SPEAKER_00 0:00

You're listening to the Support Ed Learning Podcast, where we challenge the status quo of education and reimagine what learning should be. I'm Dr. Joe Sebastian, and in every episode we dive into critical thinking, Bloom's Taxonomy, educational innovation, and how AI is shaping the future of learning. Whether you're a teacher, parent, policymaker, or lifelong learner, you're in the right place to rethink, reshape, and revive education. Amy Seeley has spent nearly 30 years inside the standardized testing industry. She's trained students, she's trained the professionals who train the students, and she's helped build the professional standards for the entire field. And she has some opinions that are going to surprise you about the digital SAT, test optional, and what most test prep is fundamentally broken. Stick around, this one is going to be loaded. Welcome back to Support Learning Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Joe Sebastian. Families often ask me how to navigate to the maze of college prep without spending a ton of time or wasting thousands of dollars. And it usually involves finding the people that have crafted the code that schools aren't telling you. And that's why I'm thrilled to welcome Amy Seeley to the here tonight to the podcast. Um, Amy is the president of Seely Test Prep, Test Pros, excuse me, test pros, the founder of LEAP program, a curriculum used by schools and consultants nationwide, co-host of the Test and the Rest podcast, and founding member of the National Test Prep Association. She has been called a premier expert on standardized test preparation. And her core philosophy, what she calls test taking literacy, is the SAT ACT mirror of what we preach here for AP skills mastery over content memorization. We're going to dive into the digital SAT, the test optional walkback, the psychology of test day, and why most test prep is built on the wrong model. Amy, welcome to the show. It's wonderful to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Looking forward to this conversation. Absolutely. Even though we're apparently rivals, because you're in Cleveland, Ohio. That's right. We did, yes. I'm Cleveland, you're Pittsburgh. That's doesn't make for good friends.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

That's okay. I'm very, very impressed by the credentials. Um, you're you've been doing this a lot longer than I have been doing this. Um, but I guess you know, you've you've been in it for 30 years. What is 32?

SPEAKER_01 2:22

32 years.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

32 years. Yeah. Um, what is the pattern most parents are missing when it comes to standardized testing?

SPEAKER_01 2:31

I think one of the things that we hear a lot is just give me the tips and tricks. It is very, very common for parents to express to us that's all they need are the tips and tricks. And given my history in the test prep industry, asking for that does make some sense. And that early in my career, especially with the SAT, there were things that were very much trick-oriented, if you will. But both the SAT and now the ACT have evolved. The SAT has gone through many iterations in my career. And I would 100% say when we use that phrase tips and tricks, it's missing the point of the skills that students must have learned. So it's sort of, I disappoint families sometimes. I'm like, no, we actually have to focus on like learning what those skills are as opposed to magical tips and tricks. You were in the classroom, right? When did you leave the classroom? No, I was never in the classroom. Well, you were in my class. I graduated um with an education secondary ed degree in 1993 in May. And I started doing test prep in January of 1994. So I actually never ever stepped foot in a classroom.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Well, if you had, here's what you would. This is the equivalent of just give me my work. Just do just I don't need to be in your class, Miss Mrs. Beelia. I could just do my work. It's like, well, wait a minute. Why are like wait? I love that I'm just doing my work. I've heard that for my entire year of education. So it's like, just give me the tips and tricks. I don't really actually, I don't want to learn. I want to just get this over with and then move on with my life.

SPEAKER_01 4:08

So, but you're not going to be able to do it Well, there is a little bit of that in test prep. I mean, there's a little bit of kids thinking, you can think really myopically and think that, oh, I'm just learning for this test. I just want to learn the things for the test and not understanding that we often see in the industry when you do test prep, it sort of broadens your perspective about studying, how you approach studying. Um, a lot of kids will pick up a lot of good study habits out of doing test preparation that then can be transferable. We often say to high school or certainly college, which is what many of our students are anticipating is trying to get into college. But right, some people can think, but it's it's it can be very much more than just tell me what I need to know for this, you know, one section or one type of question.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Well, I love that you frame it in the form of literacy because test prep is a form of literacy in terms of knowing how to take the test, knowing how to do well on the test, not to throw my credentials around. My dissertation was on mental health literacy, actually having the tools to access mental health supports and education. But I go back to when I was teaching IB, and we literally became literacy-based teachers in that we want to help you pass the papers of the test. All the papers of the test are writing, so you actually have to learn skills literacy, which involves reading and writing and actually writing well. So you frame it in terms of test prep literacy, and I think you're absolutely right. Those skills are deeper learning skills that you can actually apply multitude. And I actually was in my master's program while I was teaching IB, teaching IB history how to write made me a better writer for my master's program. So, what do you see it in terms of how you frame it in your program with uh with test prep in terms of that literacy? And how do you, I guess, how do you explain that to families that are kind of new to this whole thing?

