Panel Urges Reduced Use of College-Admission Exams

Test-prep push said to detract from high school course work.

As legions of high school students prepare to spend long Saturday mornings this fall taking the SAT or the ACT, a national panel is recommending that colleges consider dropping the tests as an entrance requirement.

A 56-page report released last week by the Commission on the Use of Standardized Tests in Undergraduate Admission cites what the panel sees as the tests’ questionable predictive value for college success, an overemphasis on test preparation versus mastery of high school courses, and uneven preparation for the exams among different student groups.

“Despite their prevalence in American high school culture, college-admission exams—such as the SAT and ACT—may not be critical to making good admission decisions at many of the colleges and universities that use them,” the report says. “While the exams, used by a large majority of four-year colleges and universities to make admission decisions, provide useful information, colleges and universities may be better served by admission exams more closely linked to...