H.S. Teachers against new writing component of SAT

Parent Cafe
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<p>Why is SO MUCH attention devoted to a simple test? </p>

<p>Does the bar exam make for better lawyers? Does the driver's license test make for better drivers? </p>

<p>The education is a process that goes from kindergarten to post-graduate schools. On the way, there are many tests and exams. The exams that are part of the school system evaluate how well students learn. The aptitude, assessment tests, or whatever you want to name them, only provide measurements against a standardized norm. </p>

<p>While the claim of The College Board that the SAT could set new standards for the high school curriculum is ridiculous, the claims by the teachers are utterly misguided. Teachers love to complain about how ETS/TCB destroy the classroom ... yet what classes are the best teachers flocking to? Does AP ring a bell?</p>

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<p>Xiggi Notes,"
Our schools are failing their basic mission, and it is not because teachers and students work too hard or too smartly!"</p>

<p>Response: Xiggi,you are absolutely correct. Yes, teachers do work hard,but it is some of what is being taught and also not being taught that I object to. </p>

<p>I certainly understand the argument that teachers make that their "plate is full" and there is no room for new additions. Accepting this as valid, my answer is to change what is being taught! We should have strong grammar and punctuation througout middle school and high school. If this replaces some books or topics such as "Hamlet," so be it.</p>

<p>Frankly, I would rather eliminate foreign language from the curriculum or shorten the number of courses taken in history to make up for more english and writing courses. Xiggi may have hit upon a great idea.</p>

<p>In fact, if kids were forced to read one book every two weeks plus cover vocabulary, grammar and punctuation, our literacy rate would skyrocket. I actually suggest this to the director of curriculum for our county. Her answer was that "kids won't read that much even if it were assigned." How's that for a cop-out!</p>

<p>I have been a rallying cry in the wilderness for strengthening the english curriculum. Finally, someone may listen to me.</p>

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<p>I wondered about my son's SAT II in writing so I requested his written copy. He had 10, 10 and 6 on the writing - no wonder - I could not read his writing. My son is an excellent writer (and I never praise my own kids) but one could never tell from anything he has had to handwrite. I believe he was graded down because nobody could read it - even if they say they don't grade down - many people believe messy writing means a messy mind. There is too much "interpretation" in this new test. Plus, it does not inspire confidence to see ads to hire people to read the SAT writing samples with limited credentials - and, who reads them - where is the consistency?</p>

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<p>SATs are structured (supposedly) to measure the first-year college performance of AVERAGE collegebound kids. They seem to do that pretty well, or at least do for white, non-low-income ones. Whether they do so for higher ranked applicants I find rather doubtful. Having graded 5,000 entrance timed writing samples at the Community College of Philadelphia every term, I think in the main (and with many exceptions) Janimom has it exactly "write" - there is a direct relationship between length and quality. If you have nothing to say, why say a lot of it? </p>

<p>As someone who taught writing for years (and worked with corporate executives who had writers' block), in my experience, bad writing has two main sources: 1) inability to think clearly. If you doesn't think clearly or know what you want to say, chances are you'll take any possible route to fill up the page, with no better than indifferent result; and 2) Mindless attention to mechanics at the expense of expression. Some folks get so tied up with spelling, grammar, neatness, etc. that they can't get beyond them to express what is truly in their heads.</p>

<p>At any rate, the new SAT Writing test is a jerryrigged and untested "solution" put together by the CollegeBoard for a single purpose - to keep their biggest customer (UCal) from jumping ship. Don't be surprised to see more major changes following shortly.</p>

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<p>taxguy--no chance of good writing classes replacing "Hamlet" or "foreign language" at our middle school, since the school offers neither of those things. If they had those things, I would not advocate eliminating them!--But I would love to see grammar incorporated back into the curriculum somehow. It has clearly fallen by the wayside in our district. I think that learning a foreign language is one of the best ways to learn grammar (well, at least learning German was!). </p>

