James S. Murphy, who tutors high school students for the SAT, says that the new, redesigned SAT is likely to pose high barriers to the neediest students. The new SAT will be aligned with the Common Core, both under the direction of the same man, David Coleman.
But as Murphy points out, students in at least eight states will have no experience with the Common Core. Many other states are just beginning to implement them. Many students are unprepared for the new SAT.
Murphy says that the math portion of the SAT is particularly daunting.
He writes:
“One problem with tying the SAT to these new standards is that it will force students and schools to play a long game of catch-up. Most states will be gradually implementing the standards over the next few years—assuming it will only take that long and assuming that any student taking the exam attends a school that is successfully using standards. At last check, 42 states are in the process of implementing the Common Core standards—three of the original participants dropped out—but they are doing so at different rates.
“The other consequence of (theoretically) basing the new SAT on what students are doing in their classrooms is that it threatens to makes success on the exam even more subject to socioeconomic background. Students at struggling schools—where teachers tend to have less experience and and support and where Common Core-related textbooks can be scarce—could be at a disadvantage. After all, they haven’t had exposure to the very materials and instruction integral to performing well on the test. This could all amount to an ironic twist: For all the faults of the SAT, one of its merits, at least in theory, is that it can identify students whose formal education might be lacking but who have the mental firepower to succeed given the opportunity.”
If more states pull out of the Common Core, the problems Murphy describes will grow worse. Coleman is betting the future of the SAT on his belief that the Common Core standards will prevail and become national standards. Some students will suffer because of that decision, or the SAT risks becoming irrelevant by its close alignment with a single set of standards whose value remains unknown and unproven.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The domination of education policy in our country by such a tiny number of people is stunning.
LikeLike
The greatest problem here is in narrowly centering a major exam on Common Core and on how to master taking a Common Core test.
LikeLike
Aligning the SAT’s to the common when the common core learning standards have not had a chance to go across all the grades is so crazy .In the past new programs were put into practice in increments, changes were not done across the board. How can a student in 11th grade be expected to have the common core standards down pat when they have only been round a few years? In New York the roll out of the standards was so bad and is still bad.The GED has been aligned to the common core standards and now has a 90% failure rate. Is this what we want? Not me!!!! How is this helping minority students?
LikeLike
“In the past new programs were put into practice in increments, changes were not done across the board.”
I don’t think the ed reform movement is capable of that.
It happens with every initiative. Ohio is putting in a vocational ed track. I agree with vocational ed! I attended a two year vocational program out of high school. My middle son is in one now.
They went nuts with it in Ohio. They’re tracking them in 7th grade. They’re going to end up at exactly the same place they were 20 years ago, where lower income kids were tracked into vocational ed, and the system was discredited.
I knew they would ruin it. They don’t seem to have any self-control or prudence or caution.
LikeLike
“Aligning the SAT’s to the common when the common core learning standards have not had a chance to go across all the grades is so crazy”
Well, folks, until it is realized that any standardized test “aligned” to any standards is not only “so crazy” but utterly insane, not to mention COMPLETELY ILLOGICAL, INVALID AND UNETHICAL to use the results for anything, we’ll have the Manx cat chasing its tail, never accomplishing anything to better the teaching and learning process. To understand why, read N. Wilson’s never refuted nor rebutted complete destruction of those two educational malpractices: “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
By Duane E. Swacker
LikeLike
Our lives are dictated by the ‘COMMON COLEMAN’ in ‘The United Gates of America’.
If the mass failures, ruined lives, future earnings and lost opportunities of thousands of students taking & failing the GED is an indication of what will come with the NEW SAT, we should resole our marching shoes now and train for the Million Disgusted & Angry Americans March – exposing the so-called EducationReform atrocities committed by the Obama Administration!
When is ENOUGH…ENOUGH?
LikeLike
One or more of the following will happen as a result of making the SAT unnecessarily more difficult. But, as we know, there are $$$$$ to be made on education failure.
* Students (mainly those of means) will take more prep courses, and the College Board makes more money on its various test prep products.
* Students will take the SAT maybe 3, 4 or more times to up their scores, because colleges typically “super score” the results, which means more $$$ for the College Board corporation.
* The ACT will become the primary, or only, test that students take, thus increasing the ACT’s “take” as a side benefit.
* More colleges and universities will drop the SAT as an admissions tool, or downplay the results if they conflict so badly with the student’s other measures.
* Students might boycott the SAT (which would be the most effective way to send a message, IMO).
Students of means will probably continue to okay on the SAT, but there will be an even greater gap between their results and students from low income families and struggling schools.
LikeLike
Increasing numbers of excellent schools no longer require the SAT (Student Affluence test) and with good reason. I’d bet in 5-10 years the SAT will be irrelevant for a majority of students.
LikeLike
It’s just another head of the Hydra named ” Making public education fail.”
LikeLike
“It’s just another head of the Hydra named. . . edudeformation.
LikeLike
Are they changing the ACT too? It is all truly unbelievable.
LikeLike
Not changing the ACT, afaik. The ACT is not owned by the College Board.
LikeLike
GO ACT@!!!! Drop SAT altogether!!!
LikeLike
Maybe they should keep “classic” SAT available on the shelves in addition to “new “SAT.” Otherwise a lot of previously loyal customers are going to just switch to Pepsi or Dr. Pepper.
LikeLike
Michigan just adopted the SAT and dropped the ACT as the 11th grade assessment with which they will grade schools and teachers. Just what they ordered: Disaster!
LikeLike
Terrible news (might this be good news for other states?).
LikeLike
“Michigan just adopted the SAT and dropped the ACT as the 11th grade assessment with which they will grade schools and teachers.”
The use of the results of any assessment for anything other than the test was designed is COMPLETELY UNETHICAL.
How is it that most don’t get that very simple concept?!?!?
LikeLike
” Many students are unprepared for the new SAT.”
Good, maybe that will help speed its demise.
LikeLike