This is one of those posts where I’m trying to figure out where to start, and which direction to take it. So let’s just start with the facts.

ACT and Revolution Prep yesterday announced a “strategic” partnership that makes the latter one of the former’s “Preferred Test Prep Partners.” For the low, low price of just $299, you get the “ACT Advantage Plus” package, a $700 value, through Revolution Prep, a Top 100 EdTech Company; as long as we’re talking about higher education, we might as well throw in another meaningless ranking to serve as the béarnaise sauce on this boiled hunk of Salisbury Steak purchased from the discount bin at the local Wal-Mart. Right?

Totally aside: I have a Master’s Degree in Marketing, and any company that promotes a discounted price on something they’ve never sold at full price is a company you want to think twice about. SIGN UP TODAY AND YOU CAN GET MY BLOG POSTS FOR FREE, A ONE MILLION DOLLAR VALUE!! But I digress.

I remember a time when the test industry and the test prep industry hated each other. The preppers pointed out (rightfully so) that the tests were a sham that could be coached and gamed to help students “earn” higher scores. They knew then–and they know now–that people who don’t know how admissions works obsess about these scores on tests, believing they’re the gold standard for admissions officers. Fortunately for the preppers, most of the people who believe this are upper-income people who are obsessed with giving junior every possible advantage in life, costs be damned.

The testing industry intimated that people were wasting their time using test prep, and, as if to prove my oft-made point about the hocus-pocus of the “research” coming out of the testing industry, THEY PUBLISHED THE GOD DAMNED RESEARCH TO PROVE THEIR POINT. ACT being ACT, a company now run by tech bros trying to squeeze a profit out of testing rather than by bumbling educators practicing a shopworn version of Eugenics, didn’t even think to take the critical research down before they posted about this new partnership. (By the way, WordPress tells me which links get clicked, and for most posts, engagement in that regard is low, but I beg you, if you’re only going to click one link, click the tech bros one above.)

A couple of examples of ACT saying test prep is not worth it:
* Here
* Here

Anyway, much the same way the Russian and American presidents suddenly seem unexpectedly cozy with each other, the Test Prep Industry and the Testing Industry have become quite chummy lately. People from the College Board and ACT have attended the National Conference of the NTPA (the test preppers, not the tractor pullers), and, as I wrote about recently, The College Board, while making no public announcement about its latest technology screw up, was having private, back-channel meetings with the people from the NTPA (insert Homeric epithet here) to assure them they’d fixed the problem. One can only imagine the Signal chats going on that we don’t know about.

ACT, now a for-profit company, has apparently abandoned any pretense of equity, but is instead affiliating with another for-profit to give special benefits to the students working with Revolution Prep. Excuse me, the students who work with Revolution Prep AND who pay the extra (but discounted) $299. (At times like these, I like to point out that at Oregon’s Land Grant University in the Fall of 2024, 455 enrolling first-year students had an EFC/SAI of less than $300.)

By the way, College Board is still a not-for profit.

The thing I always like to point out about the admissions process is that when a student presents their entire academic record for consideration, and improves test scores from, let’s say, a 29 Composite to a 32 Composite, it’s the same student who took both tests. Why is that student suddenly a better risk, one must wonder, unless it’s not really about risk in the first place.

But more than that, if a month of tutoring can move a student that far (which, ironically, in percentiles is really not that far, even though many admissions officers don’t know this or refuse to admit it), why even bother with high school? Why not take a bright 8th grader who might natively score a 17 and just put them through four years of test prep? It would save the taxpayers a lot of money and raise scores at the same time, and we might finally realize the objectives of “No Child Left Behind.”

Am I surprised by this? No. Do I care if people want to spend another $300 to get the super-duper, extra deluxe package? No again. But do I think it’s important to point out the absurdity of the whole testing industry, and the coziness of two former enemies who have united to extract more cash out of the clinically obsessed?