The New SAT 2005

Parent Cafe
1

<p>I feel this new SAT will be a timebomb for students in low-performing urban and rural America. The depth of these (biased towards middle-class) essays topics and how they will be graded is nightmare since our public education is definitely not up to the same standards these testing agencies are trying to address. (Will the student actually take the question serious enough to write an engaging and thoughtful essay?)</p>

<p>This is a sample essay question:
<a href=“http://www.detnews.com/pix/2005/01/21/asec/sat_scoring_clr_012105.jpg[/url]”>http://www.detnews.com/pix/2005/01/21/asec/sat_scoring_clr_012105.jpg</a></p>

<h2>Here’s an example:</h2>

<p>Consider carefully the following quotation and the assignment below it. Then plan and write an essay that explains your ideas as persuasively as possible. Keep in mind that the support you provide—both reasons and examples—will help make your view convincing to the reader.
“There’s no success like failure.”</p>

<h2>What is your view on the idea that success can begin with failure? In an essay, support your position using an example (or examples) from literature, the arts, history, current events, politics, science and technology, or from your personal experience or observation.</h2>

<p>Second Example:

  1. “While secrecy can be destructive, some of it is indispensable in human lives. Some control over secrecy and openness is needed in order to protect identity. Such control may be needed to guard privacy, intimacy and friendship.” - Adapted from Sissela Bok, “The Need for Secrecy” </p>

<li>“Secrecy and a free, democratic government, President Harry Truman once said, don’t mix. An open exchange of information is vital to the kind of informed citizenry essential to a healthy democracy.” - Editorial, “Overzealous Secrecy Threatens Democracy” </li>
</ol>

<h2>Assignment: Do people need to keep secrets or is secrecy harmful? Plan and write an essay in which you develop your point of view on this issue. Support your position with reasoning and examples taken from your reading, studies, experience or observations. </h2>

<p>But maybe there is some hope that the students will do better on this new version. Maybe I’m being overly pessimistic. However, it’s a matter of who will do better (the high-performing vs. the low-performing schools) and what the test scores by class, race, gender, etc. will show by the end of this year. If you have any thoughts, just vent.</p>

2

<p>Venting about the new SAT in answer to an overly alarmist and uninformed post? </p>

<p>I'll pass!</p>

3

<p>"Other major changes include: </p>

<p>The addition of third-year college-preparatory math, or Algebra II, which includes exponential growth, absolute value and functional notation. Quantitative comparison questions were eliminated. </p>

<p>Elimination of verbal analogies where you compare words like heat and sweat and ice and cold. Instead, the verbal section, which has been renamed Critical Reading, will include shorter reading passages along with the standard long reading passages. </p>

<p>The changes add an extra 45 minutes to the exam, for a total of three hours, 45 minutes. " - From Seattle Times</p>

<p>Also, I believe the testing price will change from $25 to $38. This was from the College Board website.</p>

4

<p>I'm not worried about it. The SAT has norm-based scoring rather than criterion-based scoring, so everyone is in the same boat.</p>

5

<p>We will see this March. I can't wait to see the results if signs of bias are there.</p>

6

<p>Almost all things have bias in one way or another. At least these essays will eliminate the proof reading done by the hired help in college essays. Since we do not have a criterion to compare educational standard from one school to another. Since a majority of kids have 4.0 GPAs, how do you make a difference among all the applicants? I do not know the answer my self. I think this way SAT is probably better tool. I know people may not like my reasoning.</p>

7

<p>"A majority of kids have 4.0 averages"!! Not in most of the schools I know, including my son's prep school. Agree that MANY of the applicants to the highly selective schools have 4.0 averages, in many cases due to grade inflation, but it is certainly not true that a majority of kids have 4.0 averages. My son's school uses a 6 point scale, but the grade of 6 is almost never awarded.</p>

8

<p>Parent, schools submit school profiles if the child is applying to a certain college so that administrators will know the background of the school, how many National Merit finalists, the percentage of children attending college, etc. etc. College essayists for admissions will not go away. I know that.</p>

<p>I work with students during the summer who cannot afford Kaplan/Princeton SAT/ACT programs, and the results I see are mind-boggling. As long as the students have exposure, their test scores will rise. If the students don't understand the material, they just drop their pencils and sleep through the exams. I know this sounds shocking, but this is quite the norm. I'm happy that the SAT 2005 got rid of the analogies, the Algebra II should not be too bad (Although I know some school districts that don't even require Algebra II for graduation purposes, yes I know, shocking!)</p>

<p>My biggest worries are the essays. The topics are so vague (politics, arts, technology, etc...who do you think knows more about this material?) that students who will do well on them will come from mostly middle class backgrounds. You will probably agree that the SAT should weed out those not "college-material". However, it does not address the problems facing low-performing schools like lack of resources, high teacher turnover rates, poverty, etc.</p>

