

EDUCATION REPORT - Some American Colleges Drop the SAT and ACT as Required Tests for AdmissionBy Nancy Steinbach

Broadcast: Thursday, April 27, 2006

This is Shep O'Neal with the VOA Special English Education Report.

The United States has more than three thousand colleges and universities. Most require high school students to take an admissions test, either the SAT or the ACT. But some have reconsidered.

The activist¹ organization FairTest opposes the requirements. It lists more than seven hundred individual schools now where testing is optional. Students can provide their results, but only if they want to. The list is on the Web site fairtest.org.

A number of the schools are related as campuses within university systems. Yet in some cases, it appears that other campuses do still require testing.

Testing critics say one reason to drop the requirement is that preparing for the tests takes away too much time from schoolwork, and life. They say the requirement places too much importance on one test and causes too much stress for students.

Admissions officers at other schools, however, say test scores are important but are only one of the things they consider.

Still, critics question just how much the tests really show about a student. They say higher scores in some cases might only show that a student's family had the money for costly² test-preparation classes.

One of the first colleges to drop the requirement was Bates College in Maine in nineteen eighty-four. Over the next twenty years, it compared students who provided their test scores and those who did not. The study found that grades and graduation rates were the same.

Bates College also found an increase in the number of women, minorities and poor students who applied³. The same was true of students with learning disabilities and international students.

Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts ended its requirement in two thousand one. Mount Holyoke is a small, highly rated liberal arts college for women. Recently its president, Joanne Creighton, wrote in the Los Angeles Times about the effects of making the SAT optional.


Porter Hall on the Mount Holyoke campus

Like Bates, Mount Holyoke has compared student performance. Joanne Creighton says the study has found no meaningful difference.

She says the SAT might have made sense in the nineteen twenties when it was developed. College then was only for a relatively⁴ limited group of people. But she says American students and schools are too different today for what she calls a one-size-fits-all test.

This VOA Special English Education Report was written by Nancy Steinbach. Read and listen to our reports at www.unsv.com. This is Shep O'Neal.

1 activist   

n.活动分子，积极分子

参考例句：

• He's been a trade union activist for many years.多年来他一直是工会的积极分子。
• He is a social activist in our factory.他是我厂的社会活动积极分子。

2 costly   

adj.昂贵的，价值高的，豪华的

参考例句：

• It must be very costly to keep up a house like this.维修这么一幢房子一定很昂贵。
• This dictionary is very useful,only it is a bit costly.这本词典很有用，左不过贵了些。

3 applied   

adj.应用的；v.应用，适用

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。

4 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。