Dumbing down is often done through subterfuge (warning: obscure word alert), but here it is blatant. Are college students never going to encounter "obscure vocabulary words" in their reading?
ETA: good discussion by Steve Sailer, with links to other news coverage at "New, probably not improved SAT questions"
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2014/04/new-probably-not-improved-sat-questions.html .
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/16/education/revised-sat-wont-include-obscure-vocabulary-words.htmlRevised SAT Won’t Include Obscure Vocabulary Words
By TAMAR LEWIN
New York Times
APRIL 16, 2014
The College Board on Wednesday will release many details of its revised SAT, including sample questions and explanations of the research, goals and specifications behind them.
“We are committed to a clear and open SAT, and today is the first step in that commitment,” said Cyndie Schmeiser, the College Board’s chief of assessment, in a conference call on Monday, previewing the changes to be introduced in the spring of 2016.
She said the 211-page test specifications and supporting materials being shared publicly include “everything a student needs to know to walk into that test and not be surprised.”
One big change is in the vocabulary questions, which will no longer include obscure words. Instead, the focus will be on what the College Board calls “high utility” words that appear in many contexts, in many disciplines — often with shifting meanings — and they will be tested in context. For example, a question based on a passage about an artist who “vacated” from a tradition of landscape painting, asks whether it would be better to substitute the word “evacuated,” “departed” or “retired,” or to leave the sentence unchanged. (The right answer is “departed.”)
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