Think Doing Away With ACT and SAT Is A Good Thing? Think Again

Over the last four months, ivy league universities like Stanford, Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Duke, and Brown announced their decision to do away with any usage of the ACT and SAT exams, not just for the upcoming school year, but permanently. As if on cue, other institutions of higher learning, quickly followed their lead.

Why are colleges suddenly averse to entrance exams? According to a press release by Harvard University, they are looking to find a more well-rounded applicant who is not a part of the upper-middle-class. Somehow, the elimination of testing will allow universities to increase diversity without any loss of academic quality. All of a sudden, college entry exams exist as the ultimate act of discrimination against people of color. Entry tests, required by our educational system, are a blatant example of the systemic racial disparities embedded in American society and were put in place by white supremacists to assure people of color remained lower class and poor for generations. Some decry the exams as unfair to students who score lower, or average as compared to the scores of their more advantaged peers. Almost every reason one can imagine to promote racial prejudice in education is given as a reason to discontinue the SAT and ACT as college entrance exams.

Newly devised entrance applications will consist of some combination of the following: essays, video presentations, lists of extracurricular activities, and organizations to which the student belongs. All of the listed items will quickly identify a student’s political ideas, race, and susceptibility of falling in line with the university’s predominant radical ideas, promoted by the majority of the school’s professors.

The original intent of the SAT and ACT, instituted during the 1940s, was to assure every college applicant an equal chance of admittance, regardless of color. Nicholas Lemann, in his book The Big Test: The Secret History of The American Meritocracy (pg 52) writes about James Conant, as the President of Harvard and the major player in not only getting Harvard to start requiring entrance exams but others institutions of higher learning as well. Conant wanted a governing elite selected on the basis of merit, not parentage – and the most deep-seated wish in American culture, an opportunity for everyone.

The real issue behind discarding entrance exams lies deeper than the academic community cares to admit. Colleges and universities need systemic change by promoting academic discourse instead of political radicalism. Also alarming is the high cost of university tuition. Universities could lower their tuition to allow more students to attend their institutions without accruing excessive student loan debt. But instead of much needed positive changes, the educationally elite have thrown in their woke version of change by the elimination of entrance exams. This semblance of change allows universities like Harvard, to continue their anti-God, anti-American, and anti-family indoctrination of our youth, with no interruption of their budget because of the continuing flow of government grants and student loans.

Universities and Colleges have two reasons to eliminate entrance exams:
First: As colleges and universities face declining enrollment, they look for a new pool of potential high school graduates who will fill their student quotas.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, twenty percent fewer students intend to enroll in four-year schools in the fall of 2020. There has been a steady decline in college enrollment as students and parents are no longer consider a degree necessary to jumpstart a career. Since 2016, four-million high school graduates who might have enrolled in a college in the past, have opted not to pursue higher education. President Trump’s June 26, 2020, executive order didn’t help. The federal government, as the nation’s largest employer of 2.1 million civilian workers, can now hire non-degreed applicants equally as those with degrees in hiring new employees.
Second: Higher Education needs a continual influx of young minds, easily influenced who will fit into the new socialist America.

Radical professors are in the majority in college classrooms, and they intend to remain that way. According to John M. Ellis in his new book The Breakdown of Higher Education: How It Happened, The Damage It Does, And What Can Be Done About It (pg.27), states, It is rare to find a college or university in America where departments are not predominately radical or, at a minimum, leftist. The virtual extinction of conservative voices occurred about 1999 when it became clear that radicals were not hiring others like themselves, but rather they were hellbent on hiring fellow radicals. Socialists employed in academia, do not hire conservatives, they hire those as radical as themselves, if not more so.

To maintain their new student quota, colleges now turn their attention to a different kind of student than they once courted. Their perfect student will be a student of color, whose family is not part of the upper-middle class. And he will be the first generation in the family to go to college. The parents’ yearly income is less than $125,000. Parents will most likely not able to pay for the child’s college tuition, requiring the student to use student loans to reach his dream of a college education. Much of the massive expansion of colleges and universities have been at the expense of the students who incur student loan debt to pay the high price of college tuition. Student loan debt in America surpassed credit card debt in 2012 and continues to rise with student loan debt currently at $1.6 trillion. Colleges bear no responsibility for student loan debt. The burden falls on the backs of the individual student for years after graduation.
To continue the radical agenda, we witness in colleges today, universities desire their applicants to come from the public schools of America. To continue teaching radical ideas, radical college professors need new minds, who already have a predisposition toward socialism and anti-American thought instilled in them during their years in our public high schools.
For the last sixty years, America’s colleges and Universities took in the cream of the crop of our youth. Over a four-year timeframe, professors enlightened the new students with anti-American, anti-God, and anti-family rhetoric. Many graduates remain forever changed – lost to their families, the church, and to the country that gave them hope for a future. The more extreme returnees embrace socialism and Marxism, and actively seek to overthrow the government of America. As believers, we say, “No more!”