<p>Anyway, formulaic writing is being taught to my first grader (shoot, that reminds me I promised to type up their stories, I better get off CC and get busy. . .) I cringe when ever I see that the teacher (love her dearly, but still cringe) has added an "ending" to almost every story, along the lines of "What did YOU do on your vacation?" or "Did YOU ever lose a tooth?" GARGH.</p>

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<p>And if you have to belabor to make your handwriting legible (after all, you have been writing on a computer all your life and maybe you have awful handwriting) you may find your fluidity reduced not only in graphic representation of language but in formulation of language. Both my boys have terrible handwriting - to the point that they saw an occupational therapist when they were young with no improvement. With the advent of word processing, and earlier, the use of an AlphaSmart, my kids did not have to worry about handwriting and have been able to let their "written language skills" show. Suddenly, they are being measured on how much they write while they try desperately to make their writing legible. They are not eligible for accomodations - both have done only AP and honors courses. Handwritten essays interpretered by inconsistent readers - this is not valid or reliable measurement in my opinion. Although it is stated that handwriting is not considered - the act of handwriting for some is laborious and the stress of trying to make it readable plays into the results - plus, if the reader cannot distinguish an a from an o, who is to say what is handwriting and what is spelling?</p>

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<p>Mstee notes,"But I would love to see grammar incorporated back into the curriculum somehow"</p>

<p>Response: The key word that you used is "somehow." Supposedly, the english curriculum takes up the entire class time. English teachers are already besieged with grading papers, reports, tests etc. Something has to go if we are to add a substantial addition to the curriculum, and hard choices have to be made. Frankly, I can't think of too many subjects that should take precedence over good writing. Certain,ly in my opinion, foreign language and maybe some of the info that they teach in history can be eliminated if need be. Notice I said, "if need be,"</p>

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<p>taxguy--I guess I don't get it. When I was in high school, we had foreign languages, Hamlet and grammar. When I was in middle school there was time for grammar, and foreign language, and well, not Hamlet, but I definitely remember Lord of the Flies. . . What's different now?</p>

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<p>I don't necesarily think other academic core subjects need to be eliminated or reduced. There are plenty of other non-academic courses which utilize class dollars.</p>

<p>Under a Cali block schedule, a HS teacher will have ~180 kids to teach and essays to grade. Obviously, it is impossible to provide constructive comments back to all kids, much less work with them one-on-one. If there is one area where a smaller class size would be valuable, it is in English.</p>

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<p>MSTEE, you are correct. When we went to school during the age of the dinosaurs, we did have grammar and punctuation in middle school and even in high school. However, school systems have gotten away from this with "new and improved curriculum." They now read both Hamlet and other similar plays.New additions have suposedly been added to the curriculum. Things have changed. Maybe they just need to change back.</p>

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<p>Concerning a major report on writing, the National Council of Teachers of English asserts:</p>

<p>None of the studies reviewed for the present report provides any support for teaching grammar as a means of improving composition skills. If schools insist upon teaching the identification of parts of speech, the parsing or diagramming of sentences, or other concepts of the traditional school of grammar (as many still do), they cannot defend it as a means of improving the quality of writing.</p>

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<p>Idad- "they cannot defend it (knowledge of grammar) as a means of improving the quality of writing. ??? Why not? </p>

<p>How can students proofread their own papers without the knowledge of grammar?</p>

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<p>I'm going to take a little different tack here.
One, it is hard to teach writing well, in fact, it can't be taught just as riding a bike can't be taught - you pick it up by practicing (a lot) and reading well written prose. Grammar can be taught, and should, despite what NCTE says, but their point is well taken - grammar in a vacuum, just identifying parts of speech, or diagramming sentences won't teach writing. It is like saying a course in bike repair or auto mechanics will teach you how to drive a car or ride a bike.
Of course this type of corrected practice takes immense amounts of time and effort, and mostly should occur prior to 10th or 11th grade.</p>

