SAT Changes?

<p>In a e-mail released to all CollegeBoard employees, CEO David Coleman, told his employees that the SAT will be undergoing "ambitious changes". No time frame was listed in this e-mail.</p>

<p>The full article about the e-mail is available on the Preply website in the Resource Center, with links to resources. Since, I can not link to the actual article. I have included the text version below about these alleged SAT changes.</p>

<p>"Make way friends! A change is a-comin’ to the SAT. In a e-mail dated Tuesday, Feburary 26, the president of College Board, David Coleman, told all members of the College Board staff, that the test would be undergoing an ambitious change. When this change will officially be implemented has yet to be determined.</p>

<p>In his e-mail, he states:</p>

<p>In the months ahead, the College Board will begin an effort in collaboration with its membership to redesign the SAT® so that it better meets the needs of students, schools, and colleges at all levels. We will develop an assessment that mirrors the work that students will do in college so that they will practice the work they need to do to complete college. An improved SAT will strongly focus on the core knowledge and skills that evidence shows are most important to prepare students for the rigors of college and career.
He goes on to right that the eventual changes will increase the value of the SAT exam to K-12 educators, university educators, and students alike.</p>

<p>These changes come six months after the announcement that in 2012, the number of ACT test takers edged out the number of SAT test takers. In fact, the ACT is currently mandated by 9 states, while the SAT is mandated by only 1 state: Maine.</p>

<p>In the past, the SAT has been under a lot of fire for being a poor indicator of college preparedness, as well as an unfair test. The CollegeBoard, however, has published a research report defending the validity and fairness of the exam. Staunch critic of standardized college admissions exams and public education director of Fairtest, Bob Schaffer, has written off these upcoming changes as CollegeBoard’s attempt to maintain market share over the ACT.</p>

<p>The last time a major change was made to the SAT was 2005. The analogy section of the Critical Reading section was eliminated and an entirely new section -- the Writing section, including a written essay -- was added. That bumped the total possible score from 1600 to 2400.</p>

<p>A brief history of the SAT for those of you interested:</p>

<p>1900 - College Board is founded. “College Boards” are the precursor to the SAT.
1926 - Scholastic Aptitutude Test offered for the first time to about 8,000 students
1946 - Stanley Kaplan starts teaching his SAT class. The class cost about $128 per student, equivalent to $1500 in today’s currency.
1970 - SAT scores are rounded to the nearest 10.
1993 - The SAT is renamed from "Scholastic Aptitude Test" to "SAT I: Reasoning Test", and the Achievement Tests are renamed "SAT II: Subject Tests".
1997 - The acronym from the SAT is dropped; it no stands for anything.
2004 - The SAT is again renamed, dropping the roman numerals, so that the official names are "SAT Reasoning Test" and the "SAT Subject Tests".
2005 - The content of the SAT is changed to include a Writing exam. For the first time since its inception the maximum score is changed from 1600 to 2400.
2011 - The College Board revises its SAT statistics to include those seniors taking the test as late as June of their graduation year, as opposed to March, the previous cutoff date. This change has the effect of both reducing mean SAT scores and increasing the number of seniors included in the statistics.
2013 In February, the College Board announces that the SAT will be redesigned "so that it better meets the needs of students, schools, and colleges at all levels." The time frame and details of the changes are not provided.</p>

<p>What do you think? Leave your comments below!"</p>