On the main stage at Enroll26, the premier conference for K–12 enrollment professionals, E3n CEO Mike Flanagan announced to the 1,350 attendees plans to bring together the strengths of the ISEE and SSAT into a new assessment that will be stronger for schools and simpler for families.
In his presentation, Flanagan discussed the research-based decision-making process, outlined a two-year development plan, highlighted opportunities for feedback and involvement, and committed the cost savings from efficiencies gained to programs benefiting members and fee waivers for families.
Watch his talk in its entirety below, and follow along with the presentation slides.
Grounded in research, shaped by schools.
“The one thing we talked about a lot,” Flanagan said in reference to meeting with enrollment professionals at E3n’s spring Enrollment Management Leadership Council (EMLC)’s spring seminars, “was that no matter what we do, we’d answer the question [about whether to merge the ISEE and SSAT] not by following our gut, but by following the research.
“Because pre-merger, these two organizations [EMA and ERB], while they’d been operating independently for collectively almost a hundred and seventy years, had never actually been allowed to collaborate. Each of them was deeply expert in creating their own assessment — the ISEE and the SSAT — but they were never allowed to compare notes.
Flanagan went on to share data from a recent third-party concordance study, which found that the ISEE and SSAT overlap by approximately 90%.
“What the [concordance data] means in practical terms,” Flanagan said, “is that if you have a young person who sits for the Lower Level math section of the SSAT, or the Upper Level math section, we can predict their score on the ISEE and vice versa.”
Speaking to a slide that outlined the family assessment experience, from evaluating which assessment to take through registration, preparation, and interpreting results, Flanagan added, “You could defend having families do this twice; you could defend having kids study for two different tests; if they were doing two different things.
“We know better now that we can make this family experience smoother, and we also know that because of demographics and affordability, we need every family and every student that we can get. We can’t afford to lose any of them to a process that’s full of friction.”
Independent schools will play an important role in shaping what comes next through focus groups, surveys, and additional feedback opportunities.
“We don’t know a lot of the answers to the questions that are probably immediately springing to mind for you,” Flanagan said. “This is the beginning of a journey. And we’re deliberately inviting you in now, even though we don’t have the answers, because it’s really important to us that the journey be inclusive.”
Preserving continuity while creating new possibilities.
Flanagan outlined the core design principles of the new assessment:
- Familiar and compatible
- Simpler and easier
- Transparent and inclusive
- Reliable and valid
- Integrated and interoperable
“Two years from now, you should consider this a scorecard. What we give you should be familiar. It should be compatible with the tools you use today. When we give you the new score report, you should be able to read it instantly because it’s going to look and feel similar to the ones you already know how to use.
“The numbers are going to be equally predictive—they’re going to be reliable and valid. And a young person who scores at the 95th percentile on the SSAT today should not, and will not, score at the 50th percentile on the new test. They’ll show up in the same place.
“We also want, wherever possible, for this process to be simpler and easier for families. We want the process to be transparent and inclusive, and [give you] plenty of opportunities for feedback.
“Lastly, we know that we play in a bigger ecosystem of admissions data, and so all the scores that we generate, we want to make sure they flow into your systems as easily as possible. We want them to be integrated and interoperable.”
A thoughtful path forward on a two-year plan that will yield benefits for families and schools.
The initial timeline targets a full launch in the fall of 2028, with a decision to be made in the summer of 2027 on whether to proceed with the 2028 launch as initially outlined or to add another year of development.
“When you serve schools, you’re really yoked to the academic calendar,” Flanagan said. “There’s really only a couple of moments — a launch window — in an academic year to launch a new test. In a year from now, we’re going to look at how the project is going and all the input that we’ve gotten, and we’re going to ask ourselves, honestly, are we ready to launch a year from now?
“The commitment is, we’re going to do this right, whether it’s in two years or three.”
Flanagan concluded his presentation by discussing the efficiencies E3n will gain from combining the ISEE and SSAT and the benefits this will provide for families and schools.
“Each of the organizations has historically evolved really great support structures for key steps of the [assessment] process,” he said. “Each of these is purpose-built for the test in question, and right now we’ve got duplicate sets of everything.
“What we’re going to be able to do is unlock tremendous value by combining these two — and it’s not just economic value.” Flanagan explained, “We get to go down and choose the best of each. Even if you only did that, the quality improvement would be tremendous. But when you also bring in economies of scale, what it means is that all kinds of resources get unlocked for us to deliver new and better things for you.
“We’re already starting to think and plan about what the next generation of the Standard Application Online looks like.” Flanagan added that E3n is rethinking character skills as part of the holistic student journey. “What are the non-academic or non-cognitive measures that we think are predictive of kids’ success on our campuses and in our communities?
“And then of course,” he added, “all of us are paying a lot of attention to AI in admissions.
“When we think about efficiency, I want to make a commitment to all of you,” Flanagan said. “We don’t know how much money we’re going to save by doing this, but what I can commit to you is that all of it is going to go back to membership, or to go to families in the form of increased fee waivers.”
