The Independent Schools Admissions Association of Greater New York (ISAAGNY) has announced that there will now be no universal standardized test used for admissions into New York’s independent schools. Each school will be left to decide how to assess children for entry in their programs, whether it is with the old test, a new assessment or a combination of strategic games. At the moment, a number of the most selective schools, in particular Horace Mann, is keeping the existing ERB test as a requirement. The Wall St. Journal broke the story, which Aristotle Circle CEO Suzanne Rheault contributed to, on Friday.
On September 19, 2013, ISAAGNY announced that it would no longer endorse the WPPSI-IV test (also referred to as the ECAA) for kindergarten and first grade admissions once its current contract with the Educational Records Bureau (ERB) ends in spring 2014. The decision came after months of evaluation of the WPPSI-IV’s use as an assessment test for kindergarten and first grade entry into many of the city’s private elementary schools. New York’s independent schools have used a standardized test in some form since 1966. To read more about the ISAAGNY’s decision, please refer to our blog post here.
ISAAGNY initially stated that it would announce the new testing procedures (including any replacement tests) in February 2014. While students, parents and schools awaited the ISAAGNY’s overdue decision, schools including Horace Mann announced that they would continue to require the ECAA for kindergarten and first grade applicants. Contrary to the ISAAGNY, Horace Mann School and other schools continue to believe in the usefulness of the ECAA/ERB, because it allows them to put all of their applicants through a standardized, psychometrically valid measure of general intelligence. While Horace Mann and other schools will require the ECAA, still others are making the assessment optional (translation
-> send the scores if they are good to increase the likelihood of admission to competitive schools).
Other schools are now left with four options on how to proceed:
- Keep administering the ERB and the modified WPPSI-IV test as has been done in the past.
- Use executive functions tests that would be carried out on a tablet device. Executive functions are cognitive operations that allow a person to formulate, execute and complete a plan of action, while inhibiting initial reactions that would sabotage the plan. For a more complete explanation of executive functions, please watch this short video from Harvard University.
- Employ an as-yet-unidentified set of games that would allow schools to evaluate a child’s performance against other students’.
- Administer their own in-house assessment.
Given the short time frame before children may begin testing (some may take the test this spring), we believe that many schools will opt to stick with the WPPSI-IV or at least encourage it as an optional supplement.
The ISAAGNY’s current actions appear to contradict its mission statement, which states that it “strives to further a spirit of cooperation among Member Schools by coordinating admissions practices and procedures in order to help ensure an orderly, fair, and professional admissions process and thereby serve the educational purposes of the Member Schools.”
All of this has created a lot of stress for parents, as they are left unsure of which test their child will be taking. Many parents will be forced to prepare their child for the myriad of available options, since so much weight is given to the entrance exam.
Since these admissions tests are typically given to pre-reading, 4-year-old children, the various IQ tests have many overlapping features (like Analogies, Categorization, Descriptive Language, Pattern Recognition, etc). Preparing for one test typically benefits the outcome of other tests. As always, Aristotle Circle has prep materials and tutoring for most IQ tests that the schools may choose to use in the future.
Contact us at 1.800.467.0895 with any concerns or questions or visit our website to see our full range of preparation materials.