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Well, I think there's a couple elements, one of which is obviously test familiarity, right? Part of the literacy is just knowing what are they going to test? How are they going to test it? And what ends up happening is you start with what the skills you teach to be efficient and to be effective, you start to align all of that instruction based upon what you know the test will test. So a good example of that might be like when it comes to like using commas, right? We might know that your regular English teacher might teach you 25 different rules for commas, but in test prep, maybe we're only going to teach you five of them and sort of say, don't mess with or think about those other 20 rules. So the idea is to make sure that they're very clear on what elements or what skills matter and in what order or in to what degree. Um, for example, in math, it could be you have to know if there's geometry, what elements of geometry do you have to make sure you remember what those geometry formulas are? Because in some tests, they're not going to provide them to you. And so part of the literacy is understanding the test framework. The second part is what are those skills that either I haven't learned, which usually they should have learned by junior year of high school, or what skills have I forgotten? You know, grammar is a good example of where most kids will learn it in fifth or sixth grade. And that's not a part of the high school curriculum. So understandably, a lot of students do not remember, like, how do I use coolens? You know, or, you know, remembering, you know, the distance formula and math. So some of those things are making sure they understand sort of what is the depth of knowledge that they will need and what's required to make sure they know the way in which they need to know it.

SPEAKER_00 7:48

Do you think most test prep is broken?

SPEAKER_01 7:53

I think that there are, well, so I am a founding board member of the National Test Prep Association. Prior to the podcast I had, there was no such thing as test prep people. The industry was fractured. Nobody knew anybody. And so, you know, I helped to create the National Test Prep Association, which was founded in 2020, ironically, right before COVID started. And in that, I am now, you know, easily familiar with well over 300 or 400 different test prep companies in the country and even around the world. And I will say that I'm very hesitant to criticize any of my colleagues because they really wouldn't be in business if they weren't getting the job done. It's just that there's different ways in which we, I like to laugh, I think about pizza. There's so many different kinds of pizza anymore that, but that's not to say that on any given day, I don't, I like ordering different pizza. So people can, different people can satisfy my pizza, you know, taste buds or urges. So I do think that there's very different ways. I do think that there are some standards that test prep people should follow. For example, using official test material. If you're going to practice, make sure you are using the materials put out by the testing companies. So if someone just writing and making up their own tests for everything, you can't really predict how the student's going to score. So I will say test prep that is focused on using official test materials should be a priority. If it's not, um so for example, that means when somebody says they've been prepping out of the Princeton Review book, I sort of laugh because Princeton Review hasn't really been in the test prep industry for many, many years, despite the fact that publishing would show you differently. So in terms of fractured, I think it could be different in terms of in different parts of the country, some people's goals and what they're trying to accomplish are different, which means programs look different. You know, the typical student that works at my company does about maybe 10 hours of tutoring, maybe no more than 20. I mean, 20 is max. But you could go to other programs where they're selling you 40 hours of tutoring. Well, if someone takes 40 hours to teach you something, that says a lot about maybe how well they are at doing it. I mean, yeah, the more I do anything, hopefully eventually something's going to stick. So I think in the sense of over-prescribing the number of hours of preparation can sometimes be something that can be questionable, you know, on the part of some test prep companies.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Yeah, I mean, it's something that we struggle with because so just to give you a little bit of my background, when I was tea, I was teaching and I left teaching and became an administrator, and I was tutoring when I was teaching, and I left tutoring. I got back into tutoring right around the pandemic, teach test prep online, and I was just throwing a bunch of kids for AP histories and was like told, hey, get them fours and fives in this amount of time. And I'm like, okay, real easy. So like I kind of developed my process of test prep out of necessity. And I'm like, it's really like eight sessions. Um, they have to do, they have to review the curriculum, they have to learn the skills of what the test actually tests on the free response questions, and then they have to practice the test. And most kids that do that process. Now, the process is harder to follow than it sounds, but they can do well. They can base most of them can score fours and fives, and that's pretty much what it's predicated on. Um, it is kind of in the business side of things, you're fighting a little bit of an uphill battle because I think parents come to you with preconceived notions that this much time equals this much exact success. And they just want to quantify everything as in I pay this much, I get this much sessions and things like that. When it's, I try to fight back of like it is a process more than it is.

