Devoted Reader Daryl sends along this article about the new SAT:
I've been a high school English teacher for 10 years, and if there's one thing I hate worse than the SAT, it's the idea of a new SAT...It's not that I'm against assessing kids. I give my own students eight to 10 assessments each marking period, though my assignments don't look anything like what students encounter on these high-stakes national exams...
The entire "writing" section of this new test is the kind of assessment that most teachers of writing would run away from. First of all, the idea that during the writing of this blitzkrieg essay..."You should take care to develop your point of view, present your ideas logically and clearly, and use language precisely" in under half an hour and under extreme pressure is ridiculous. We're not talking e-mail here. This article of mine you're reading now, for example, took several hours to compose - not to mention the fruitful give and take between the paper's editors and me. That's how real writing gets done...
Second, the slew of multiple-choice questions about grammar that the College Board calls "improving sentences and paragraphs" is not what Shakespeare had in mind when he dipped his quill in the inkwell before sitting down to edit a draft.
From the board's official Prep Booklet, here's the first example of what to expect [each letter is a point at which there is a possible error]:
"The students (a) have discovered that (b) they can address issues more effectively (c) through letter-writing campaigns (d) and not through public demonstrations. (e) No error."
This sentence appears OK to me, even if it is a little clunky. According to the College Board, however, the error occurs at (d) because: "When a comparison is introduced by the adverb 'more,' as in 'more effectively,' the second part of the comparison must be introduced by the conjunction 'than' rather than 'and not.' "
Got that?
But if I were to edit this sentence, I might make a few more changes: "The students discovered that they can address issues more effectively by writing letters than by demonstrating publicly." But, hey, I'd be wrong because this is not the portion of the writing section where I'm allowed to write anything.
What the bulk of the writing section of the new SAT is really measuring is acquired skills in managing style within the realm of standard written English...Students would be better served by consistently reading the commentary section of the local newspaper - and then periodically writing letters to the editor - than by sitting through the painfully boring lesson plans that these changes to the SAT are likely to inspire.
I agree. And all those testing critics out there should be taking notes - THIS is how effective test criticism should be done. No hyperbole. No hysterical rants about how the exams are completely biased or dependent on one's social standing. No childish arguments about how evil it is to hold students to objective standards.
It's completely legitimate to worry about the impact of the new SAT on writing curricula. It makes sense to put the horse before the cart and suggest changes that schools can make to improve writing skills. And portfolios, though expensive and laden with plenty of psychometric challenges, are not a bad idea for writing assessments.
Posted by kswygert at February 17, 2005 01:02 PM