Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion The SAT

Hi, haven't visited here for a while as now living in the UK. Anyway, on another message board that is based in Britain, posts are suggesting - politicians too, that the US SAT is something that students can't practice to improve their scores. Apparently British universities are moving towards this type of test. I wasn't sure what to think. I grew up in England so have no personal knowledge, but distinctly remember seeing shelves full of SAT prep books in the bookstores. Would appreciate feedback. Thanks

The SAT started as something close to an IQ test. If you have the time, this website has an interesting history of the SAT:

http://www.erikthered.com/tutor/sat-act-history.html

Over the years it has evolved into more of an achievement test. The College Board is supposed to change the SAT again in a year or so to make it even more achievement-like.

You can prep and you can raise your score, even if the College Board says you cannot. However, for most kids, there are limits to how much they can raise their score. If you start out at a 1500 (out of 2400), maybe you can raise the score to 1700. If you begin at 2000, it is reasonable that you could prep and score a 2200. It would be very rare for a kid to make a leap of 500 or 600 points. While many folks on this forum may say that the SAT has a low ceiling or it is easy to score above 2000, decades of testing doesn't seem to show this. If it was easy to prep and raise your score a lot, kids would do this and the test would be renormed (of course it has been renormed - the other direction due to dropping test scores).

If you have a good solid background in math and have read plenty of literature and publications like the New York Times and the Economist, you will do well on the SAT. Of course, many kids in the US don't have great math instruction and they haven't read literature or publications with rich vocabulary, so they struggle with the SAT.

I respectfully disagree. The timed aspect of the SAT (and ACT) make this statement somewhat superficial.

MANY kids do NOT do as well as they should because of the timed aspect of the test. It's not that they are "slow" even-- just that they simply do not have time to reason through test items-- period.

DD did MUCH better (like, a standard deviation better) on the ACT's math section than on the SAT's. Why? Well, it's complicated, but she was able to use her super-human reading speed to generate additional time for herself, and she used that time to use reasoning and to work through problems twice. She did the math section TWICE on the ACT, basically, during that hour. Even though the problems on the ACT included trigonometry which she's technically not yet completed and never had instruction in, she did fine because she had the reasoning time to spare.

On the SAT, being broken into two sections and being much more about particular single-method problems, she simply didn't have enough time to spare, and it shows. Give her double time and she can get a perfect 800 on any given day. Easier problems than the ACT, but she doesn't do as well on them.

She has no disability that accounts for this-- it's just that under pressure she is far more prone to careless/dumb calculation-based errors. Forgetting signs, slipping a decimal place, etc. Those are far more painful on the SAT because of the test design.

Anyway-- I do think that some aspects of test prep probably work over the long haul. Hey-- we did it. But not "prep" so much as desensitization to that timed/formatting that was problematic for my DD in particular. She took about seven practice tests in the 10 weeks before the ACT.


I also think that some aspects of prep don't really work well, and that this explains nicely why the average point gain is rather pitiful when you look at what kind of difference test prep makes.


I think that the single most interesting angle on this type of testing is the ACT's science section-- which seems to measure mostly reading speed and cognitive ability.

Ironically, though, my DD's scores indicate to me that the tests skew wildly toward a mechanical rather than actual/fluent level of "literacy" particularly in written fluency, and that the math favors raw calculation speed above everything else. So my DD's actual ability and potential is, I think, misrepresented significantly by such a test. She is no writer-- and she sees seven different and all valid means of working many math problems. Yet her scores indicate the reverse should be the case.

DS11 is a deep, deep, thinker and he is always hurt by timed tests. He will not be rushed.

I also respectfully disagree, and not only due to the timed aspect which HK mentions. I think that there is a degree to which ability plays into what a student is able to pull out and synthesize information when reading publications such as the NYT etc that will enable a HG+ student to be leaps and bounds ahead of a typically "average" ability student even if they both sit down and read the same NYT articles every day of secondary school.

I can't speak directly to the SAT at this point as my children haven't taken it yet, but I can see a world of difference in verbal achievement and verbal reasoning ability test scores between my EG ds and my MG dd - both of whom are avid readers and both of whom read equally challenging articles and books (for the most part - it's of course a very not-well-constrained comparison lol!)


We see this with my ds too - in real life it's clear that his greatest abilities are in mathematics/engineering/science but if you only knew him through his standardized testing scores he would look like a very different student!