SPEAKER_01 11:46

Well, and the big variable in this equation is the student, right? I mean, the instructor can be the same, the materials or resources can be the same, but it's your student that comes to the process representing a lot of different variables. What starting score are they at? What math have they had? How much do they read independently? And so what is the goal that they have? How much are they trying to improve? And as you said, like in what period of time? You know, think about it. I always like to use the analogy of weight loss and dieting, you know, probably because both test prep um and dieting is numbers, right? It's, you know, in numbers, how many points, how many pounds, right? You can imagine if someone came to you and said, I want to lose 50 pounds in two weeks. It's sort of like you'd be taken aback and saying, well, that will never happen. Like that's virtually impossible. Much like if someone were to say, I want to increase by 10 points in two weeks, I would literally say to them, that is just never going to happen. And so sometimes, you know, sometimes we're fortunate enough that maybe the expectation is in two to four weeks, the next test date. The question becomes, how many more test dates do we have after that? So then I can say, well, we'll start and we'll try to build those skills going into this upcoming. Maybe we're going to only focus on one part of the test in this next test. I think that's for, for example, for APs, it's very different. It's one shot. You take that AP test at the end of the year, you have to be a hundred percent prepared on that one day. Whereas with SAT A C T, you have multiple sections, you have many colleges that will superscore. I mean, they'll take your highest individual section from any test and put it together. And then potentially a student starting right, you know, starting in like winter of their junior year has potentially six, you know, SAT dates or six ACT dates in front of them with which to test. That is where we can then start to say, look, we'll do our best between now and this date. So sometimes what you're trying to do is kind of recalibrate the expectation. Um, now that's not to say there haven't been students who've gone up six or seven points in a month, but we don't sell dreams. I mean, in the sense of like unrealistic, ridiculous. We sell reality and practicality. And if something exceeds both of our expectations, well, great. But then I say don't tell anybody about those results because I don't want anyone to know that if we magically increased, that that's typical for the industry. But there are there are typical industry standards that I would say, you know, you can kind of follow, which are such that, like I would say, if you start your test prep, you know, 10 to 12 weeks before your test date, that's a good timeline. If you're trying to do a practice test or practice sections every week, that's even better. Um, and that's realistic to expect if you're doing that sort of process on the SAT to get you anywhere between 150 to maybe 200 points in the ACT. That's potentially going to get you three to five points more in the composite. That those are realistic standards.

SPEAKER_00 14:55

We like, I do not encourage my kids to take the May SAT. I think it is lunacy that they had the college board has the May SAT two days before the AP exams start. We don't even really promote the June SAT that much.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

We it's more like the it's just, I don't, I just well remember, so just so you know, where I know where you live by what you just said. If you were in New Jersey, people would say, well, what is the ACT? So for example, their ACT dates, their SAT dates. Every college in the country will take an either an SAT or ACT score. Some students will perform better on one test than the other. That's what actually is really the evolution of the work I do. You know, back in the day, when you went to college, the college dictated what test scores to send. So in Ohio, it was really commonly the ACT, but the minute you try to apply to a school East Coast, West Coast, then it might have been you must submit the SAT. All of that changed in 2007, where all colleges accept both. So now you see these regional preferences, but a really good test prep provider is going to try from the outset to determine is one of these tests going, are you going to be better suited for one of these tests? The idea being if we can get you the result you're looking for on one test versus the other, this is where, for example, ACT is not, they are February, they are April, they are June, July. They are not your May, right? They are going to be a little bit different. So some students that might influence what their testing timeline or their pref testing preference might even be. But I agree with you. For certain students, it is problematic for Mayor June very much. That's what those are the kids doing AP or IB. But that is not true if you're in a regular curriculum. In a regular curriculum, you want to wait till Mayor June till you're finishing like your algebra two. So it can really vary. And that's why, again, you want a test prep provider that asks you all these questions. Where do you go to school? What classes do you take? What are your grades? What colleges are you looking at? What where are you at score-wise? What is your goal score? And that really does influence advice that we give or we should give in test prep for what do we think the path of least resistance would be test-wise? And then, of course, possibly, do you need a test at all? You know, obviously with test optional, that influences some of students' decisions about doing test prep.

