Understanding Placement Exams

Placement exams are the crucial standard  students confront when they enter broad acess postsecondary education, and the pathway to credit-level courses.  Many of  students work many hours while attending postsecondary education.   K-16 connections are inadequate, and prospective students receive weak and confusing signals about necessary academic preparation to pass placement exams.   Secondary school students know they will be admitted if they meet minimum GPA and course requirements, or are over 18, so they often take few academic courses in their senior year.  Consequently, they are not prepared for placement exams. 

Research and information on the content, K-16 alignment, reliability, and necessary preparation for placement exams is scant, and not well publicized to prospective students or secondary schools.  The content and cognitive demands of placement exams are a “dark continent” in terms of the research literature when compared to the SAT or ACT research base.  Students are admitted under one standard, but placed in credit courses or remediation on another standard that is often much higher (e.g. some Algebra II). Secondary school students wrongly believe that their high school graduation requirements are sufficient for postsecondary credit-level work, and rarely know about placement failure that leads to starting college in remedial, non-credit courses.  Students who begin in remedial reading and math courses have a lower probability of finishing their desired academic program (including vocational education certificates).  Remediation is a poor pathway from high school to college, while being able to enter credit-level course leads to better outcomes.

Placement exams have not been part of the K-12 standards movement that has swept across the U.S.  Indeed, the entire K-12 standards movement has lacked participation and buy-in from com college policymakers, because standards policies are made in separate K-12 and higher education orbits that rarely intersect.  While there are some new encouraging developments, however, such as revising SATI, the K-16 dialogue has not extended to placement exams.   Broad access institutions use SAT or ACT for admissions decisions on a very occasional basis.  College Placement exams are extremely diverse with many institutions using academic departmental faculties to devise a local exam.  National products like Accuplacer and Compass have a substantial share of the market.