Paul Reville: How Will The Pandemic Change Standardized Testing?

Hannah Uebele is a producer for Under the Radar with Callie Crossley and previously worked as associate producer for Boston Public Radio. She graduated from Tufts University with a B.S. in English and Environmental Studies. She's a proud Delawarean but has found herself saying "wicked" more and more often, so the Bostonian metamorphosis is well underway.Contact: hannah_uebele@wgbh.org

May 12, 2020

Updated August 07, 2023

Spring SAT and ACT tests were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and dozens of colleges have made the tests optional for applicants seeking to enroll in 2021. Paul Reville, former Massachusetts education secretary, spoke with Boston Public Radio on Tuesday about standardized testing in the age of the coronavirus.

"It's going to, at some level, be more of a challenge for admissions officers because they use these tests to get some kind of comparability between schools," he said. "But many colleges were already moving in the direction of being test-optional in respect to the SAT and ACT, so I think there will be some acceleration of that trend."

Reville is a professor at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education, where he also runs the Education Redesign Lab. His latest book, co-authored with Elaine Weiss, is "Broader, Bolder, Better: How Schools and Communities Help Students Overcome the Disadvantages of Poverty."