Editorial: College Board benchmark is flawed

When students falter during their first year of college, it’s often because of a confluence of… When students falter during their first year of college, it’s often because of a confluence of factors: an unfamiliar environment or a party-centric mentality. One nonprofit, however, believes a single score can help predict academic success or failure.

This Wednesday, College Board unveiled the College and Career Readiness Benchmark, a tool that associates academic preparedness with SAT performance. Based on research correlating a combined math, critical reading and writing score of 1550 with a 65 percent likelihood of earning at least a 2.67 freshman year GPA — which in turn foretells a better chance of college “success and completion” — the test service deemed only 43 percent of high school seniors prepared to enroll.

Curiously, the College Board stressed that this correlation be used to evaluate the effectiveness of academic programs, and not the readiness of any particular student. Regardless, although we agree the rigors of academic life are often a shock to incoming freshmen, we wonder whether this is the best standard by which to plan a high school curriculum.

First and foremost, while the test provider claims a 2.67 GPA is crucial, it fails to elaborate on the consequences of not achieving such a score. Furthermore, despite the supposed predictive power of GPAs, one’s performance during freshman year is, in our experiences, an unreliable indicator of future achievement. Many undergraduates, for whatever reason, struggle during their first two semesters, but subsequently compose themselves to graduate with an exemplary record.

More importantly, there are other ways besides a GPA to measure academic success. One is the quantity of awards or accolades a student garners; another is the quality of their research or scholarship, which can be conducted outside of a particular class and thus wouldn’t affect grades.

For all the benchmark’s flaws, however — in reality, it might be impossible to determine what “readiness” actually denotes, especially with regards to academics — we concur with the Board’s conclusion: A startling number of freshmen are ill-prepared for a strenuous course load. Whether or not they’re the products of pampered upbringings or ailing schools, students, in our experience, have a tendency to botch their first classes.

Unfortunately, as a recent Pennsylvania Association of School Administrators survey affirms, state and federal cuts to public education will likely perpetuate such ineptitude. Thirty-five percent of the 294 districts that responded to the survey said they’d reduced or eliminated tutoring or other assistance programs as a consequence of budget cuts; 20 percent had cut summer school.

“Success” is a nebulous term, and the College Board’s “benchmark” score is likely to provoke widespread skepticism. Nevertheless, the problem of college under-preparedness is very real — even if we don’t agree with certain means of gauging it.