BY JENNIFER C. KERR
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Not so tricky. More straightforward. Guessing allowed. The newly redesigned SAT college entrance exam that debuts nationally Saturday is getting good reviews from some of the students who took it early this week.
The new exam focuses less on arcane vocabulary words and more on real-world learning and analysis by students. Students no longer will be penalized for guessing. And the essay has been made optional.
The College Board says more than 463,000 test-takers signed up to take the new SAT in March, up slightly from a year ago.
Because the exam is new, the College Board, the nonprofit organization that owns the SAT, has restricted the exam on Saturday to those applying to college or for scholarships, financial aid or other programs requiring a college test score. People who don’t fall into these categories have been rescheduled to take the May test, which will be released at a point afterward. The College Board said it took the action because of concerns about possible theft.
https://www.northjersey.com/news/early-takers-say-new-sat-wasn-t-so-bad-and-not-so-tricky-1.1522690
A larger percentage of students will get perfect scores. The cohort of students who get perfect scores on the new test who would have been incapable of getting a perfect score on the old test will have an inflated sense of academic prowess. Admissions offices of top colleges and universities will find the SAT test is no longer useful for separating the wheat from the chaff. They will all change policy, declaring that students who apply to their school need not take any standardized achievement test whatever. This is, therefore, a development that disadvantages the very top of every high school class in the country. A song case can be made that this is a deliberarate, meaning that the primary goal of those who set out to weaken the SAT test into irrelevance was to discriminate against top-performing students. Anyone want to guess what the racial makeup of most of these top-performing students is?
That is a pretty big and expensive conspiracy.
Traditionally low scoring students will look better too.
There are lots of caucasian students who are eager to surmount the academic disparity between them and the non-white topmost performers by means other than working harder, getting better grades, and achieving a higher class rank. Diluting the SAT helps blur this distinction. Who’s kidding who, 9:58am? BTW, what is the benefit to be had by changing an achievement test to elevate the scores of low-scoring students? Improving their self esteem?
first we need to believe that the SAT was diluted.
Does removing arcane vocabulary dilute the test or does it allow focus on real vocabulary?
Real world problem analysis is what high school curriculum is going to focus on. Remember PARCC?
College Board still wants to make money. We won’t know till the numbers are in. Maybe the distribution of grades will be the same, just different students at the top.
Why characterize what has been done with respect to the SAT verbal section as “removing arcane vocabulary?” One who has a larger and more nuanced vocabulary than his peers is not to be dismissed as one who uses out-of-date words. Such a person should never feel obliged to dumb down his speech or prose unless he is speaking to elementary school students who by virtue of their age can’t be held accountable for having small vicabularies. Shakespeare clearly never engaged in any such editing–or have you carved out an exception for the Bard for which no modern speaker of English qualifies? Dictionaries and Thesauruses are replete with words that, despite not being used or known by the average speaker of English, are nevertheless not “arcane.” What learned individual not on the payroll of Pearson Publishing or receiving a government grant to defend the indefensible Common Core curriculum is on record as criticizing the STS for testing vocabulary words that are, objectively speaking, arcane? Surely we can dispose of this canard that the STS was for decades needlessly testing “arcane” vocabulary words. Only those who are obsessed with process, and insufficiently steeped in or dedicated to substance, can have the temerity to maintain such a baseless accusation.