Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment Effectiveness/advisability - SAT prep young kids?

It's wonderful that you have that kind of relatinship with your DD. Unfortunately, DS rarely lets me teach him anything. However, he will accept an explanation of why something is wrong if I can manage to cough it up in 60 seconds or so.

You are absolutely correct that "teaching to the SAT" would skipped way too much essential background knowledge for higher math. That's part of the reasoning why I agreed with DS that he should repeat Pre-Algebra at school this year even though he was able to get 100% on the ALEKS Pre-algebra over 3-4 weeks in the summer.

Well, if a very bright kid without exceptionalities completes Algebra I and II and Geometry before taking the SAT, I imagine that he would likely get over 700. Even if he had documented exceptionalities, I believe that the College Board does grant extra time up to double time. At the time that I took the SAT in my junior year, I was already taking Calculus but I don't recall needing anything beyond Geometry.

I am not an academic so my perspective may be a tad different. I have found that in the professional context, the ability to quickly identify and solve a problem have come in handy many times. I believe that ability is tested when a very young child takes the SAT without the benefit of the presumed formal instructions.

My cynicism is probably greater than yours. One of the reasons why I am considering SET membership is to have one additional ammunition in my arsenal in case I need it for advocacy down the road. That was also the same reason why I had DS join DYS. It was nice to have that in my back pocket when I requested the last acceleration at the beginning of the school year.

I actually think that the current SAT is easier than it was 25-30 years ago. However, statistically it may be equally hard for a given student to get that 700. Of course, you also need to consider that the demographics of SAT takers have changed a lot. Being top 1% of "college prep" kids in the old days is not the same as being top 1% of the general school population today. I also think that extensive prep is so rampant now that a 700 today after substantial prepping does not equal the same 700 with minimal prepping from a quarter century ago.

Some of the math competition questions are really easy but you are correct that at least the difficult questions are more challenging and more indicative of math talent. However, I think that fluency is also a big factor for the AMC8. In any case, the math compentitions are not standardized and for someone like my DS, they are pretty much worthless as a measure of progress. I had DS take about a half dozen of the recent actual AMC8 tests and his scores fluctuate a lot.

DS is not anything close to a math genius. I agree that the SAT would not be a good measure of that in any case. I also tend to think that SET is also premised on the idea that if a kid can score 700 without all that formal instruction (Algebra I and II and Geomerty) that a college Junior is presumed to have had, then he might have some measure of talent.

As for the length of the test, it is grueling even with the breaks and downtime, but the actual test is well under 4 hours (70 minutes math, 70 minutes reading, and 60 minutes writing with a 20-25 minute expermental section thrown in).

Thanks. Those are very helpful anecdotes. Clearly, two to four years of additional math exposure made a huge difference. I would only consider prepping DS if he were to take the SAT within the next year or so. Alternatively, it may make more sense to have just him learn some algebra and geometry.

Thanks. Your experience confirms my gut feelings. Most of the test does look fairly easy when you have the algebra and geometry background. That's also an excellent point about unfamiliar terminology, which would not be an issue if you have taken the courses. I think that timing becomes more of an issue when you need to figure out a problem without the expected tools.

Yes, that's Dottie's point. If you have to score higher to reach the 99th percentile, that means more kids are attaining higher scores. Which means the test is easier. Think of it as "an 800 ain't what it used to be."

To answer the general question in this thread, part of the standardized conditions for administration of the SAT or ACT is that each test-taker receives a full sample test when registering for the test, so that each test-taker can in principle prepare in the same way by working through the sample test with actual test-taking time limits. That's ONE sample test. Not doing that is to be a chump. I know a human intelligence researcher who argues that testing under that kind of condition, in which item content and format is disclosed to all test-takers, is actually a better test of intelligence than attempting to surprise all test-takers with items that may in fact be innocently familiar to some test-takers from their home environment (as is done with what are labeled IQ tests). In terms of construct validity, IQ tests are largely indistinguishable from the SAT or ACT, as has been argued in several peer-reviewed papers published in the journal Intelligence and other journals.

Taking SAT scores as an informative correlate (proxy) of what psychologists call "general intelligence" is a procedure often found in the professional literature of psychology, with the warrant of studies specifically on that issue. Note that it is standard usage among psychologists to treat "general intelligence" as a term that basically equates with "scoring well on IQ tests and good proxies of IQ tests."

http://www.iapsych.com/iqmr/koening2008.pdf

"Frey and Detterman (2004) showed that the SAT was correlated with measures of general intelligence .82 (.87 when corrected for nonlinearity)"

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3144549/

"Indeed, research suggests that SAT scores load highly on the first principal factor of a factor analysis of cognitive measures; a finding that strongly suggests that the SAT is g loaded (Frey & Detterman, 2004)."

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebat...tter/the-sat-is-a-good-intelligence-test

"Furthermore, the SAT is largely a measure of general intelligence. Scores on the SAT correlate very highly with scores on standardized tests of intelligence, and like IQ scores, are stable across time and not easily increased through training, coaching or practice."

http://faculty.psy.ohio-state.edu/p...sion_The_role_of_numeracy_in_J_and_D.pdf

"Numeracy’s effects can be examined when controlling for other proxies of general intelligence (e.g., SAT scores; Stanovich & West, 2008)."

As I have heard the issue discussed in the local "journal club" I participate in with professors and graduate students of psychology who focus on human behavioral genetics (including the genetics of IQ), one thing that makes the SAT a very good proxy of general intelligence is that its item content is disclosed (in released previous tests that can be used as practice tests), so that almost the only difference between one test-taker and another in performance on the SAT is generally and consistently getting all of the various items correct, which certainly takes cognitive strengths.

By contrast (I have another Gifted Issues thread in mind as I type this), the expectation of IQ test norming is that the item content of the test will be a surprise to the test-taker. Yes, there are definitely examples in various places (not just New York City in the United States) where children can become familiar with the test items either through formal prep courses or through playing various kinds of games. Of course, a vocabulary subtest is a part of almost all IQ batteries, and some children will have life experience of using the vocabulary that happens to be sampled on a particular test and some will not. Mental arithmetic items are part of some IQ tests, and those will also reflect how well a child has been taught arithmetic.