Steven R. Cohen, the superintendent of the Shoreham-Wading River School District in Long Island, is unimpressed by the changes to the SAT.
They will still strike fear and terror in the hearts of students.
They will still be arbiters of access to higher education.
They will still be graded and normed on a bell curve, so that the same proportion of students are at the top and at the bottom.
They will no longer include an essay section.
They will be aligned with the Common Core, no surprise since David Coleman, president of the College Board (which sponsors the SAT), was “architect” of the Common Core standards.
He writes:
Among other things, Mr. Coleman tells us that to teach these important standards properly, students must have considerable time to read and re-read texts, time to discuss the words and sentences used in the text, time to write about the meaning of the words in the text and time to edit what they write. One problem with the “new” and “fairer” SAT is that it uses multiple-choice questions to assess whether students understand the meaning of words in texts instead of having students write about such meanings — the skill Mr. Coleman insists is the signature skill of the Common Core. To make matters worse, the new SAT has a writing section but it is optional. So the “new” and “fairer” SAT, one that will reflect what actually goes on in high school classrooms, will not, in fact, adhere to the new Common Core State Standards as described by the very person who created both.
Superintendent Cohen concludes:
….according to Mr. Coleman and the state Board of Regents, the “new” and “fairer” SAT is oriented to higher, better standards that will prepare students to be “college and career ready.” Common Core State Standards, we are told, are also a complete set of standards, in addition to being better. However, if one looks at assessments used by some of the most renowned universities in the world — schools like Oxford University in England — one finds that they adhere to standards ignored by “higher” Common Core State Standards. For example, if one wanted to study, say, history at Oxford, one would have to take a test that assesses not only clear and precise writing via a real writing test; the content would have to demonstrate what Oxford calls “historical imagination” as well as “originality.” Nowhere in our new, vaunted Common Core State Standards are teachers told to be concerned with nurturing young people’s imaginations or their original thoughts about the books they read, about the way nature works, about whether our government’s policies are good or bad, about whether the Pythagorean theorem could be used to help design a better bridge over the Hudson river, or whether “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” Nor will the “new” and “fairer” SAT ask students to write about such matters.
The “new” and “fairer” SAT is neither. And the Common Core State Standards assessed by this new test do not include, contrary to what many seem to believe, nurturing young people’s imaginations or originality: yet another instance of the profound cynicism of contemporary education “reform.”
Look at 1948 on this timeline.
http://www.presbyterianmission.org/ministries/publiceducation/timeline-american-public-education/
I think the idea that SAT scores are the arbiter of access to higher education is a misunderstanding of the admissions process even at elite privates like NYU and Harvard. No doubt it has some influence (along with other standardized test scores like AP exams, SAT 2, AMC 10/12, AIME, etc.), but at least as important at Harvard is how good a high school rower or football player you were.
If you are a high school student in my state you can go to any of the public universities no matter your scores on any standardized test as long as you average a C over a set of academically oriented high school classes.
What if you are in a non-CCSS state? There are a few of those. If you don’t get educated in the Common Core, are you lesser than other students.? It feels to me at least partially like an attempt to hang more stakes on the CCSS in order to lock states into it even more.
I think that Dr. Cohen and all of us should wait until April 16, when The College “fleshes out” the new SAT, to make judgments.
Mr. Coleman et al do not expect “other people’s children” to go to Oxford, don’tcha know? If students in public schools can fill in bubble tests, then they have learned how to follow a list of orders and are ready for serving the 1%. Success! Career!
I am a little confused by this comment. Elite private schools generally require “bubble tests” as part of the admissions process. In fact, the most elite privates require more “bubble tests” and generally enroll students with higher scores than less elite schools. MIT, for example requires the SAT or ACT along with two SAT II exams.
The last part of the last line sums it up nicely: “yet another instance of the profound cynicism of contemporary education ‘reform.’”
Let’s get a little perspective on this…
Hmmmm… A statement from Deborah Dollinger, CEO of The Princeton Review, 3/7/14:
[start quote]
“I’m glad that the College Board has acknowledged the importance of prepping for the SAT, and I applaud Sal Khan, a former Princeton Review Teacher of the Year, for making test prep material available free through Khan Academy.
We believe all students should have access to test prep resources and coaching, which is why we work with schools and school districts across the country to ensure underserved students receive guidance and coaching not just on these tests, but on the additional challenges of finding the best fit college and securing financial aid. In fact, The Princeton Review serves more students through school districts and community programs than through our parent-paid courses. We have been working since the day we were founded to ensure equal access.
No standardized test is perfect, and the SAT in particular tends to be biased against women and various ethnic groups. I am very sorry to see the College Board has made optional the only section (essay) where women had better average scores that help offset part of the gender gap in the reading and math sections. We have to deal with this, though, because in spite of the SAT’s notable shortcomings, the reality is that most colleges use standardized tests for admissions decisions, and in many cases scholarships and other forms of financial aid are tied to test performance.
This is not the first time, nor do we expect it will be the last, that the College Board has changed the test. We support any effort to align the test more directly with what students are learning in school. A common refrain when these changes are announced is that they are being made because the old test was coachable, and that the new test will be better tied to curriculum and less coachable. We’ve never seen a test that wasn’t coachable.
The Princeton Review’s position about the SAT remains unchanged. We are not as concerned about the changes to the test as we are about students doing well on this high stakes exam. We will continue to teach our unique combination of test taking, problem solving, and methodology that helps maximize our students’ scores.
Ultimately, to put the whole matter into perspective, this is nothing more than a Coke versus Pepsi battle. In this case Pepsi (the ACT) has taken market leadership from Coke (the SAT), and Coke has responded. When viewed through that lens, these changes make a lot of business sense. From The Princeton Review’s point of view, the College Board has never designed a test that we couldn’t help students crack.”
[end quote]
Link: http://www.princetonreview.com/sat-changes-press-release.aspx
A self-interested statement? [Insert a Homer Simpson DOH!!! at this point]
Spot on? [Insert a Homer Simpson DOH!!! at this point]
😎
Two points.
There does seem to be a robust difference between male and female students in both standardized scores and teacher assigned grades. Which way the bias goes depends on which measure you take to be unbiased.
There is also no shortage of places for women in higher education, indeed they outnumber men by a significant margin, both in matriculation and graduation. For every 100 men graduating from college there are 140 women. Highly selective schools which are not allowed to deliberately balance the gender make up of their class are becoming female dominant. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, for example, is currently 42% male, 58% female. Schools that want a more equal gender distribution will have to choose in favor of male students.
Now that the redesign for the SAT has been released, what are your thoughts on those changes? Will it “level the playing field?”
The redesign of the SAT will make little difference. The same students will score at the top, and the tutoring industry will grow richer.