SPEAKER_00 17:20

Yeah, we've talked about that on the podcast uh before, but just kind of like obviously that was a pandemic era policy and a lot of people were celebrating it. Where are you standing on it in in terms of, you know, I think the pendulum is swinging back the other way, in fact, pretty hard. But just where do you, where do you fall on that?

SPEAKER_01 17:38

So I'm the mother of five kids, four of whom who've gone through this test prep in a college process. My three oldest were phenomenal testers. So that was just the kind of student they were. My fourth child testing was never going to be in her future. She was a freshman when COVID hit. And there was no one celebrating test optional more, knowing that probably test optional would be something that would be a path that she would probably pursue. Now, my daughter did test prep. She prepped for the ACT, she prepped over this sort of typical timeline, and she went up those five points in her composite. However, that did not nearly leave her with a score that was going to benefit her in the admissions process. So I do think while there is a segment of that there's a segment of students who are going to benefit from test optional because there are still test optional colleges, the differences in the trend that you're speaking of is the implementation of the like a very widespread test optional policy early in COVID was simply as a response to the lack of test, the lack of access to testing, which obviously does not exist anymore, at least in most of the country. You'd be surprised, though, test access is an issue in California. There are states where students have to leave the state to take a test. California is still very much one of them. But my point is what colleges are finding, as you can imagine, is now that they've had enough graduates in a test optional admissions policy process to see students are not graduating at rates they should be when they were accepted without test scores. Students are not, so they're either taking more time, they're dropping out. And so what they're recognizing is test scores really do tell you something about the student because there's so much grade inflation. You know, the typical student at most of the high schools around me are getting a 3.75 or greater. So the student who has a 3.0 does apparently has a shot. You know, and so the idea is that in order to be able to really differentiate what skills a student actually has, the tests are the only measurement. They're the only standardized measurement that really truly tell you, do they know it or do they not? And so that is something that no GPA is really able to do because it varies dramatically at schools what their grading scales are. Um and that's where when you talk about APs, you know, there are a lot of kids who take the AP course for the grade bump, but they're getting ones, they're getting twos. So it's sort of like begs the question why did you bother taking, you know, I mean, for the college credit least. So that's one of the things we see is students who just are still underprepared even if taking an AP because they aren't still able to do the skills that are a part of the class.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

This episode is brought to you by Supported Tutoring, where we don't just help students get better grades, we help them become critical thinkers. Whether it's mastering AP exams, maximizing college applications, or building lifelong learning habits, our expert tutors focus on critical thinking, confidence, and real growth. Head to supported tutoring.com to find the support your student deserves. Well, I think it's also we talk a lot about it inside the program too, of just like your A in the class does not equal five. Like your does not like that grade can be based on literally anything homework, participation points, projects, not nothing related to the AP standard.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

So Well, so and certainly things that take, like, think about the project. If you give a student a project in AP class and they have time to work on it, and let's say they're very hardworking, they're very motivated, they'll they'll put so much time in. Those are things that very often in taking an actual test, you don't get do-overs, you don't get extra time, you don't get to go back and like, you know, turn in corrections to your test. It doesn't work that way, like it might work in some high school classes.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

Well, that's I mean, I've seen a lot of teachers teach the FRQs that way, like a take-home DBQ. I'm like, you're not gonna be able to do that in the test. Like, you need to learn the skills first before you even release kids to do it on their own.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Otherwise, the hard part is you want to learn from your mistakes. So you want to understand why did you not do well on that FRQ? However, the grade you get should really just be what you got. Like, what did you give me? And that's the grade, because that's what a test score is, right? That's what the AP does, that's what SAT is doing on that given day, given. Those questions, here's how you did in the moment. You don't, you don't get to go back and do it over.