Best wishes,

polarbear

Also:


For the members on this forum, most of whom have children above the 99th percentile, this IS mostly a true statement.

It's entirely expected that HG+ children who have been educated at least reasonably appropriately SHOULD be able to score at the 99th percentile on a nationally normed assessment aimed at their age-mates. N'est pas?

MOST of our cohort here should be able to do that even 2 or more years beyond their age cohort.

I agree, especially on the math section.

Though I'll add that on the verbal section, being HG+ may be a handicap, because HG+ people tend to see nuances where others don't, making a choice between two bad answers very difficult (HK, think you pointed this idea out once?).

Remember that the post-analogy SAT has questions that are fuzzier than the analogies were. Hence the statement in the directions to select the "best" answer, rather than the "correct" answer.

I agree! I've always struggled with multiple choice questions for this exact reason. I've often wondered whether the testers were actually trying to test for these nuances or whether they were just poorly written questions. I am currently leaning more towards the latter. I recently gave the 2nd grade IOWA tests to my son, and there were three or four questions where I really wasn't sure which answer they wanted. I could hear my son talking through some of the problems and could tell he was also reading way too much into some of the questions.

Yes, that one is a perennial problem for my DD, too.

Personally, she and I both feel that the ACT is a far better-constructed test.

I also suspect, as hinted above, that the Science section may parse out as an ad hoc IQ test, much the way the old-old SAT did. At least if it weren't for the 'speed' aspect of things, it would.

I have tutored the SAT for over 15 years. Countless kids ranging from learning disabled to HG+. Here's my two cents:

Preparing for the test will help. Some more than others. I can usually get a child up 100 points in math (if they are starting below 650.) I get plenty of kids who can score a 750 on any given day but want an 800 (why is a different issue.) A good tutor can usually get them there too. The preparation for those kids has mostly to do with training them to avoid careless errors and identify in advance their own tendencies when it comes to careless errors. But a gifted child typically has no problem internalizing those lessons quickly.

Reading is tough to budge. Maybe 50 points if you are very lucky, but the margin of error is about that, so it is tough to say.

Writing is surprisingly easy to move, again, if you are at a low enough starting point. Grammar isn't taught in school much and the multiple choice portion is very grammar heavy. The essay is graded on a rubric and is pretty formulaic. You might not be able to get someone from an 11 to a 12 (perfect), but you can get most kids up a point or two if they are clearly doing something wrong.

Timing on the test is rarely a major factor. A typical MG or HG kid has time to spare. And because of the way it is scored, where you lose points for wrong answers (as opposed to skipped questions, which result in neither adding nor losing points), the timing often benefits lower performing kids because they don't have time to get to the questions they would get wrong anyway. With all due respect to the prior posters, if a gifted child has issues with the timing, then this is actually an indication that they will, in fact, have trouble at the college level with timed tests. I suppose you could find your way through some college program without timed testing, but it would be difficult. In this sense the timed nature of the SAT is an important element in determining a student's aptitude for college level work, which is of course the primary purpose of the test.

The math portion of the SAT, much more than the ACT, does an excellent job of differentiating those children who do well at school because they are good kids who work hard and do what they are told from those kids who have a natural aptitude for mathematics. The math is much more about creative problem solving then it is about math content. In fact the average student is done learning the content they need by the end of 10th grade. And the computation is minimal, even though you are allowed to use a calculator. Most of my gifted kids won't even use it.

As mentioned in prior posts, the reading section can definitely be an issue for gifted children, because of their ability to see nuance in the questions and answers. This is not an issue in the writing portion of the test.

I think it is worth remembering also the target audience for the SAT (a 17-year old getting ready for college) and the point of the test (assessing aptitude for college-level work.) A child at that age should have the maturity to understand why they are taking the test and the goal -- getting as high a score as possible. Unless there is an underlying issue, a 17-year old with a high aptitude for college level work will be able to modify their style in order to complete the task successfully -- this is what we have to do in real life! If they cannot, that might not be a statement about their abstract intelligence, but it very well does say something about their ability to adapt to a demanding college-level environment as an independent adult.

This is not to say the SAT is the end all, be all. It unfair in all sorts of ways, starting but by no means ending with the ability to tutor to it. But it is just a small piece of a college application, after all. And for the gifted crew, once you go above 700 in a subject area, scoring higher really makes no difference.