Dr.

Cynthia Schmeiser Interview

Podcasts for Leaderful Schools
Friday, April 10, 2015
MAXFIELD: Welcome back for another recording of Podcasts for Leaderful Schools, almost
live from the campus of Oakland University in the School of Education and Human Services.
We are joined today by Cynthia Schmeiser. Dr. Schmeiser is the current Chief of Assessment at
SAT and has had a distinguished career in the assessment component of education, spanning
nearly forty years. In her time in the assessment field, Dr. Schmeiser has worked for ACT and
recently put her efforts into redesigning the SAT.
First of all, welcome to the podcast and thank you for taking the time to talk with us today.
Share with our listeners your background. How did you find yourself involved with ACT and now SAT?
What led you to this career path?
As you know, the Michigan Department of Education and the legislature approved the adoption of the
SAT as one of our mandatory assessments given to high school students in their junior year. Anxiety
levels increased not only among students, but with parents, school administrators, curriculum directors,
teachers, and school counselors.
What should these stakeholders expect from the test when juniors sit for the SAT in the spring
of 2016?
A portion of the anxiety is placed in the concern that with this assessment transition, school
curriculum and test preparation must change. Are these concerns rightfully placed?
One of the criticisms of nationalized standardized tests like the SAT is that test preparation services
benefit those who can afford these pricey offerings, benefiting students of higher socioeconomic status.
What has SAT done to offer equal opportunities for test preparation regardless of a students economic
status?
You were involved with redesigning the SAT.
Describe observations that were made leading to the redesigned SAT. How responsive was
this redesign to states adoption of the Common Core State Standards?
Explain the differences in the redesigned SAT to the former test.
What process is followed to ensure a confidence in rolling out a new test and exposing
students to an updated version of the SAT?
An assessment culture has been cultivated in our country. Those in the education profession find
themselves responding to headlines about international comparisons in student achievement to assessment
scores from students around the world. In your work in the assessment profession, what have you learned
about curriculum, instruction, and testing that can aide student learning and help guide instruction?

One of the ambitions of the SAT is to predict college and career readiness. Some of your
published work sought to identify attributes of students in middle school that would predict if
they would graduate from high school (Casillas, A., Robbins, S., Allen, J., Kuo, Y.-L.,
Hanson, M.A., & Schmeiser, C., 2012). Additionally, you also worked on identifying
characteristics of high schools that despite higher levels of poverty and ethnic diversity
manage to be above the national average in high school graduate and college admittance
(Stein, M., Robinson, S., Haycock, K., Vitale, D., & Schmeiser, C., 2005). What have you
gleaned from these studies that educational stakeholders should understand that increases
high school graduation rates and college and career readiness?

To end our conversation, what advice do you give to Michigan high school students who are concerned
about needing to take the SAT in their junior year?

Referenced Work:
Casillas, A., Robbins, S., Allen, J., Kuo, Y.-L., Hanson, M.A., & Schmeiser, C. (2012, February 13).
Predicting early academic failure in high school from prior academic achievement, psychosocial
characteristics, and behavior. Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication,
doi: 10.1037/a0027180.
Stein, M., Robinson, S., Haycock, K., Vitale, D., & Schmeiser, C. (2005, September). College prep 101.
Principal Leadership (Middle School Edition) 6(1), 23-26.