practice tests for Accuplacer

Accuplacer is the standardized test no one ever hears about; it's the test everyone entering a community college takes.

My sister thinks entering students may actually be required by law to take the Accuplacer. Her 8th grade daughter signed up for two courses at their community college this fall, and she had to take the test even though she's still in middle school and was enrolling in Spanish I and Voice.

My sister may be right about a legal requirement, at least for some states if not all.

In any case, zillions of people take the Accuplacer, but you never hear a word about it.

Nor does there appear to be a roaring test-prep industry for Accuplacer tests, even though your results on the test determine absolutely whether you do or do not get to enroll in college.

If you flunk, you can't enroll.

You can enroll in the school's pre-college courses, but pre-college courses aren't college. They're high school that you're paying for.^*

Apparently the idea that anyone can enroll in community colleges is one of the misconceptions high school students and their parents share.

Not true.

The rule is: anyone who passes the Accuplacer can enroll in community college. (The College Puzzle puts it this way: "Students usually must take placement tests at community colleges in order to qualify for college-level work.")


what's on the Accuplacer?

Tonight I was trying to get Christian signed up for his next course at Westchester Community College. (He's still fiddling with financial aid, so it will be just one course this winter). Last summer Christian passed the Accuplacer reading test, failed the math. He's supposed to be working his way through Saxon Homeschool Math 5/4, and until a couple of months ago was working his way through Saxon Homeschool Math 5/4, but lately he's stalled.

Everyone's stalled except me, and although I haven't stalled I've slowed.


math woe

I'm going to have to crack the whip if there's any chance of averting a Math Catastrophe around here.

Tonight Christopher melted down because he couldn't figure out how to do a problem Christian made up: "If 5 babies are born every 10 seconds, how many are born in 1 minute?"

Something like that.

This came up because yesterday Christopher had no idea how to do a real-world problem concerning babies: If 1 baby is born every 12 seconds, how many are born every minute?

1 baby per 12 seconds is apparently the actual rate of babies being born in the U.S. according to Ed.

(Just in case you're looking for a cool description of how to estimate how many babies are born per minute in the U.S., it's here. At least, I think it's cool. I leave it to our resident math brains to decide.)

Christopher had no idea how to solve this problem. "12 x 60?" he said.

Ed says the accelerated math curriculum is so incurably procedural that the kids approach word problems the way they'd approach a dartboard; they pick a procedure, fling it across the room, and hope it hits the target not the wall.

Christian didn't know how to do the baby problem, either, at first.

"12 x 60?" he said.

Before I could start banging my head against the wall he decided he could answer the question skip-counting by 12s up to 60.

That was a relief.

Anyway, tonight I got worried about what exactly is on the Accuplacer math test. Christian has to take a math course to get his Teaching Assistant Certificate, which is his immediate goal, and he has to pass the Accuplacer test to take the course.

Christian wants to buy the textbook to see what he needs to know. That's a good idea, but since we couldn't do that tonight and couldn't even look at it on Amazon because we didn't know the title I decided to see if there was an Accuplacer test prep book I could take a look at.

Apparently there's not.

I find this bizarre. People's lives are hanging on the results of the Accuplacer, and no one's ever heard of it or written a test prep manual telling you what's on it or how close you are to being able to pass it.

The good news is that I found what looks like a terrific website for Accuplacer test prep. You can take a free online self-assessment test on 31 different scales including Algebra II. I thought I saw somewhere that Accuplacer also tests college-level math, but I don't see it now.

I took the Algebra 1 test & missed one of 20. Careless error.

May try algebra 2 tomorrow.

College Placement and the College Puzzle of placement tests

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^* high school you're paying for again