David Coleman led the creation of the Common Core, which has been mired in controversy since it was released.
Now he is president of the College Board, where he oversaw the redesign of the SAT. Confusion reigns.
The good news is that nearly 1,000 colleges and universities are now test-optional, meaning students don’t have to take the SAT or the ACT to apply. The word is out than the students’ four-year grade-point-average is a better predictor of college performance than a standardized test.
What next for David Coleman?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The new high school is college and the new college is graduate school. Everyone knows that.
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And the fetus is in pre-K
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Amen!
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“Progress in Education”
High school is college
Grade-school is high
Pre-K is grade-school
And fetus is, sigh,
Pre-K (with tests)
Blastula’s pre-school
(Sans snack and rests)
Egg is just fool
For letting the sperm
Put it on spot
Never will learn
That progress it’s not
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A complete directory of 980+ accredited, bachelor-degree granting institutions which will make admissions decisions about all or many applicants without regard to their ACT/SAT scores is available free online at http://fairtest.org/university/optional
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From the article:
“Knowing this, generations of high school juniors and seniors have sweated over their scores.”
The only reason I sweated over the SAT was because I was so hungover that beads of beer sweat were pouring out of my pores! I’m surprised the machine was able to score it! (yes I took it spring semester senior year of high school-1973).
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You are funny, Duane.
I have no idea why so many spend money and time taking classes to get high SAT scores. Doesn’t this very act invalidate those tests anyway? Ka-Ching! Ka-Ching!
That Coleman has cause a lot of sorrow for a lot of people, even though he’s only one of the “middle” folks selling snake oil as medicine.
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Has CAUSED… sorry. Typo.
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I took it a year earlier, sans beer. Cannot recall how I did. It matters not. I still had to learn how to deal with people.
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Also from the article:
“The next time, he took a test-preparation class through his school. Davis said he took the SAT again in October and got a 1220. He fretted about that score, too. “Test scores can have a dramatic effect on how you view yourself academically,” Davis said. He had gotten straight A’s in high school and believed he could have or should have scored 100 or 200 points higher.”
“How one views oneself academically”
And that right there sums up THE major problem with the standards and testing regime. Everyone, but many times especially the students end up falsely labeling themselves as smart, dumb, stupid, average and it affects their entire life outlook negatively. People internalize what the “authorities” proclaim about them. Foucault calls it subjectivization, Ian Hacking the looping effect. Me I call it internalizing what others tell you about yourself until it becomes a basic part of one’s being that is almost impossible for a person to shake him/herself out of.
I can only shake my head in disgust.
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Disgust … indeed, Duane! So sick.
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Exactly, Duane. There is a body of literature on the detrimental effects of test scores on children’s self-efficacy. Their self-perceptions become reality in a psychological phenomena known as the self-fulfilling prophecy. A test score will modify a child’s perceptions that they are failures. The test can be low stakes or high stakes, repeated failure makes reversing those perceptions nearly impossible. We are creating an entire society of children who will have no personal expectations that they can overcome their fears of failure.
I want to cry whenever I see these invalid, misused test scores on the children who score below average. (Knowing that 36% will always score below average).
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“You are only you in terms of what other people think and tell you”
It’s the Facebook philosophy of life.
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And a completely inane one at that, eh!
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“Defined by Others”
First they define you
Then they decline you
Then they will fine you
Find you and bind you
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Or in the case of SAT, they fine you at the very start with their test fees.
Priorities.
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Dennis Coleman is probably planning to run for president of the U.S. After all if a slimy, bug-ridden slug-like Trump can win the White House, he might have a chance.
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Now here’s an interesting thing. The Washington Post published an article on the new SAT scores the other day, but did NOT allow any comments on the article. Perhaps that’s because in a previous article about the ACT, The Post reporter was raked over the coals in the commentary, and so was The Post. Here’s the article:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/new-sat-scores-sow-confusion-over-how-to-tell-a-good-result/2017/09/25/8732abce-a1f5-11e7-ade1-76d061d56efa_story.html?utm_term=.53838bee7e1d
Both the article and the closing of comments raise a number of questions and concerns.
One, why did The Post close comments on this SAT article when the website says had been posted for only 3 HOURS? Is The Post trying to discourage conversation – and revelation – about the SAT?
