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

The College Board press release is at https://www.collegeboard.org/releases/2014/expand-opportunity-redesign-sat .

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/education/major-changes-in-sat-announced-by-college-board.html
Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board
By TAMAR LEWIN
New York Times
MARCH 5, 2014

Saying its college admission exams do not focus enough on the important academic skills, the College Board announced on Wednesday a fundamental rethinking of the SAT, eliminating obligatory essays, ending the longstanding penalty for guessing wrong and cutting obscure vocabulary words.

David Coleman, president of the College Board, criticized his own test, the SAT and its main rival, the ACT, saying that both “have become disconnected from the work of our high schools.”

In addition, Mr. Coleman announced new programs to help low-income students, who will now be given fee waivers allowing them to apply to four colleges at no charge. And even before the new exam starts, the College Board, in partnership with Khan Academy, will offer free online practice problems from old tests and instructional videos showing how to solve them.

The changes coming to the exam are extensive: The SAT’s rarefied vocabulary words will be replaced by words that are common in college courses, such as “empirical” and “synthesis.” The math questions, now scattered widely across many topics, will focus more narrowly on linear equations, functions and proportional thinking. The use of a calculator will no longer be allowed on some of the math sections. The new exam will be available on paper and computer, and the scoring will revert to the old 1600 scale, with a top score of 800 on math and what will now be called “Evidence-Based Reading and Writing.” The optional essay will have a separate score.

...

Mr. Coleman, who came to the College Board in 2012, announced his plans to revise the SAT a year ago. He has spoken from the start about his dissatisfaction with the essay test added to the SAT in 2005, his desire to make the test mesh more closely with what students should be doing in high school, and his hopes of making a dent in the intense coaching and tutoring that give affluent students an advantage on the test and often turn junior year into a test-prep marathon.

“It is time for the College Board to say in a clearer voice that the culture and practice of costly test preparation that has arisen around admissions exams drives the perception of inequality and injustice in our country,” he said in a speech Wednesday in which he announced the changes. “It may not be our fault, but it is our problem.”

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The group differences in SAT scores are also found in NAEP scores, which students are not directly preparing for. Differential access to test prep does not explain group differences in SAT scores. Coleman is effectively trying to reduce the g loading of the SAT, which used to stand for Scholastic Aptitude Test, but the g loading is the main reason it has predictive power for college grades in the first place.

Interesting article. American Mensa does not accept scores for SATs taken after Jan 1994 as qualifying, therefore it was my understanding that g was removed from SAT decades ago.

Still the changes seem analogous to removing "extended norms"... how might colleges distinguish among the best of the best when many are hitting the ceiling?

I respect what SAT desires to accomplish in terms of accessibility but am uncertain if this is the best way to go about it.

Great food for thought.

This is interesting. Will need to read more about this as it will directly affect DS15 (9th grade), and if we should have him take the SAT in the fall of 2015, his junior year AND the 'new' test in the spring. Wonder if it will affect the PSAT for that fall?

Is this in response to more schools complaining. I know adding the writing part was a direct result of the University of California system contemplating not requiring college testing at all.

One of the issues with the test, is that many many kids now get extensive test prep. I wonder how these changes will affect this. This test prep doesn't necessary make them better college students, but does make them better test takers. Colleges would like kids to do interesting things during their summer, but I know large groups spend their summer is SAT prep. (And these are the 'top' students.)

@ indigo — 

Reading comprehension is highly g-loaded (e.g. the WISC-IV comprehension subtest correlates with g at the 0.73 level http://alpha.fdu.edu/psychology/wisciv_gloadings.htm), and the SAT verbal section mostly tests reading comprehension.

Most of the math in the SAT math section consists of routine application of algorithms, but some of the items involve problem solving, and a lot of the items involve twists and turns such that it's easy to make errors without good working memory, and working memory correlates moderately with g (e.g. reverse digit span correlates at the ~0.5 level).

True, but SAT verbal questions aren't necessarily g-loaded. Many have no objectively right answers. This is why the directions tell you to choose the best answer, not the correct answer. They had to change to that phrase after many, many complaints about what was called the "correct" answer. The word "best" can't be debated and (IMO) got the College Board off the hook.

We've talked about this problem here before; I can't find the threads right now, but the upshot is generally that gifties tend to see nuances or overthink the answers and have trouble with the questions that don't have an objectively correct answer, while NT people tend not to have this problem.

I took the GRE before and after they removed the analogies. The analogies were a cakewalk for me: if I knew the vocabulary words, I knew the answer instantly and moved on. Then they substituted in questions that were more subjective. My score fell from solidly past the 99th percentile to 97th or 98th. It was the equivalent of a 40 point drop, I think. I had much more trouble with the new test: whereas I had finished the old one in time to check each answer, I only had time to check a portion of them on the new test. It was much more stressful because I couldn't figure out what some of the questions wanted. I remember thinking that some of the passages were relatively easy to understand, but the questions almost didn't make sense in context of the passage.

Oh boy. My favorite standardized test of all time was the GRE... the analytical portion. YAY!! I could have done those every weekend. Just for fun! {ahem} But apparently I was in a very tiny minority, judging from the cohort that I took the generals with-- they looked AWFULLY beat up after that section, and were consoling one another that most programs didn't look at your scores there.

Clearly they weren't STEM people, because au contraire... STEM programs LOVED that marker.

g-loaded? Oh, you bet they were.



Um...



why align with HIGH SCHOOL curriculum rather than what colleges would like students to know??

Oh, wait. I know!! I know this one!!

Coleman... Coleman... where have I heard that name before?


Oh, right. Here.

I don't know who College Board has been talking to in higher ed, but from what I hear (and see) from people I know, writing is one of the most profound skill gaps that faculty see in freshman who simply aren't ready for college level material.

I hardly see how rewriting the SAT is going to help that phenomenon by eliminating the (rather minimal, IMO) benchmark of a timed essay.

Nothing like members of the Elite who directly benefited from differentiated instruction (Stuyvesant is incredibly hard to get into - admissions are/were based on test scores) pulling the ladder up behind themselves under the smoke screen of making higher education more accessible.

@ Val — Thanks, these are interesting points.

@ kcab — Ok, I was misremembering. In any case, Arthur Jensen wrote http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Arthur_Jensen#The_g_factor:_The_science_of_mental_ability_.281998.29 "The most critical tool for scholastic learning beyond the primary grades— reading comprehension—is probably the most highly g-loaded attainment in the course of elementary education."

For my son it's too bad there aren't analogies in these tests anymore, my son really well with analogies. His GT Class from 4-8th grade competed in Word Masters, and he did very well with little effort. He really enjoyed them.

The SAT essay has been so deep in disrepute that it was unsalvageable - no surprise that that's going. Does sound suspiciously as though they want to make the maths easier and more routine, though.