Wow. Maybe APUSH mc is another good source of reading practice for the rSAT.
Looks like CB rolled out a redesigned APUSH curriculum in 2014 to increase the amount of space devoted to diversity issues.
https://www.nas.org/articles/push_back_on_apush
“Does APUSH’s operational manual aim to elevate teachers’ and students’ understanding of American history or to smuggle into the classroom, Howard Zinn-style, a useable past, one tailor-made to advance identity politics and a progressive ideology?”
This is a video of David Coleman explaining how to teach a lesson on MLK’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.
Has anyone else seen this?
I don’t think he’d last 2 minutes in a classroom.
Actually, the new Apush curriculum is pretty good. Think that, in “regular” Texas textbooks, slaves were considered immigrants…
The issue here isn’t that the speech is by F. Douglass but rather that 19th century rhetorical IS not related to college readiness.
No, I haven’t, but I doubt I could stomach it. David Coleman should stop pretending he knows the first thing about education, including curriculum, mastery, test design, and what is needed for college. Never in my undergraduate years did I have to interpret graphs. I did that in grammar school, high school, and I did it working in business. Never in college, despite full distribution requirements. Not in any social science class, not in any natural or physical science class, not in math class, not in humanities classes. My own students I’ve taught and counseled who are now in college are also not interpreting graphs. We can’t all be outliers.
He needs to seriously get over himself.
@epiphany, actually, interpreting graphs has become an essential skills, as is presenting information in graph or visual form. When you and I went to college, the entire field of infographics didn’t even exist. Emphasizing data interpretation and stats over pre-calculus is actually a very good move in my opinion.
That doesn’t make Coleman an educator.
@MYOS1634 didn’t read the second part of my post. I said that
And as to infographics, I’m sorry, but it is not a new field, not by a country mile. It has always been used in business, in medicine, in other fields. The means by which infographics is presented is obviously enhanced and made more efficient by the means of technology, but that does not mean that it is something every undergraduate needs to be extensively trained in, at the undergraduate level.
I agree that no extensive training is required but basic understanding and practice is. I don’t know where these students are attending college but I can assure you they have encountered or used graphs and visuals presenting stats, sometimes critically, sometimes not.) And of course being able of interpreting graphs and visually-presented information is important both for well-educated citizens and any type of work thatt requires a degree. Infographics in today’s sense is fairly new (presenting information visually existed before but was not as common and in a different form. The capabilities of big data have totally changed our approach to maps and mapping for instance.) Being able to read and interpret these is an essential part of today’s literacy.
It doesn’t mean that the sat 's interpretation of that skill is appropriate.
Descriptive statistics is certainly useful in some fields, but it is conceptually much simpler than is pre-calc. It is friendly for people who do not like math.
ETS showed that it is possible to make conceptually challenging descriptive statistics questions. There were level 5 difficulty descriptive statistics questions on the old SAT. By contrast, the statistics questions on the new test look straightforward and rote – like easier IB Math Studies questions.
Field report: I am sitting here with my 600-level SAT students watching them practice long division, multiplication tables, and arithmetic of fractions with a pencil. They are rolling their eyes – partly because they can’t believe they are being asked to do this, and partly because they are trying to remember back to elementary school.
I guess if you test people on skills they haven’t been asked to use since third grade, you narrow the gap with the people who never learned those skills in the first place.
However, this will not work for long. People who are just rusty are going to get the rust off. They are going to crush the non-calc section next time, or the time after that. The gap will return.
I agree, Plotinus. In any case, Coleman should stick to his day job. He is living proof that one can have 2 or even 3 doctoral degrees and still be an idiot.
“If a test is being used to decide who goes to Cal Tech, it should meaningfully measure the skills necessary to do well at Cal Tech. It should have some of the questions that are on the “more meaningful” math tests you mention. Many of these questions do not require any more advanced knowledge of math than does the current SAT, and many problems can be solved in few steps in a very short time.”
Isnt that Caltech’s problem, not yours? If Caltech thinks that the SAT (or ACT) is insufficient for its purposes, they are free to institute their own testing requirement at any time.
No, it isn’t my problem. But since I have experience in university admissions, I have opinions about how admissions tests should be written and how admissions should be done. This is a forum, and I am expressing my opinions. You are free to disagree. But why do you want to curtail discussion?