Two, the article about the SAT was written by a reporter who has a journalist long enough to know better. The reporter writes that the College Board is trying to make the SAT “a more straightforward measure of achievement.” But the SAT is NOT an achievement test, and in fact, the acronym SAT stands for absolutely nothing.
Third, the reporter tells readers that “admissions chiefs” at elite colleges “say they find the [SAT] scores useful as they look at the entirety of an applicant’s record.” What hogwash. The truth is that these “elite” institutions use SAT scores to eliminate poorer students from admission and they use the scores to award financial aid to students who don’t really need it. This has been well documented.
The SAT and the ACT are not used to gauge student performance in college. They are used to enhance the ‘selectivity’ rankings of colleges, and they are used used for the purpose of “financial-aid leveraging.” Instead of using a $20,000 scholarship for one needy student, schools can break that amount into four $5,000 grants for wealthier students who score higher, who will pay the rest of the tuition ($15,000 a year) and who will bring the school more cash and “will improve the school’s profile and thus its desirability.”
As Matthew Quirk wrote in The Atlantic some years back, “The ACT and the College Board don’t just sell hundreds of thousands of student profiles to schools; they also offer software and consulting services that can be used to set crude wealth and test-score cutoffs, to target or eliminate students before they apply…That students are rejected on the basis of income is one of the most closely held secrets in admissions; enrollment managers say the practice is far more prevalent than most schools let on.”
The fact that The Post promotes ‘journalism’ that tells readers none of this is more than a little bit negligent.
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This article is behind a paywall for me, am I the only one?
My newsfeed shows only 2 other articles on the subject, at edweek (I am not a subscriber), and– free at last– Edsource. The latter quotes natl ave on this test as 533 verbal, 527 math, apparently somewhat higher than the previous scores under old test. Just wondering for those who read the published article: what’s the “sows confusion” about?
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Hate to let you down. Here is the article:
The perfect score of yore — 1600 — is back and just as impressive as ever. But many students could be forgiven these days for puzzling over whether their own SAT scores are good, great or merely okay. The first national report on the revised SAT shows the confusion that results when a familiar device for sorting college-bound students is recalibrated and scores on the admission test suddenly look a bit better than they actually are. The average score for the high school class of 2017, according to data the College Board released Tuesday, was a combined 1060 out of 1600: 533 for reading and writing, and 527 for math. The averages for previous classes, going back a decade, hovered closer to the midpoint of 500 on each portion of the test. But those results came from a different test in a different era, with three separate sections for reading, writing and math, and a maximum score of 2400. Last year, the College Board eliminated the notorious guessing penalty on the SAT, jettisoned some tricky vocabulary and took other steps, hoping to make the test a more straightforward measure of achievement. The board also returned the top score to the iconic number parents and grandparents remember: 1600. What resulted were apparently higher marks. But that doesn’t necessarily mean students are smarter. This year’s high school graduates were subjected to the ensuing SAT-score whiplash. Brian Keyes, 18, who graduated in June from Wilson High School in the District, said he took the old SAT in fall 2015 and got a combined 1990 on the three sections. He said he took the new version when it debuted in March 2016 and scored 1410. So which was better — his first score, averaging roughly 660 per section? Or the second, averaging about 40 points higher? The College Board has published a conversion chart allowing for comparisons. It shows that the scores Keyes obtained were almost equivalent. Keyes, who learned that after asking around, said he tried not to stress about it. His attitude: “I’ll try my best. I’m a good student, a hard worker. I’ll be fine wherever I go.” He wound up at the prestigious University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Inevitably, some students and parents misinterpret the new scores. They forget that a 1300 now doesn’t mean what it once did. (The conversion chart suggests that a comparable “old SAT” score on a 1600-point scale would be 1230.) “I try to politely explain that the goal posts have moved,” said Steven Roy Goodman, a college admission consultant in Washington. He said he compliments students when they tell him about a seemingly high score. But he points out that the scale has changed. “My job is also to put that score in context with what is likely to be the national competition and the international competition that student is about to face,” Goodman said. “I call it encouragement and reality at the same time.” The College Board discourages comparisons, calling this year’s results a new baseline. David Coleman, president of the College Board, acknowledged that the transition has caused misunderstandings. “By next year, we’ll turn the page and this period of some confusion will be over,” he