9

<p>My son prep school also uses a 6-point scale too. NO kid ever scored a perfect 6.0 ever. But here I see many kids with perfect 4.0 grades, yet their subjects SAT II as well SAT 1 are lower. My son attended a very prestigious public school. He was in top 2-3 kids but here in prep school he has never got anywhere near 4.0. Had he remained in his public school, he would have 4.0 but with his current prep school GPA. He is finding that almost 50 kids in the previous public school have a higher GPA than his current prep school GPA of 5.3. Thus, I think his SAT 1 and SAT II scores reflect that he does not have a lower GPA if the grading criterion is same. Thus, I think SAT 1 and SAT II has relevant for him to compare with other kids. Others may find that they have bias for them.</p>

10

<p>tensighs:</p>

<p>I think the purpose of education is to let you be a thinker so that you can think and express opinions. At least in USA, since when lack of money allows you not to think. However, kids may be too lazy to exercise their mind. They can debate football games but are ashamed to discuss politics, current events etc. Many thinkers are not wealthy people. At least it will force student to participate in current national debate and make their point known. IF you see the apathy for younger kids towards their future, it is shame that we are Americans. By not participating in election and showing our resolve and not interested in reading newspaper but have time to go to mall and watch MTV. If someone wants to study newspaper they can go to library or listen to NPR or any nightly news. I think essay writing is a right approach to let you think and express your views (whatever side one prefers).</p>

<p>It is better for people to particpate than blame someone else for thier problems. To give you an example there is a village in India where kids parents make less than $200 per year. The kids from this village have now start placing more than 20 kids in the most prestigious college group. These kids share books among the entire student body. Their resources are far lass as compared to what you will find in rural America. If they can succeed because they have right mentality then some one in America can succeed too. I am a contributing member for their cause. My kids get motivated, as he has met some of these hard working kids. This news about the poor kids from a poor village in India was telecasted on CBS 60 minutes.</p>

11

<p>The profile of my son's school for the 2004 class shows that the highest average was 5.6. 1% had 5.5 and above, 12% 5.0-5.4, 24% 4.5-4.9, 37% 4.0-4.4, 19% 3.5-3.9, 5% 3.0-3.4 and 2% below 3.0. 17 juniors out of 110 kids had 5.0 or above averages and made Headmaster's List.</p>

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<p>Well, duh? They wouldn't be "lower performing" schools if they taught their students how to write a coherent essay, however mechanical or contrived the process.</p>

<p>What I'm more concerned about is what will happen when we start seeing how bad the scores are from middle income white kids who have never been taught how to write an essay! I think there are going to be some unhappy folks everywhere, and a geat deal of discussion about teaching writing - not all good, because some very thoughtful, high performing writers won't do well on this because they do a lot of their proofing mentally. I predict we will see a lot of forced training of rapid fire writing.</p>

<p>By the way, I know whole states where algebra II is not required.</p>

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<p>Majority of kids with 4.0 GPA's? Ah...not at my D's public hs. About 1 percent did (and she wasn't one of them). Since that was the val/sal pool, I scrutinized a bit. About three were all around good students who took challenging classes across the boards. Three were lopsided in either Math/Science or English/History/Arts. And two were bright enough but ducked a number of harder classes that they very easily could have taken. (School does not weight GPA for Honors or AP.)</p>

14

<p>Hey, cangel.</p>

<p>That's exactly my point. For states that don't require Algebra II as a graduation requirement, how will these students, who may not want to attend the Harvards of the world, apply to college yet must know Algebra II to do well on the SAT? even when their district/state does not require it? This will involve states (or the entire nation) to restructure their curriculum, whether they have the money or not, so that their studens will pass the test. I see this as a problem that can be corrected through requirement changes.</p>

<p>The math section does not worry me as much. My biggest concern is the writing section. I'm not saying that children cannot write essays. No where in this thread did I state that. All students by the time they graduate from high school should be able to write a coherent essay or paper. My biggest issue is the type of essay topics the College Board has on their exams. I don't even recall the SAT II Writing section to be this descriptive in their topics (and I did take the SAT II Writing years ago).</p>

<p>Some of these sample topics are elitist or biased towards a certain group (middle class families who have exposure to the resources and news outlets that can make writing on the arts, politics, science, current events, etc. a breeze.) . Some people on this thread state that all students should be held under the same criteria. What about students from rural districts who may not have the museums, news outlets, access to expensive equipment for labs and to learn science, etc. ? It's already a national consensus that rural and (sub)urban America view the country differently. As for low-performing, inner-city schools, they have their own social and financial issues like budget deficits, high teacher turnover rates, concentrated poverty, security, etc. that takes away (or a better word, shortchanges) the education for its students. </p>

