The Washington Post (4/22, Anderson) reports that that the new SAT is part of a “long move away from testing for aptitude as the College Board seeks to tie the exam more closely to what students learn in the classroom.” Cyndie Schmeiser, the College Board’s chief of assessment, commented that “the College Board has moved toward achievement testing in response to the need for better information about student readiness.” Jeremiah Quinlan, Yale University’s dean of undergraduate admissions and an adviser to college board, said “this test could be even more predictive of success in college than it has been in the past.” Bob Schaeffer, a spokesman for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, criticized the new test, stating that “SAT scores will remain a better measure of family income than of college readiness.” In an opposite opinion, Stuart Schmill, dean of admissions for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the new focus “made sense,” as it measures what students “should be” learning in high school.
New Technology Seen As Essential To Teaching Old Subjects
In an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal (4/22, Subscription Publication), former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who serves as chairwoman of iCivics Inc., and Jeff Curley, its executive director, cite the College Board’s decision to have every student who takes the SAT read a passage from America’s founding documents or the world debate they inspired. They also note the announcement that the College Board and the nonprofit digital education platform Khan Academy will partner to provide “free, world-class test prep” for the new SAT. In discussing these developments, the authors note a paradox in education in which teaching the old subjects is as important as ever, but also in which new methods may be required to fully prepare students for the future. They argue that old methods of preparation such as flashcards and memorization are no longer sufficient, and digital technology is essential to providing students with the tools they need to understand the material.
New SAT Moves Toward Testing Analytic Ability
The New York Times (4/16, Lewin, Subscription Publication) reports that the revised SAT’s vocabulary questions “will no longer include obscure words.” Instead, the test will focus on what the College Board describes as “high utility” words that appear in multiple contexts across disciplines. The new test will also require students to interpret graphs for “analyzing science and social science texts.” College officials praised the changes which tested students on what they should be learning in high school, but Christoph Guttentag, Duke University’s admissions director, added that “we’ll still have to examine the evidence to see if there’s any change in the predictive validity within our context.” Many admissions officials questioned the College Board’s claims that the new tests would eliminate the gap between high and low income students’ scores.
New SAT Will Focus More On Algebra And Reading Comprehension, Less On Vocabulary
Politico (4/16, Simon) reports on the recent changes to the SAT. In addition to noting the changes to vocabulary testing, the article says that “the exam now focuses intently on algebra” for its math section, adding that the essay is optional. The article adds that students may find new questions “confounding,” as the new test mimics Common Core exams and the first wave of students taking the SAT in 2016 will have little exposure to the Common Core tests. College Board President David Coleman said, “We aim to offer worthy challenges, not artificial obstacles.” The article speculates that Coleman seeks to revitalize the SAT brand, which has lost market share to the ACT. The article also provides sample questions from the new exam.
SAT Shakeup Comes As Demand Wanes
The Washington Post (3/17, Anderson) reports that as the College Board “aims to start a national crusade for college access” by overhauling its SAT test, the group “faces a major hurdle” in that the usage of the test declined in 29 states in the nine years since its last major revision. The article compares this with the ACT, which saw declines in only three states. Moreover, “the SAT also had declining usage in some states where its presence is greater than the ACT’s.”
Commentary: SAT Overhaul Won’t Correct Test’s Flaws
USA Today (3/14) editorializes about the College Board’s recent announcement of plans to overhaul the SAT, saying that most of the changes being planned “won’t make much difference.” The paper argues that among the test’s “inherent shortcomings” is the fact that there tends to be a direct correlation between wealth and higher scores, saying that “rejiggering the test” won’t alleviate the “intractable social problems” that lead to poor academic performance. Instead, USA Today suggests, colleges should improve the way that they “misuse” the test.
Meanwhile, in an op-ed in USA Today (3/14), National Center for Fair & Open Testing public education director Bob Schaeffer writes that the SAT is “is supposed to predict college academic performance accurately and fairly while resisting short-term coaching,” but argues that it achieves none of these goals. He dismisses the proposed changes as “little more than marketing bells and whistles,” citing research indicating that such metrics as grades in high school are “better predictors of undergrad academic performance” than are college entrance tests.
SAT Changes Said To Magnify Education Gap
In a Wall Street Journal (3/12, Arguelles, Subscription Publication) op-ed, Randolf Arguelles, who heads a test prep center and reviewed applications to UC Berkeley for eight years, argues that the SAT is the only objective measure of a prospective student. Further, Arguelles argues that changing the SAT will extend, not mitigate, the socioeconomic education gap by privileging test takers from suburban districts. Arguelles concludes that the old SAT provided a fair and unbiased means of measurement, and proposed changes will underscore disparities.
College Board Announces SAT Overhaul
Education Week (3/12, Adams) continues coverage of the recent announcement that the College Board is redesigning the SAT to make “substantive shifts aimed at making the exam more ‘focused’ and ‘useful,’” noting that the overhaul “offers strong echoes of the Common Core State Standards, which board President David Coleman helped write.” The article notes that the change comes two years after rival test ACT “eclipsed” the SAT, and describes the “mixed” reaction to the announcement. Education Week reports that the Education Trust’s Christina L. Theokas “applauded the effort,” though Wake Forest University sociology professor Joseph Soares dismissed the changes as “a PR maneuver.”