Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

After reading the details of the test, it starts to sound a whole lot more like the ACT. Particularly parts "Analyzing data and texts in real world context", and "Source documents originate from a wide range of academic disciplines, including science and social studies".

Could this be a reaction of the ACT taking a larger share of the testing market?

Doesn't sound like the essay is disappearing. Just becoming optional, like it is on the ACT. But many universities request the ACT with writing and might do that with the SAT. Thus 'optional' will depend on university.

Well, it seems so reasonable to think that the reading portion of the test would be g-loaded. But it's increasingly not (each successive iteration of the test seems to increase its penetration into the not category).

I agree with others about the essay being in disrepute and the grading being suboptimal. This blog post gives a wonderful summary of what's wrong with it. Here's an excerpt:

Related article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/magazine/the-story-behind-the-sat-overhaul.html
The Story Behind the SAT Overhaul
By TODD BALF
New York Times magazine
MARCH 6, 2014

...

A couple of weeks after his talk with Henderson, Coleman flew to Silicon Valley to discuss a partnership with Sal Khan. There was no discussion of financial terms, just an agreement in principle that they would join forces. (The College Board won’t pay Khan Academy.) They talked about a hypothetical test-prep experience in which students would log on to a personal dashboard, indicate that they wanted to prepare for the SAT and then work through a series of preliminary questions to demonstrate their initial skill level and identify the gaps in their knowledge. Khan said he could foresee a way to estimate the amount of time it would take to achieve certain benchmarks. “It might go something like, ‘O.K., we think you’ll be able to get to this level within the next month and this level within the next two months if you put in 30 minutes a day,’ ” he said. And he saw no reason the site couldn’t predict for anyone, anywhere the score he or she might hope to achieve with a commitment to a prescribed amount of work.

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Some brilliant people believe that anyone could learn almost anything if they just put in enough effort, since this was true for them. It's not true for the general population.

Yes. The colleges looking for math talent may increasingly rely on scores in contests such as the AMC. The SAT is being revamped in part to reduce class and race score gaps (supposedly due to test prep), but how many "disadvantaged" students, relative to "privileged" ones, have *heard* of the AMC? In what kinds of schools is it offered? The SAT is a lightning rod, and if it is dumbed down for political reasons, selective colleges will look at a range of other metrics. This increases the complexity of the admissions process and benefits the children of Tiger Parents. So be it.

{sigh}

I fear that you're right, Bostonian.

Sadly, though, this makes it that much harder for HG+ students to find true peers in the end, though-- because the TigerParented bright-to-MG ones aren't *actual* peers. Only superficially so.

So yeah, I'm not elated by the notion that throwing away up to half of the actually HG+ cohort is "fine" in the name of getting more of the NT to pass at higher performance rates.

SATs no longer relevant? This guy doesn't understand averages and percentiles. Perhaps the percentiles corresponding to a certain scores will shift a bit, but the College Board always publishes the percentile charts.

Try telling my 10th grader who will take the SAT on Saturday that they are no longer relevant. If they aren't relevant, then why do 22% of kids who score 2300+ get into Princeton, but the overall admission rate is 8%?

Unless every kid gets the same score, no one can say that everyone does well on them.

I wish they would go back to the old SAT. It measures aptitude (more or less) and that differentiates it from the ACT.

I don't know why so many people think everyone should be "college ready". Why is the College Board so upset that only 43% are college ready? (I question if a 1550 is college ready, as that means when DD16 was in 7th grade, she was ready.) Try looking back about 50 years and see how many folks had college degrees - about 10%. College is supposed to be for higher learning, not to get a useless degree in something that ends in "Studies".

I think the everyone-must-go-to-college mania is a symptom of a larger problem, which the loss of good jobs for skilled people not holding degrees. We have a gap in this country, with a large pool of low-wage unskilled jobs on one end and high-wage highly-skilled jobs on the other. The middle section has been shrinking for a long time.

Even the unskilled jobs aren't what they used to be. A very large seller of clothing had a factory in a town where my family lived for a long time. For many years, the regular factory-floor employees did very well there. The company had a profit-sharing/retirement plan that put money into retirement accounts every month. The employees all earned living wages and retired well. None of that is true these days, and that same factory nickel and dimes its employees (but not the executives). The same is true for other factories in that town (the ones that are still there, anyway).

I think that a lot of people are just stuck. They can't get the jobs their parents or grandparents got 30 or 40 years ago, because those jobs either don't exist anymore or they pay lousy wages. The high schools are teaching less vocational ed., and employers expect people to come to work pre-trained. So they're really forced into college. It's awful.

A test that helps to level the playing field.

=Everyone must go to college, and we need a test that will get them the scores to get in.

Joy.

Because college is now high school.