<p>While there are some positive changes to the SAT, don't get me wrong here, I also see some flaws with it too. I see regional and class biases. Writing an essay? Great. Writing an essay where there will be class/cultural/regional biases? Not so great.</p>

15

<p>I think who is scoring the new SAT writing will have just as much impact on what is on the new test. For example, in Texas the TAKs writing is often shipped out-of-state to English majors for evaluation. A friend of mine's daughter was hired to evaluate test booklets. What is taught in Texas schools for TAKs is extremely formulaic, the emphasis is on having the essay set up in five paragraphs with three subpoints, not what is actually in the essay in terms of ideas or creativity. If you get a Texas evaluator your score can be higher. At my children's elementary they keep copy of all the essays until after the scores come back, in some cases the score was 2-3 points lower than what would be expected. Some scorers did look beyond the formula.</p>

<p>I'm most afraid that our poor quality schools will instruct students to write on the new SAT like they do for the TAKs--and that would net some very low scores.</p>

<p>As an aside...what I think parentny was pointing out is that there is a lot of grade inflation out there. Perhaps not in the prep schools, but it is quite rampant in our public high schools down where I live. We don't use a 4.0 scale, but if you look at the numerical grades the cut-off for the top 10% is around a 104. You can still be in National Honor Society with an "A" average in your core which would be a "90," and that adds another 200 kids to the first 70 in the top 10%. Looking at the other stats from our school such as SAT average, # of AP exams taken, % that go to college, the number of kids with a very high A average (up in the 120s) doesn't fit. We have several AP classes where the average grade is a 97 unweighted, or a 126.1 weighted. The SAT helps put those grades in perspective for colleges that aren't familiar with our high school.</p>

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<p>TexasTaxi, I completely understand your point. Coming from a high school where the highest GPA in my grade was a 3.9, grade inflation was not a problem. So I don't know what it's like to be in schools where grade inflation was a problem. I wish there were other ways to tackle grade inflation. I know that school profiles, interviews and college admission essays try to differentiate those who can write and do well in school from others. I just feel this new essay section on the SAT will have class/regional/cultural biases as not everyone has exposure to the same material learned in school. Some will say it makes sure the "stupid" don't get into college, but I think that's a very selfish way to look at it. I think AP/IB exams are the perfect indicators of those who will succeed in college. The problem? The colleges don't know that since they only see the transcripts, and the students decide later not to take the test for college credit. It will expose the realities how different our American public education, and while conservatives feel that No Child Left Behind is doing wonders, it's actually dangerous and not serving any kind of accountability. We will see what this SAT will expose by the end of the year.</p>

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<p>Ten:</p>

<p>I think that is where colleges that have a more "holistic" admissions policy will net students who are more suited to their school. Unfortunately the very large schools have to use some measures to even start culling their stack of applications.</p>

<p>I agree, the uneven teaching will be quite apparent. It already is at my son's high school. Very few kids score over a 1400 on the SAT, and we have a National Merit Finalist about every other year. That's out of almost 4,000 students. I am always in awe of the reports on this board, many schools with numerous Merit Finalists and several perfect 1600s in their student body. It is obvious that our curriculum and our prep does not stack up. We will be among those schools not doing well on the new SAT writing I would imagine, but we've long had the issue with depressed SAT scores.</p>

<p>Judging by the number of kids from our area that have washed out their first semester at UT or A & M (or are hanging by a thread), we still manage to get many students shoveled in, when perhaps another environment would have been better.</p>

<p>Oh...and I am also not a fan of NCLB. The TAKs (our state testing) has already inspired many schools to stoop to cheating on the tests. Houston's method of accountability was to just lie about their huge drop out rate. <em>sigh</em> If you shuffle the kids who will fail the test around enough, they just "disappear."</p>

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<p>Tenisghs:</p>

<p>In a way, I'm sort of glad that I won't have to take the Sew SAT and the New ACT, but at the same time, I'm slightly disappointed about not being able to take them. I'm good at writing and English so the writing portion wouldn't have scared me (I probably would have actually liked that part), but the timing and the way that they would have been scored would have. I'm not so sure that they are going to be able to score these writings in a way that they will be fair on everyone saying everyone is going to say different things in the essays. Also, everyone uses a unique writing style, diction, syntax, etc. that may not be liked by one judge but might be liked by another. Everyone even takes different amounts of time to compose a good essay so writing an essay in, say, thirty minutes may be a hindrance for some and a blessing for others.</p>

<p>Standardized tests are already biased in how they evaluate an applicant because they were originally supposed to evaluate and find the norm in a population ( since they were based off of a normal curve). This means that they were originally not supposed to test how smart one person is but evqaluate a group as a whole. I don't know. I'm wondering if the new tests may make them even more biased than make them more reasonable.</p>