Pray: We disrupt the plans of the enemy who has come to steal our children. They do not know the thoughts of the Lord, and that He intends victory for His people. Let God’s people rise up like a mighty army and throw off the bondage of debt and deception that American Colleges and Universities have placed on our children.

Post Coronavirus Could Bring Positive Changes to Mountain of Education

                                     Classrooms Empty Across America as Coronavirus Spreads

A shift in education occurred as public school administrators across America closed school buildings and sent students home for the remainder of the school year to avoid the spread of the Coronavirus. Realizing the responsibility to continue to educate students in a different setting, many public school administrators struggled to adjust from predominately classroom content delivery to virtual online delivery. Public education needed a reset, but few were prepared for changes to happen as rapidly as they did. During this time, the cultural Mountain of Education made significant changes that will most likely be permanent, and it remains to be seen whether or not those changes will benefit America or cause the nation harm. The result will depend on the prayers of believers. Whatever happens, we will forever connect the Coronavirus outbreak and consequent closing of school buildings with a seismic shift in education as we currently know it.
• The most apparent change to come to education was to online learning as a means to deliver instruction to students. Until the Coronavirus, online learning existed to accommodate those students who missed school days, needed to make up a missed or failed class to graduate, or who simply functioned better with online learning.

• The second significant change is that students will choose when and where they want to learn. Gone will be the “factory model” of education that began over 200 years ago. Manufacturers needed schools to educate workers who went to work when the 8:00 am factory whistle sounded and left work at the same sound at 5:00 pm. The structured school day could now be only a memory of past generations. With online learning, we begin to turn out students educated as independent workers not tied to brick and mortar institutions that require a physical presence in a specific location, bound to a rigid routine. Education has changed.

• If we pray, online learning has the potential to upend the secularization of schooling. Horace Mann founded the first public school in 1834, funded with taxpayer money. The use of taxpayer money gave Mann’s progressive supporters two advantages, money to build more schools and the elimination of religious instruction. Parents, wary of sending their children to failing schools, and schools that cause them to leave their faith, now because of virtual learning find themselves with options to select a curriculum that includes religious values.

• The disruption of the National Education Association (NEA) will continue its current decline in membership. As the largest labor union in the United States, the NEA is a powerful force in education. The NEA has lost a significant number of members in recent years as 27states have initiated right-to-work laws. As new school alternatives emerge, educators are less likely to join a union.

• Charter schools could be the trend of the future. The Department of Education under President Trump and with Secretary Betsy DeVos at the helm has promoted charter schools and school vouchers. President Trump recently said, “I want every single inner-city child in America who is today trapped in a failing school to have the freedom, the civil right, to attend the school of their choice.” With virtual learning and fewer tax dollars going to buildings, textbooks, consultants, etc. more school alternatives like online charter schools, online schools, private schools, and even vouchers emerge.

• For the history of schools in America, the gold standard has been hard-copy textbooks. With the advent of more online schools and learning with computers, the new delivery method will be online. Prayer is needed that the newly developed curriculum promotes the values and virtues that will strengthen the beliefs of America’s founding fathers.

Because of the Coronavirus, in a matter of a few weeks, virtual online instruction ceased being a convenience for a few students to being a necessity for all students. Virtual learning has the potential to upend everything that concerns public schools from morning commute traffic to a family’s routine. Students will now be able, even encouraged, to learn anywhere and anytime they wish.
The good news is online learning has the potential to strengthen the families of our nation. Switching to virtual learning gives parents more control over the education of their children.
The closing of public schools gave a wake-up call for parents. As many realized, they had more options available to them than they thought possible. A dream of President Trump has been to return the parents the right to choose the educational delivery system that would best suit their children.

One thing is for sure: education will no longer be the same in the United States and perhaps across the world. It could be better if we pray.
I’m asking you to pray over the possible changes and agree that only positive changes that benefit America, the students of this land, and the families of our nation will prevail.

Nancy serves as the Heartland Apostolic Prayer Network (HAPN) Lead Prayer Coordinator for the Mountain of Education. For additional information go to: https://takingthemountainofeducation.com