said. The New York nonprofit is in fierce competition for leadership in testing with Iowa-based ACT. In 2012, the ACT surpassed the SAT for the first time to become the most widely used college admission test. But in the Washington region and in many cities and states, the SAT remains dominant. The College Board points to its popular PSAT/NMSQT and Advanced Placement testing programs, as well as a partnership with the Khan Academy to provide free online tutoring, as it seeks to rejuvenate the SAT brand. About 1.8 million students in this year’s class took the SAT, the vast majority using the new version. Male students averaged 22 points higher in math on the new test (538) than females (516), following a historic pattern. Female students averaged 2 points higher in reading and writing than males (534 to 532). Students whose parents hold a bachelor’s degree fared better (1118 average combined) than those whose parents had only a high school diploma (1003 average). James Murphy, director of national outreach for the test preparation company Princeton Review, said an analysis using the College Board’s conversion chart shows that this year’s SAT scores actually slid slightly. He said that probably reflects a broader testing pool. “It means that more students are taking the steps needed to get into a four-year college,” Murphy said. Critics of standardized testing call the SAT and the ACT overrated. They say grades and course rigor are a better guide to student potential. The new SAT is “a marketing ploy designed to sell more tests,” said Bob Schaeffer of the nonprofit National Center for Fair & Open Testing, “not a better tool for tracking college readiness.” In recent years, numerous universities have dropped or scaled back testing requirements, including Wake Forest, Brandeis, American and George Washington. “The best predictor of success for our students was their performance in high school,” Laurie Koehler, vice provost for enrollment management and retention at GWU, said this month at a college admission conference in Boston. “It’s not rocket science.” Going test-optional in 2015, she said, enabled the university to diversify its applicant pool without sacrificing quality. But most highly selective schools continue to require an ACT or SAT score. Admission chiefs at those schools say they find the scores useful as they look at the entirety of an applicant’s record. Knowing this, generations of high school juniors and seniors have sweated over their scores. “I was definitely nervous at first,” said Alex Davis, 18, who graduated this year from Washington Latin Public Charter School in the District. He took the new SAT for the first time in March 2016. “We were kind of the guinea pigs and didn’t know what to expect.” He said he was not satisfied with the result: 1180. The next time, he took a test-preparation class through his school. Davis said he took the SAT again in October and got a 1220. He fretted about that score, too. “Test scores can have a dramatic effect on how you view yourself academically,” Davis said. He had gotten straight A’s in high school and believed he could have or should have scored 100 or 200 points higher. His mother worried, too. “It just is a tremendous amount of stress,” said Shan Davis. “If you don’t do well at taking tests, but you’re an A student, then where does that leave you?” But she and her son had faith that what really defined him was his academic record and his participation in activities such as lacrosse, the school newspaper and Model United Nations. He applied to and got into excellent schools. Davis is now a freshman at Cornell University, aiming for a double major in classics and government. Nick Anderson covers higher education for The Washington Post
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The so called “guessing penalty” was always a cruel joke because there is no way of telling whether someone is simply “guessing” (what does that even mean? Rolling dice?) and SAT questions are designed specifically to trick people into giving incorrect answers.
This is just one indication that the whole test is a fraud and has been since day one.
And so are all the people who work on it. Fake scientists and fake statisticians who have been defrauding the American public to the tune of billions of dollars over the long, sorry history of SAT and other tests like it.
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Thanks Diane! Very thorough article.
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I posted the article. None knows what the scores mean since there is no trend line. The SAT is now aligned with Common Core.
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So, I just looked at my daughter’s PSAT9 from last year and her results were 1100 (570 and 530) combined….no test prep and I’m not going to do it. I did not want her to take it last year but she persisted because of peer pressure. She wants to take it again this year and it will be curious to see if the results go up. The tests are given to every student in her school district for “free” (nothing in life is free!). Can’t wait to see if her “teach to the test” courses in HS will make a difference in those numbers. The school system pummels my email with test prep packages available for various costs/times/locations….no thanks! I think I will keep that money in my pocket to pay for things that really matter in life.
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I must say that it has taken some time for that word to go out. This is something that researchers have known for decades now.