SPEAKER_00 22:04

Well, you can retest, but then you got to put more time and effort into probably to your point about grade inflation, there's so many competing forces out there. Like I had to do it as an IB teacher of like, I would lose kids, kids would just drop out because the class would be too hard. I'm like, no, you can actually accomplish, you can do this, but you have to understand that what you know is not good enough. And you actually have to grow during this process. But like we would grade their first essay the second day on the IB rubric, like showing them that they would fail, but the points are only out of 10 points. So even if you failed, you're not gonna fail the class because it's only 10 points. Right. But I think there's like this, I do think there's a lot of pressure on teachers to not drop kids out of the A because it's the GPA is gonna mess up their future and the perception of the parents. And so really we have a declining population of like they're they've never had higher scores and grades in their life.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

They never had higher, no. If you look at the curves, if you look at the research, you know, especially the curve for the number of like foes or A's back in like the 60s compared to now. I mean, the growth curve there is amazing with how many A's are being given out now. If you match or align that with test scores from SATs over that time, it is like it's going down, you know. So the problem is we can't say, oh, they're getting better grades. The kids today are getting smarter. The test would suggest the opposite. They're they have fewer skills.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

This is a very non-PC thing. I said this is when I was a teacher. My first year teaching IB, I almost had no idea what was going on. Like, I didn't, I did not know what IB was. Thank God my kids were good writers because they knew how to write a well-structured essay. By my fourth year teaching it, I'm like, do you know how to do a topic sentence? We're gonna start there. Right. And so kids are actually getting like it's thought, and it's like we're teaching them less critical things. We're teaching less critical writing.

SPEAKER_01 24:01

So that's kind of where we're at, you know, enter a test prep. That's why so many kids, when they're working on the tests, yes, the immediate goal is to get a higher number. But ultimately, I always say, you know, parents will sometimes come back and say to me, you know, thank you for making my student a better student. And that is actually the greatest compliment I can get as an educator because that's ultimately what we all want is leave this class with skills that are transferable in all kinds of places. And certainly the skills of reading and writing, you are definitely going to have to sort of produce those skills when you end up on a college campus.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yeah, and I don't mean it as a disrespectful thing. I just think there is like I talked to my uh colleague in school the other day about, well, yeah, we're like you have to like there's we talk about the legal system. There's like no consequences in law. Like they're the court systems are not producing drug charges as much, not producing pursuing truancy. And I'm like, there's no consequences. I like just not hard to understand that. But like the problem is schools are right now the best provider of all social services, which all other social services have collapsed and have fallen on the school, which the school was never designed to provide, on top of like, oh yeah, by the way, have to do this, have to do that, have to do that, also teach some point too. Right. And so there's just a challenge.

SPEAKER_01 25:24

I mean, to be a to be a classroom teacher is a challenge I would never want to assume today. Like, I'm relieved that I never entered teaching in classrooms because I don't know that I would still be a teacher.

SPEAKER_00 25:36

That's forcing a lot of great teachers out. A lot, a lot of teachers took the COVID exit. A lot of teachers, like it's just this dec more and more pressure, but less and less of that, I think, gratification and reward. And um, it's a shame because it's really the entire system is kind of collapsing on each other in each other.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

And I don't know, you know, you mentioned earlier about writing about mental health or mental health literacy. And I think I I don't take any issue with recognizing that students today are facing more mental health issues than any previous generation. And we really do try to keep that in mind. But at the end of the day, it's tricky when a parent says, look, I want this result, but I don't want to have them to have to be pressured. And it's like, well, which is it going to be? And so sometimes the tricky part is I think the system has sometimes given given in a little bit more than it should sometimes, which is why the kids then have expectations of they can get around things or they don't need to do things, or there's a lot of shortcuts they can use. And it it's it's very, it's very tricky sometimes because we have to say, look, if you if you aren't able to put in that effort because of external things, that's totally fine, but you can't expect the result. You don't get the payoff without the work. And I think sometimes that's what's tricky is we try to give allowances for things. And sometimes, which is totally fine and totally acceptable. I don't take any issue, but the expectation of outcome may have to be somewhat altered.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

Do you have you read the uh coddling of the American?