You think Coleman has a doctorate? No way. I think he only has a B.A.
Here is what is in his bio on the CB website about his post-undergraduate studies:
“David received a Rhodes Scholarship, which he used to study English literature at the University of Oxford and classical educational philosophy at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.”
As far as I can tell, he has a B.A. from Yale in philosophy, and some scattered course work in English literature and philosophy of education in the UK. I could not find anything definite on the internet about whether he actually earned an M.A. in England. Definitely no Ph.D. There is one article where he claimed he earned the “equivalent of an master’s”. But what does that mean? What actually was happening there in the UK? I could not track down a cv for him. Maybe someone has one?
I taught doctoral students for 12 years, and my sniff test says this is NOT doctoral material. This is an M.A. student at best.
If he never even took the GRE, no wonder he was happy to get rid of the sentence completions. 
I bow to your information, Plotinus. I may have come to a rushed conclusion about his background, given the inordinate praise heaped upon him in the much-earlier NYT article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/09/magazine/the-story-behind-the-sat-overhaul.html?_r=0
I don’t know why I assumed he had a doctorate – possibly because he claimed to be so qualified, but everything he has said (except about the essay portion) shows me that nevertheless he is short on expertise and long on chutzpah.
My linked NYT article uses the word “obsessed.” Yeah, that sums it up. He experienced some kind of transition shock between humanities at an Ivy and the skills needed to be a consultant at a fancy firm, and “therefore” he is forcing an entire generation to be focused on the work world instead of the academic world. People learn those kinds of things, if they’re not smart enough to figure them out already, in business school.
I still say he’s an idiot. The degrees are irrelevant.
I will add that this is the laziness (or desperation) of the colleges come home to roost. I do agree with @Pizzagirl that if the colleges want a different test, they can and should create their own, singly or collectively, and not rely on a third party to participate in a guessing game or a generic test that may fit neither CalTech’s nor Yale’s standards.
Another Coleman bio:
“Upon returning to New York, he applied to a high school teaching job and was turned down.”
So at that point he decided to become a consultant and make big $$$ changing the system that had rejected him?
“The core aspiration is to build an exam that much more clearly focuses on the skills that matter most,” he said. Instead of obscure vocabulary words, students would be expected to show deep understanding of academic terms such as “synthesis” and “transform.”
Yes, and also “academic” terms such as “swell the hallelujahs.”
I suspect universities don’t want a different test. This is the test CB wrote because this is the test universities want. Universities don’t want a test where there is a gap between racial groups or genders. That way universities can admit whomever they want without being accused of discrimination or reverse discrimination. CB and the universities are in this together.
I said IF they want a different test, Plotinus. I didn’t say THAT they want a different test.
Post 115:
Yes, I saw all that in the earlier article, @Plotinus
I also agree with you that CB and the U’s are in this together for “accessibility,” and I’m not referring to disability in this case. An easier test enables admission of minorities.
The real losers in all this are smart kids from the middle class.
CB has this line that a test with questions that are different from what students encounter in school favors the wealthy, because students need tutors or prep classes to teach them how to do these questions. CB claims that a test that is aligned with the school curriculum levels the playing field among different income groups.
This is really misleading.
IF what makes the questions different from what is taught in school is that the questions have stupid traps in them, then yes, tutoring will help.
IF what makes the questions different is that they are really hard conceptually, then it is going to be hard or even impossible to teach students to get these questions right. You can’t tutor a student who is not exceptionally good in math to win the math olympics. Similarly, it is hard to tutor students who are not that strong in math or reading to solve the old level 5 difficulty SAT math or reading questions. Most tutoring focusses on the level 3 and 4 difficulty questions. You tutor the level 5 questions only to students who are already strong.
A test with a lot of level 6 or level 7 difficulty questions would be a test that is really hard to tutor. The students who are really talented would stand out. Talented kids without money for tutors would not be passed by less talented kids with lots of money.
Making an easier test aligned with a specific curriculum does not help talented kids to stand out from less talented kids. It just favors students who are taught the curriculum well in school or can afford prep to make up for any gaps. Unless CB puts some conceptually harder questions back in the test, it is going to be easier than ever to coach people to high scores.
So it looks like what universities want is to increase lower and upper income enrollment, and to cut back on the middle class.