Wednesday, March 12, 2014
The Story Behind the SAT Overhaul
NYTimes.com: In July 2012, a few months before he was to officially take over as president of the College Board, David Coleman invited Les Perelman, then a director of writing at M.I.T., to come meet with him in Lower Manhattan. Of the many things the College Board does — take part in research, develop education policy, create curriculums — it is perhaps most recognized as the organization that administers the SAT, and Perelman was one of the exam’s harshest and most relentless critics.
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5 comments:
I'm really happy that they did this and really sad that they didn't figure out how subjective the writing portion was before now and get rid of it when I was taking the exam. If I had known that I only had to quote a few people and tell a life story, I would have scored a LOT better on my SAT writing portion than I did. The writing part of the SAT is possibly the worst part of any test that I have taken, and I've taken a lot of government regulated exams. I always happened to be in the school that got chosen to test out a new exam style. They were mostly all REALLY stupid in the way they were graded, and I could tell that as an elementary school student. Thank goodness they are making the test more reasonable and more logical.
I think standardized tests in general are a waste of time and, although I'm glad to see College Board listening to and addressing criticism, I still think they would be better off doing away with the test all together, but that would be bad for business wouldn't it? I remember taking the test and the prep that went into it. For me that prep was zero but I know people who spend the entire year leading up to it prepping. I've even seen prep classes being offered as soon as freshmen year and even sooner. It's a huge waste of time and money. I think the most telling things in this article are the statistics showing how average score goes up as income goes up. The most telling quote is from the former Bates admissions officers who said that higher GPAs were more indicative of college success than high test scores. Some people are just really good at multiple choice style test and some, who are just as smart or even smarter, are really bad at them. Your college admission really shouldn't be so dependent on an easily screw-upable test.
This is by far the longest article I have ever bothered to read for the news quiz. It was worth it. From a very young age I've always been very interested in the education system. In high school I was always there to say mean things about the SAT but at the end of the day it didn't effect me that much. I was never forced to go to test pre classes, I never studied, only took the test once, and did good enough. I don't even think that my SAT score made any difference in getting me in to any of the schools that I applied to. Maybe it's only because I applied to theatre schools, but it seemed to me that I got in as a result of the interviews only and they didn't even look at the test sores or grades. Basically what I'm saying is that I don't really fit in to any of the categories of people that they talk about in the article and so maybe I shouldn't be complaining. That's not going to stop me though.
I don't think that any of the changes that were made to the SAT are really going to make any difference. It's still inherently not a good idea to pick who gets to go to fancy schools based off of what marks people can make on a paper in a couple of hours. People are super complex and education is super complex and what we teach in high school is super complex (or at least should be) and everyone of those things is different for each of us. It's silly to simplify that down to one test that works basically the same way for every single person.
Now I don't think that the SAT is actually that bad, I just don't think it is the right way to judge everyone in the country. One of the opponents to the new changes said that " Are we in a place to let Dave Coleman control the entire K-to-12 curriculum?”. To me that is a really silly idea. Just because one person is in charge of the SAT does not mean that he is in charge of education for the whole country. It is a really bad idea to give one person control of all all K-12, but that's not at all possible. Everyone gets to make their own choices when it comes to education. The only thing the establishment can do is try to encourage good choices and give people lots of options so that everyone can find what is right for them.
I'm not sure how I feel about the overhaul. Full disclosure: I was one of those snobby kids who had a bunch of test prep in order to game the exam. That being said, there was something about preparing for the exam that I enjoyed. The SAT was a challenge to be met, and it's grading standards and content were all well known to the public at large. It was up to each individual student to prepare well and master taking the SAT. By and large, this seems like a pretty fair system to me. I suppose the argument stands that kids that can't afford test prep are left at a disadvantage.
I'm not quite sure what to make of the shakeup. I suppose it will be for the better. I just hope that people will still acknowledge my test scores for the writing section that will no longer exist!
This is definitely a interesting article and I am going to have to go back over it and read it again. Also, like Ben, I was one of those kids that went to test prep classes and all. Personally, I could care less for the SATs. I mean I have always felt it wasn't a good judge, and because I have extended time, I was required to stay for double the time for all the sections. That may seem like an advantage, but it is actually quite exhausting, dull, and boring. The things I have read seem like a step in the right direction, but I am going to read this again to get a better understanding. Additionally, only time will really be able to tell if the changes were useful.
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