The Education Bureaucracy's Priorities Aren't Yours

Mercury News graphic: Bay Area students can book an
SAT reservation at least an hour's drive away in the spring.
Many students won't know where they're admitted,
much less if they have financial aid, until they graduate.

Now that some top colleges are requiring standardized admissions tests, there's a shortage of test sites, as we noted four months ago:

Fewer than half of the schools that served as testing centers before the pandemic have returned

Since many California educators subscribe to the ideology that testing is racist and inequitable, that ideology is probably a factor in their dragging their feet on resuming "School Day" testing, where the test is held at the students' school on a weekday. Some test-takers have to travel out-of-town on weekends in order to sit for the exam, which, of course, adds to the stress and inequity for students who can't afford to do so.

Some high-achieving but underprivileged students want to better their lives by going to and winning scholarships at out-of-state colleges, but educators won't support testing because they think they know what's better for the students than the students themselves.

With total education expenditures of $109 billion (nearly $24,000 per pupil), Californians might suppose the money could be found to support some of our best and brightest students for one day, but the educators have other priorities, like teaching the racist history of the United States or pushing gender transitioning on impressionable children. Meanwhile, parents must spend hours trying to reserve a seat at testing sites. [bold added]

But as elite schools like Stanford, Caltech, Harvard and Yale reverse their test-optional policies, Bay Area students attempting to take the SAT before college applications are due this winter might have to travel several hours or even out of state to nab a coveted spot — an especially challenging situation for lower-income students.

A recent search by a reporter of SAT testing centers through the College Board found disheartening results. Seats for the August, October and November testing dates were fully booked within 100 miles of San Jose and San Francisco, while just a handful of seats remained for the December and March exams — most of which were in locations several hours away, in cities like Sacramento, Sonora and Folsom.

...The College Board blamed the lack of availability on host schools unwilling to staff and run weekend test centers, but others pointed to low pay for proctors and schools ditching the testing requirement

To be fair,

Some Bay Area districts — including Dublin Unified and San Jose Unified — participate in “SAT School Day,” a designated day where high school juniors and seniors can take the test during class time. Some districts even offer it at no-cost.

But the College Board said most California schools do not participate in the program, which accounts for the majority of the tests administered nationwide.

It's fair to say that the majority of California schools exist to serve their administrators and teachers' unions, not their students.