I call the new SAT the Scholastic Common Core Aptitude Test, or SCAT. Coleman does that to everything he touches. The old test was farce. The new one is Theatre of the Absurd.
The test was first known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test, but after independent research showed conclusively that it did not in fact measure aptitude for scholastic achievement, they finally changed the name to the Scholastic Assessment Test, but it wasn’t a sound assessment of scholastic achievement either, so then they changed it to simply the SAT.
I have some other names for it: Numerology. Pseudoscience.
And consider the degree to which people are suckered by Lord Coleman’s Grift a fairly good measure of both general intelligence and emotional intelligence–EQ and IQ!
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What ticks me off even more is the involvement with Khan Academy. I used to use that site when my kids were having problems and I needed a refresher course so that I could help them better understand a math concept. Now, it’s just Common Bore crap. What’s a parent to do when the resources have all bought into the game? The text books (if the kids get any at all) are Common Bore and I can’t find or understand anything in the book. They have to wait until their father gets home from work so that he can teach them the concept and help them with homework. And don’t even get me started on the ELA.
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Yes, it (Khan Academy) was once a thing of beauty. Now, it has been Cored. Sickening. What a loss!!!
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Senor Swacker. Tenga cuidado con su lenguaje. Este es el salón de Diane. Saludos cordiales, mi hermano!
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I just say it as I perceive it! Je je je.
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SCAT!
Ha ha ha.
I have a book by Olauss Murie that helps you identify animals in the wild by their tracks and scat.
The Coleman bird can be identified by the gigantic SCAT it leaves behind (bigger than that of the elephant) and the rotten Cores and seeds of destruction contained there in.
As Lewis Carrol wrote quite presciently,
Beware the Jabbertalk, my son
The laws that bite, the Cores that catch
Beware the Coleman bird and shun
The felonious charters, natch!
From Jabbertalky, in A Damthology of Deform (vol 1)
http://damthology.blogspot.com/
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ROFLM*O. Awesome. A book on animal s–t! I need this in my library! Seriously.
Oh, Jabbertalky. That’s wonderful!!!
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It’s actually a very useful book, since it is fairly rare to see bear, mountain lion, bobcat, badger and other animals in the wild but you their tracks and scat are quite common.
I used to live out west and spent countless days hiking in wild places searching for SCAT and tracks, including those of the elusive Coleman bird.
Of course, back then, sightings were very rare (fortunately).. in fact, at one point, naturalists like Olaus Murie thought it might have gone the way of the passenger pigeon. But no such luck. And now the sightings are all too frequent.
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You don’t have to convince me, SomeDAM. I am freaking Antaeus. If not in frequent contact with our Great Mother, I die. I have heard, BTW, that a Cassawary can eviscerate a grown Homo ignorans with a single swipe of its claws. The Coleman bird, however, much more dangerous. Whole populations of schoolchildren have succumbed to Coleman bird predation.
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And luckily, I never encountered the Coleman bird on the trail in the back country.
That would have been more frightening — and probably more dangerous — than a mother grizzly with Cubs.
I’m not even sure what you are supposed to do in such a situation.
Playing dead works with grizzlies but I have heard the Coleman bird does not give a scat whether you are alive or dead and keeps bugging you until you take it’s tests.
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What’s next for D. C.? Retirement to a far away island. Especially, if you read SAT questions. For example, where in the world do you have to be able to solve a problem like the following in one minute
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sample-questions/math/calculator-permitted/2
Why would any university care whether you can solve a problem like this one (let alone under one minute)?
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sample-questions/math/calculator-permitted/29
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Where do you have to be able to solve a problem like that in one minute?
Probably only in psychology departments.
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More precisely, “on tests given in psychology departments”. In actual research, you never have to whip out answers.
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… except if you are research subjects.
BF Skinner’s pigeons were expected to whip out their responses/answers.
They got shocked if they did not.
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And if you want to identify Ax murderers you might want to Ax a question like the second one
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“No one gives a s&!t, right?”
Just move on
To other things
Past is done
So spread your wings
No regrets
For Common Core
Standard tests
And VAM and more
Not to blame
For execution
Time to name
For absolution
Note to David Coleman: fat chance.
