Exam results day is unmatched in America – is that good?

The Herald Scotland

4 days ago

Usually in those times, I have lived here long enough to have a sense of the context involved, and I can wrap my head around what I am covering.
Every year, however, I have a day at work where my American brain cannot help but think: 'Why, though?'
Unfortunately, it happens to also be arguably the most important single day in Scottish education reporting: SQA results day.
My ambivalence about results day has grown over the years. Five years ago, on my first results day, I visited Lossiemouth High School to speak with students who had aced their exams and were on their way to top universities across the UK.
It was a great day. My favourite part of this job is speaking to students and teachers. At the time, the pandemic was disrupting daily life, and we were all happy to celebrate.
I never hesitate to celebrate student achievement, but over the years, results day has raised new questions as I started to think more about the young people who we do not see in the headlines.
I wonder whether the spotlight we shine on success doesn't increase the disappointment of the many students who don't receive their desired result, especially on a day that is already so charged with anxiety and emotion that students might feel like they may as well be back in the exam hall.
Of course, I understand that the results matter. The Scottish Government, particularly in the past decade, has made it virtually impossible for anyone wanting to heap praise or criticism to look away from attainment statistics.
Beyond politics, unless some of the loftier goals that have been kicked around recently come to fruition– for example, by ending Scotland's reliance on high-stakes exams, creating new pathways to university and careers, or better recognising young people's work over the course of their careers – the fact remains that exam results open and close doors for young people.
As I've continued to report on proposed changes to student evaluation, some transatlantic comparisons have come into focus.
Read more
In the United States, there is no results day. There is no single day when clicks on the 'Education' tab of every major outlet's website skyrocket, fuelled in no small part by readers who will not be seen there again until next August.
Still, students, teachers, and communities are judged on student performance. Sometimes that judgment leads to improvements. At other times, it is unfair and masks deeper problems that children are facing.
The major difference is that there is no one test—no single key that unlocks access to university. Instead, there are many.
At first blush, this may sound like an improvement over the highly charged exam system in Scotland. Here, countless teachers and other education experts have argued that the threshold of three or more Highers as the key to university is outdated, but the vision of a world where those results are not so decisive is not yet a reality.
In the US, the key to higher education is spread much more thinly, and the doors to university are opened by a healthy diet of alphabet soup.
For years, the gold standard for students leaving high school was a score of 1400 (out of 1600) on the SAT, along with enough passes in Advanced Placement (AP) courses to boost their Grade Point Average (GPA) and earn university course credit.
The SAT is a standardised test administered by the College Board, an American non-profit organisation. It covers reading, writing, and mathematics using the same format every year.
For context, although Harvard University no longer requires students to submit an SAT score, 1530 is the recommendation for an applicant to be competitive.
Alternatively, some students opt to sit the ACT, a similar test but with more focus on science and mathematics. Depending on where and when a student went through the US education system, they may have been encouraged to sit both, one over the other or, as happens far too frequently, told not to bother with either.
Read more:
The last point is an important one and speaks to another major difference in the two systems I am familiar with. As challenging as closing the attainment gap has proven in Scotland, it is at least relatively well-known. In the US, the gap is much wider than it appears on paper, because many students who are struggling the most do not even make it into the statistics.
The senior phase of secondary school genuinely has no comparison. When I first explained it to him, a friend who has taught for years in the US suggested it sounded like 'bonus high school' for top students.
The early exit is much more fraught in the US, meaning many students who might not carry on to the senior phase in Scotland find themselves still struggling through higher-level courses without the foundation they need to succeed. Often, these students are from poorer and minority backgrounds. If they are encouraged to sit the SAT, ACT or something similar, they are usually still at a disadvantage compared to their wealthier peers, who have better access to the multibillion-dollar test prep industry.
In the context of the attainment gap, they are the demographics that Scottish education policy is trying to lift up.
In the US, instead, they are often pressured through the grade levels until they finally reach the end, sometimes with very little concrete qualifications to show for it.
This context has given me an unusual view of standardisation.
The SQA will be replaced by a new body called Qualifications Scotland in December, and with that comes the potential for changes.
As the reaper's scythe swings lower, the SQA has come under renewed criticism for having a near-monopoly on qualifications in the country, particularly in the senior phase.
There is not the same level of government or single-organisation involvement in America. Instead, major companies administer the tests and dozens of international corporations and local businesses profit from test prep materials and courses.
Nothing like the singular focus on one type of test on one day exists in America. Instead, results days play out in miniature at different times across the country all year long. And even though students unlock the next steps in their careers in different ways, each of these paths opens a new opportunity to be exploited.
Whether I will ever fully accept the hysteria of results day is a question for another year. What I can say for sure is that, when it comes to exams, the grass is best described as yellow on both sides of the ocean.