SPEAKER_01 27:13

I you know what? I'm not, I actually that has been in my Amazon cart for longer than it should. I've not read it, but so many of my friends have. But yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

That's he speaks on like it is so I would just push back on that. Yeah, no, I the stat that drew me to write my dissertation was there was a study done in the economist probably about now 15 years ago, and it showed depression and anxiety, it's broken down by income levels, and like they have that like plot whisker diagram, and all three income levels, lower, middle, and and higher, were experiencing higher degrees of anxiety and depression amongst teenagers than any other field. And it's like, why is that? I mean, one is this the phone. Phones, right, sure. And two, parents that um, and you know, and I'm dealing I'm not saying I'm not, I have three girls, three daughters, and so we want to always give them a better life and make, but like also, and the point of the book is we don't allow kids to fail safely anymore.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

We we put Learning how to fail is probably one of the most important lessons anybody can learn. The hard part is it's like, how do you protect or soften it? You know, I mean, it's it's an interesting thing because it's an interesting lesson, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Yeah, I mean, I I'm not trying to chew my own horn, but that was like the whole point of we realize that, because are you familiar with the IB curriculum?

SPEAKER_01 28:38

I we have podcasts on it. I mean, I mean, I know things like you know, standard curriculum. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shell, SL, yeah, theory of knowledge. You know, I I know sort of some things, right?

SPEAKER_00 28:51

So the challenge in Virginia, because that's where I was teaching in Fairfax County, and you we taught history of the Americas, which is technically a US history course, but it's history of all the Americas. Right. So you have to write three essays, you get two and a half hours on there's 18 topics, 36 questions. And so one of the topics you knew you could choose a topic. So we chose Civil War, mainly because it only was US focused, and then two other questions or other other two topics focused on Latin America or Canada. So we did a Cold War, and then we eventually did civil rights. So the challenge was it was also a US survey course, they were tested on that. So we had to cover all of US history while going in depth on these three topics, and we spent literally eight weeks on the Civil War. The problem was a kid could make it about six or seven weeks into the class before their first real IB essay, because that's when we get through the causes of Civil War, and then we would just like devastate them with the score, and they're like, oh no. So we're like, we have to move this timeline up and basically like fail safely. Like, hey, you did summer work, you're gonna write about Washington as a leader, and we're gonna grade you on the IB rubric. But if you don't, you don't understand how to write, you're gonna do poorly, and most kids are gonna do poorly, but it's okay because we're gonna teach you now how to get out of it as long as you change. And I just think we as a society have it's just easier to give the kid a photo, like right? It's easier to give the kid this. And the kid, and you're a parent, so it's out of love. I hope it's out of love, but it's like we're short chaining kids those upper those learning opportunities when it's failure, it is not the end. It's actually, as you probably know, as a business owner, entrepreneur, you can't fail. The only reason you fail you fail is if you quit. You actually just learn how to do something differently. You just learn how to figure this out. So I think schools are not great at teaching that right now.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

And I I mean, I don't even want to get started on just, well, then what does AI throw into the mix? Because certainly that's you know, the last couple of years, that's a whole other thing of like students and what expectations we have now for their skill level, given the access to AI. And I'm and I'm not denigrating AI. I'm just saying it poses a new challenge for students trying to gain the skill. You know, it's very easy to try to use AI because I could say like you start to replace things you normally do with using AI.

SPEAKER_00 31:19

Well, the same author talks about it because he's been John. I I know I say his name wrong. John, how do you, you know, there's all this backlash against social media. He he wrote the next book, The Anxious Generation, about countries passing bans on social media for kids, having phones in schools, states are passing that. And he's saying, I think he was on Bill Maher, he was saying about we now have the same opportunity for AI. Um and I think, and so I've had guests on this podcast that are pro-AI, anti-AI for kids. It's interesting because there's some discussion, at least in Pennsylvania, about potentially banning AI, all forms of AI for kids. And I think the only argument I have for it that it makes sense that I'm with is if you're going to basically outsource your critical thinking with AI, then absolutely, because I think you and I grew up in a generation that didn't have phones or social media. So we actually know how to interact with humans without it the same way as we're gonna teach a whole bunch of kids that you could just hey, just take, just give answer, ask your question AI, and whatever the answer is, take its word for it, not think critically about it.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

I just finished a book called Co-Intelligence. It was written by a professor at Wharton. Um, and I saw him speak, and it's really interesting because one of the premises is that when you take sort of average people, average thinkers, average in some way, it really increases like their capability, like what they're now capable of is way better. Someone who starts with sort of above, well above, obviously the improvement for them is going to be less. But one of the challenges is these gaps of age. Like you and I could say, we gained our experience right on the battlefield of like working it, doing it, learning through failing, learning through iteration. To get where we are, we can use AI in a powerful way because we can evaluate what it's doing and whether it's right or wrong, or we use our own experience to sort of put it in context. But how do you get to be where we are? You have to sort of go through the work to gain the context. So there's a little bit of, I think, in education is how are we going to teach our students to use it in a way that it is is only going to be an addition to or it's only going to augment education. But obviously, sadly, we know that there's gonna be a lot of places where it doesn't do that.

