There's a new "new SAT" article making the rounds. Let's examine it, shall we?
The SAT is undergoing significant changes in 2005, including the elimination of those dreaded analogies...
Hey, I liked those!
...and the addition of a Writing section that includes an equally dreaded 25-minute essay...
Students who plan on attending college should NOT be afraid of having to write a short essay in 25 minutes. This is hardly setting the standard too high.
The changes are:
_The Verbal section will be renamed Critical Reading. Analogies will be eliminated. Short reading passages will be added.
_Quantitative comparisons will be eliminated from the Math section. Questions based on Algebra II skills will be added.
_A Writing section will be added, with questions on error identification, sentence improvement and paragraph improvement, plus a 25-minute essay. The writing test replaces the SAT II writing test previously taken by students applying to selective schools.
The revisions to the exam, the first in 10 years, make the test "better reflect what students are actually doing in classrooms," says Kristin Carnahan, associate director of public affairs for the College Board, the organization that designs and administers both the SAT and PSAT.
Though that might seem an obvious idea, it was not always the stated goal of the SAT. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the College Board widely touted the SAT as a measure of students' innate ability, and sections such as antonyms (eliminated in 1994) and those tricky analogies - brain teasers that were not directly related to schoolwork - were prized for that very reason.
But times changed. Students started studying lists of difficult words, and companies like the Princeton Review, which launched in 1981, began offering SAT-prep classes, all of which put the concept of the SAT as a pure measure of intellectual ability in question.
At the same time, some observers began saying cultural bias in questions' wording hurt the scores of minorities.
Not a bad timeline. Actually, the article in general is very good, and even-handed. The only "critics say" line is above, where it's actually appropriate. The reporter spends a lot of time on the topic that is most nerve-wracking - "that essay":
As for that essay - it will be read by two graders in a process that has been followed for years by the College Board in grading its SAT II writing test. Furthermore, the essay counts for only one-third of the Writing grade.
College Board representatives say the company conducted trials of the new test at 650 schools and found that a score of 600 on the old verbal test was equivalent to a score of 600 on the new critical reading test. Likewise, the scores from the old math test translated to equivalent scores on the new math test.
Of course, the Writing section is new and does change the balance of the test. Each student will now receive two language-related scores, which could concern some students who are significantly stronger in math than in language skills, such as students whose native language is not English.
Brian O'Reilly, executive director of SAT Information and Services, says, however, their research shows the addition of the writing test will be a boon for most English-as-a-second-language students.
"ESL students do not do as well on a writing test as non-ESL students, but with a writing test, that disadvantage is considerably less than with a reading test," O'Reilly explained.
And there's this tidbit, Lauren Schneider: "To some extent, it should help one group that right now scores lower than another group, that is women vs. men," O'Reilly said. "Women tend to do better on a writing test than men."
The bottom line on the new test, though, is that the vast majority of students will get a score that is comparable to what they would have received on the old test.
So students should relax.
Posted by kswygert at September 20, 2004 12:31 PM