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A piece I wrote for David Coleman, in Honor of Shakespeare’s 450th Birthday
I once read, in “The American Scholar,” I think, or perhaps it was in “Verbatim,” a tragic report on the paucity of dedicated swear words in classical Latin. The Romans were always envious of the subtlety of the Greek tongue, of its rich resources for philosophical and literary purposes, but the Greeks were even less well endowed with profanities than the Romans were. The poor Romans had to result to graffiti, which they did with wild and glorious abandon, while the Greeks stuck to salacious statuary and decoration of vases.
I have a nice little collection of books on cursing in various languages. French, Spanish, German, Italian–the modern European languages, generally–are rich mines of lively expressions. But our language, which has been so promiscuous through the centuries, has to be the finest for cursing that we apes have yet developed. We English speakers are blessed with borrowed riches, there, that speakers of other tongues can only dream of.
So, when I watch a David Coleman video, there’s a lot for me to say, and a lot of choice language to say it with.
Those of you who are English teachers will be familiar with the Homeric catalog. It’s a literary technique that is basically a list. The simple list isn’t much to write home about, you might think, but this humble trope can be extraordinarily effective. Consider the following trove of treasures. What are these all names of? (Take a guess. Don’t cheat. The answer is below.)
Green Darner
Roseate Skimmer
Great Pondhawk
Ringed Cascader
Comet Darner
Banded Pennant
Orange Emperor
Banded Groundling
Black Percher
Little Scarlet
Tau Emerald
Southern Yellowjack
Vagrant Darter
Beautiful Demoiselle
Large Red
Mercury Bluet
Eastern Spectre
Somber Goldenring
Back to my dreams of properly cursing Coleman and the Core, of dumping the full Homeric catalog of English invective on them.
I have wanted to do so on Diane Ravitch’s blog, but Diane doesn’t allow such language in her living room, and I respect that. So I am sending this post, re Coleman and the Core, thinking that perhaps Diane won’t mind a little Shakespeare. (After all, it’s almost Shakespeare’s birthday. His 450th. Happy birthday, Willie!)
Let’s begin with some adjectives:
Artless, beslubbering, bootless, churlish, craven, dissembling, errant, fawning, forward, gleeking, impertinent, loggerheaded, mammering, merkin-faced, mewling, qualling, rank, reeky, rougish, pleeny, scurvie, venomed, villainous, warped and weedy,
And then add some compound participles:
beef-witted, boil-brained, dismal-dreaming, earth-vexing, fen-sucked, folly-fallen, idle-headed, rude-growing, spur-galled, . . .
And round it all off with a noun (pick any one that you please):
Bum-baily
Canker-blossom
Clotpole
Coxcomb
Codpiece
Dewberry
Flap-dragon
Foot-licker
Hugger-mugger
Lout
Mammet
Minnow
Miscreant
Moldwarp
Nut-hock
Puttock
Pumpion
Skainsmate
Varlet
Or, if you want whole statements from the Bard himself:
“Thy tongue outvenoms all the worms of the Nile.” (worms = snakes)
“Methink’st thou art a general offence and every man should beat thee.”
“You scullion! You rampallian! You fustilarian! I’ll tickle your catastrophe!”
“You starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, you bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish–O for breath to utter what is like thee!-you tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!”
“Thou sycophantic, merkin-faced varlet.”
“Thou cream-faced loon!”
There. Glad I got that out of my system.
BTW. Those are names of dragonflies, above. Beautiful, aren’t they? Shakespeare loved odd names of things. Scholars have shown that he used in writing a wider vocabulary than any other author who has ever wrote in our glorious tongue. Again, happy birthday, Willie. What fools those Ed Deformers be!
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I had read that on one of Diane’s posts a while back.
Most excellent and very fitting, given the scatillogical nature of the Coleman bird.
I just discovered that there is another meaning for “scat” —
pattering stacoto gibberish” — which applies to the Coleman bird as well.
And of course, scat — go away — also applies.
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I just looked up flapdragon.
Now, that’s an insult you don’t hear very often.
Ha ha ha.
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Bless you, my son. I should take out “rude-growing.” Too horrible to contemplate.
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You know, your piece makes me kind of sad.
The modern vocabulary is so limited when it comes to profanity.
All these people who only know the f word don’ know there is a whole other “secret” language out there just waiting to be used.
And the best part is that it’s like swearing at someone in a foreign language.
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