SPEAKER_00 33:45

All right, Amy, you ready for lighting round to round? Lighting round. Oh, there we go. All right. Most overrated thing about ACT or SAT prep that everyone obsesses over.

SPEAKER_01 33:58

Everyone obsesses over taking lots of practice tests. Now, I think practice tests are great, but students will eat through them. Some students will just go, oh, the more I do, the more I do. And parents had this mentality if I just let my kids work on practice tests, they're gonna get better. No, they're not. If you do not learn from your mistakes, you cannot expect to get better. And so I would say probably the notion of simply just taking tests is what makes you better. And I would argue, no, no, it's the review and it's the deconstruction of your error in between that is what you evaluate and you learn from in that next time you take a test.

SPEAKER_00 34:35

I like that. That's you're actually really true. Most underrated thing nobody talks about that actually moves scores.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

That moves the, you know, some memorization. I mean, there is really some rote memorization, and I think that's actually where some students are falling short. Um, the typical student, let's say, who takes geometry, their geometry teacher has never expected them to retain any one of those rules or formulas. When you get to a test like the ACT and you have to know distance formula, midpoint formula, slope formula, equations of lines, parabolas, circles, ellipses, hyperbolas. You gotta know the memorization. And so that's what's tricky is I want my students to be critical thinkers, but it has to be based upon some actual knowledge.

SPEAKER_00 35:19

Bloom's taxonomy right there. Exactly. If you could whisper one piece of advice to a parent of an eighth grader about how to think about testing over the next four years, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 35:29

Without hesitation, read, read more, and read more nonfiction, 15 minutes a day. You know, we make our kindergarten first and second, sometimes third graders do 15 minutes a day where us parents have to sign off on it. This, the stop, the stats for how little kids really read by the time they hit high school. So reading, reading more and reading more nonfiction.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

And what's the next big shift coming in standardized testing that no one is talking about yet?

SPEAKER_01 35:56

Um, big shift coming. It's funny. You know, I recorded a podcast, our second podcast was me talking about test, testing past, present, and future. It's a funny episode to listen to now because that was in early 2019. Um, and so much has changed since we recorded that. But um, I would say a trend. Uh trend, I mean, a trend in terms of test prep is can AI prep you for a test as well as a human? Because there are a lot of elements of things we all do as humans in test prep that AI, at least at this point, might not have sort of sentience over. So think even like looking at a student as you work with them and noticing certain things about what they're thinking, what they're doing, what they're touching, what they're writing, that I can stop them in their tracks because I know where it's going. So it's I can predict a lot of behaviors because I've seen them. I I don't know whether AI will do that, but it's certainly if at a point in time comes where it can, you know, that that would be the concern. So understanding how AI is able to engage or act eventually as compared to human tutoring teaching.

SPEAKER_00 37:03

Well, I mean, this has been incredible for families and educators and others that want to learn more and go deeper with what you offer. Where should they find you? Where can they find you?

SPEAKER_01 37:13

So you can always find me at our website, leapprogram.com. That's L-E-A-P-R-O-G-R-A-M.com. And the about us page is where you can find me.

SPEAKER_00 37:23

All right. And before we wrap, what's one thing you want every parent listening to remember from this conversation?

SPEAKER_01 37:29

Test scores are about skills. And if you want your students to succeed, make sure they have the skills.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Awesome. All right, Amy. Thank you again. Pleasure. Pleasure getting to know you. And uh thank you all for tuning in to the Supported Learning Podcast. We'll see you next time. Thanks for joining us on the Supported Learning Podcast. If today's conversation inspired you, challenged you, or sparked a new perspective, be sure to subscribe and share with a fellow change maker. We'll be back soon with more voices, more insight, and more ways to elevate the future of learning together. Until then, keep learning and keep pushing the conversation forward.