<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>