<p>The other point is that I'm not sure that formulaic writing is such a bad way to go. We aren't talking about recreating a college essay or semonstrating creative writing ability, we are talking about demonstrating a student's ability to define an idea and defend an argument in a short piece of prose. What kind of writing do people need to do in everyday work? What kind of papers do students need to produce in college? Will any of those papers be written, soup to nuts, in 20 MINUTES? (well maybe when my son gets to college, his will be written in 20 minutes, but that's not the idea ;))
Maybe a better exercise than an essay about a story for the SAT would be to write an E-mail to a friend persuading them to not drop out of school, or to read a book the student particularly enjoyed - with the measurement being grammar, sentence structure and clarity of thought.</p>

<p>What can possibly be accomplished in an essay written in 20 minutes and graded in 5?</p>

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<p>I'll get excited about what high school English teachers have to say about the new SAT when my son has one that can produce a handout written in truly articulate language with no grammar or punctuation errors. </p>

<p>OOPS! Too late! He's graduating this year!</p>

<p>My point is that, though I teach English--writing--too, I just don't sympathize with teachers' whining about how much they have to do when my son has had exactly ONE English teacher who taught him anything except how to schmooze the teacher. Unfortunately, he refuses to play the game and so that's always been one of the B's on his report card.</p>

<p>The new SAT IS a problem for lots of kids because it DOES demand formulaic writing. I know--I was THIS close to being a grader. (I came to my senses just before signing the contract when I remembered how horrible grading similar CLAST exams for the state of Florida used to be.) But lots of writing situations in life demand speed and accuracy. No big deal. It's a decent check against all the application essays that Mom or the teacher revises for the kid. It just shouldn't be given too much credence, and I think most colleges are dramatically limiting the attention they give it, aren't they?</p>

<p>I certainly hope so.</p>

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<p>Here are my 2 cents.</p>

<p>I lived in Europe during my elementary school years. I took math, language arts, science, history, geography, and English as a foreign language. Since it was elementary school, we had recess.</p>

<p>We did not have P.E; do not remember ever taking a music or art class; I am pretty certain I never took a drug awareness or human growth & development class, or sign language, for that matter. I don’t recall any gifted programs at my school. We had huge classes of 40+ students!</p>

<p>Learning was just that: learning. I don’t remember it as particularly fun. We drilled our multiplication tables; were constantly reviewing and re-reviewing our grammar, punctuation, and usage. We were expected to know our geography, our science, and were supposed to speak our foreign language of choice (not too many choices, though) somewhat fluently. With anything else, we were on our own.</p>

<p>Of course, my children have had many, many more choices than I ever did. The biggest difference, though, is that with all those choices there has been a built in expectation that learning had to be always fun. Since drilling multiplication tables is no fun, who wants to do that? Diagramming sentences? “Mom, you must be kidding me. Not even Mrs. Smith expects me to do that!” And so on, and on, and on. </p>

<p>The gist of all this rambling is that I believe that we have gotten away from the basics because we all have bought into the idea that LEARNING MUST ALWAYS BE FUN. Under no such delusion, I learned the basics pretty darn well in elementary school.</p>

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<p>mstee: From what I understand, which is not a great deal, they reviewed research studies comparing the writing output of those with and without different types of training, and came to the conclusions they did.</p>

<p>cangel: Writing may be hard to teach, but bike riding is not. I taught my youngest in a few minutes with this: <a href="http://www.pedalmagic.com/default.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.pedalmagic.com/default.htm&lt;/a>, it really works. Everyone I have told about it has a bike riding kid.</p>

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<p>BTW, cangel, I disagree--good writing CAN be taught, if you have a motivated student writer and a teacher who's paying attention. It's what I do for a living, and my students will testify that I do it well.</p>

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<p>in a related article on Bloomberg, the adcoms at Yale & Penn speak positively on the new essay. Notably, HS changes will be made: in Baltimore, students will be asked to "write" about an author and to "think critically".....what a concept. :rolleyes: </p>

<p>Interestingly, a student at Stuyvesant HS is quoted as saying that he was "unprepared" to write an essay in 25 minutes to answer the question...</p>

<p><a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aK5zkgkklWiY&refer=us%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=aK5zkgkklWiY&refer=us&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>