Do We Still Need Standardized Testing?
The History of Assessment Series
By Faith Walessa
Estimated Reading Time: 7 minutes
Standardized testing may be an integral part of the modern American education, but the long-standing tests seem far from standardized themselves. Recent changes to popular college entrance exams like the ACT and SAT are cause for concern about declining academic standards and the risk of grade inflation. In order to assess the accuracy of these claims and understand where to go from here, it is essential to look back at the original goal of standardized testing and ask ourselves what has been lost, what is worth preserving, and what must change.
The First Standardized Test
Standardized testing began in the late 1800s at a time when most elite colleges offered their own unique entrance exams. The College Board was founded in 1900 to streamline this process, examining students on 9 major subject areas, including English, Latin, Greek, and all the sciences. The process grew more mainstream in 1914 when Frederick J. Kelly introduced the Kansas Silent Reading Test, the first multiple-choice testing format, hoping primarily to help eliminate the concern of subjective grading based on teacher bias in schools. The multiple-choice format also allowed for much more efficient grading, prompting the College Board to form the SAT as a way to “identify scholarly aptitude.”
At the time, high standards and content that emphasized the critical reasoning abilities of the student were designed to “increase access to higher education” by emphasizing “merit-based” admissions. The formation of a test around this goal required it to demand the best from its students or fail to showcase their true skill.
Modern Standardized Testing
Quietly but decisively, the SAT has remade itself in recent years. The test has shifted to a digital, adaptive model, removing crucial content like U.S. founding documents and replacing them with dull, shortened readings. The SAT used to ask a series of questions on 500-750 word reading passages. In 2026, the maximum length for an SAT reading passage is 150 words, with the shortest possible length at 25 words.
In fact, while the letters “SAT” were long understood as an acronym for the “Scholastic Aptitude Test” (with “aptitude” meaning a natural academic inclination), and later the “Scholastic Achievement Test” (with “achievement” referring to more specific knowledge and skills), they now no longer stand for anything at all. This elimination of internal accountability means that the SAT is under no obligation to test by any particular metric. So, while parents, students, and colleges expect SAT results to reveal academic skills and abilities, the SAT now must test neither aptitude nor achievement, meaning the College Board is operating under the guise of an old system that does not necessarily have anything to do with the product they currently provide.
Do We Still Need Standardized Testing?
Considering the risk the fallen modern version of standardized testing now poses to the integrity of the college admissions process, why not simply do away with it altogether? Furthermore, is the concept itself even useful? The natural criticism of standardized testing is to label it as reductive, and therefore incapable of capturing an accurate picture of the student. The idea is embodied by thinkers like Dewey, who argued in his article “My Pedagogic Creed” that “Examinations are of use only so far as they test the child’s fitness for social life and reveal the place in which he can be of most service and where he can receive the most help.” However, by advocating for the individuality of the student in his rejection of standardized testing, Dewey is on some level negating the possibility for this student’s individuality to be taken seriously.
Since the SAT’s original goal was to “increase access to higher education,” it makes sense that one of the major benefits of standardized testing is as a tool to level the playing field, especially for underprivileged and international students. These are students that may have incredible natural ability and drive, but have lacked opportunity comparable to their peers applying to college. Even if their grades and references are impeccable, they are almost certainly from a school unfamiliar to the college and do not carry the same weight without some external confirmation. If we lose the power of standardized tests as this great equalizer in education, more privileged students will take precedence in the admissions process, with connections, experiences, and private academies that place them far beyond their peers. With SAT score inflation growing so pronounced, however, these underprivileged students may soon lose this way of proving themselves.
The truth is, top colleges are searching for exactly these kinds of students. Ivy leagues like Harvard and MIT now offer free tuition to admitted students whose families earn under $200,000. Prestigious schools are clearly trying to eliminate barriers that would stop highly qualified students from committing to quality education. The decline of the SAT is now becoming just such a barrier to students from lower-income families who will not be able to attend well-known private academies or participate in expensive extracurriculars. The test should help even the playing field, not reduce it to a place where everyone gets a perfect score. The solution, then, is not to eliminate standardized testing, but to reform it.
What Needs to Change?
To reform standardized testing requires a re-assessment and re-definition of what it will provide for students. What began with Franklin Kelly’s goal to eliminate teacher bias and speed up the grading process is now being used as the distinguishing factor in the selection of top students for college admissions and state scholarships, as well as an equivalency tool for high school students to meet graduation requirements. If such important decisions are being based on these limited numbers, these tests should be intentionally designed to prove a student’s capability based on valuable skills. The question is, what skills should be labelled as markers of success from 16 years of education?
In his 1940s book Education at the Crossroads, Jacques Maritain makes the compelling argument that the aim of education is to “guide man” as he “shapes himself as a human person.” He explains that this effort requires three key skills: knowledge, strength of judgment, and moral virtues. It is by these virtues that the educated person frees himself to live a thriving life both individually and as a productive member of society. If we grant education this holistic definition, we cannot rely on a test that does not attempt to take these skills into account. If this is the true picture of the high-achieving student, we need a test that measures these abilities, by including works that capture the student’s imagination, by featuring readings with enough depth to require strength of judgment, and by assessing their common practical knowledge through a broad scope of content across all the major academic disciplines.
A Test that Raises Standards Again
At present, this ideal of education is best reflected in a current prominent alternative to the SAT and ACT: the Classic Learning Test (CLT). The CLT holds itself to a high standard by testing aptitude and achievement, identifying and returning results in key academic domains like logic, critical analysis, and mathematical reasoning, and grounding its content in texts from the classical western tradition to hold its students to the high standards of the past. As its founder and CEO Jeremy Tate pointed out, the content and mission of the CLT is actually similar to that of the SAT at its conception. What has been lost can be restored and perhaps even improved.
With the dramatic failures of the SAT and ACT to fulfill their traditional role as they relax their standards, the lack of public outcry is a wonder. In his Martin Center article, Michael Torres argues that “A likely reason for this seeming indifference is that, well, what can anyone do about it?” He explains how the SAT and ACT have rendered themselves impervious to correction, as they have “lobbied state lawmakers for decades to secure a monopoly or duopoly position in every state,” granting them the security to relax their standards, as there is no alternative to challenge them.
With the CLT now available as an alternative, this is no longer the reality. Students can once again rely on a test that prioritizes their future success by challenging them to demonstrate real skills that colleges want to see. And with almost 400 Partner Colleges on board with CLT’s mission and many more to come, there may be another major shift on the way in the history of standardized testing.
Photo courtesy of Hamline University, adapted by CLT. Original licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. This adaptation is licensed CC BY-SA 3.0.
Faith Walessa is from Ontario, Canada, and is a rising junior at Hillsdale College. She loves fanciful poetry, reading by flashlight, and freshly brewed coffee.
If you enjoyed this piece, be sure to check out The Anchored Podcast. For more Journal content, check out this post on the history of assessment. From all of us at the Journal, thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week.
Published on 23rd September, 2026.