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Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

nytimes.com

131–140 of 152 posts

Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

#131
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Making test prep materials more accessible doesn't really sound like affirmative action to me. It's not an attempt to counterbalance this particular socioeconomic bias, but rather to remove it.

The socioeconomic correlation isn't a bias - it reflects the reality that a poor childhood leaves you less prepared to do well in college. Erasing that effect without fully erasing the causes of the effect is a cover-up that defeats the purpose of the SAT. Making the test harder to hack by acquiring shallow knowledge (like memorizing "SAT words" without actually being well-read enough to have seen or used them before…

"But simply making those test-prep tools more affordable and easier to find will only have the effect of compressing the distribution of scores, making the SAT a less discriminating test in the technical sense and thus a less useful measurement."

What you are advocating amounts to intentional "handicap" for those who find test-prep tools expensive. Yes, you are getting higher distribution of scores. If you would single out brown eyed people and denied them access to those tools while giving them everybody else, you would get high scores distribution too.

Both tests would be just about the same useful. If the childhood leaves some less prepared to do well in college, then you do not need to add another handicap to them. They are more likely to fail even with access to those tools. If the access makes them perform better, then your "it is fair cause they are not prepared" goes out of window.

Note: I'm not saying they should not sell test prep. It is business and it is ok business to try to earn money. Just that the more expensive materials are, the less you choose on actual aptitude.

Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

#132
post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The socioeconomic correlation isn't a bias - it reflects the reality that a poor childhood leaves you less prepared to do well in college. Erasing that effect without fully erasing the causes of the effect is a cover-up that defeats the purpose of the SAT. Making the test harder to hack by acquiring shallow knowledge (like memorizing "SAT words" without actually being well-read enough to have seen or used them before…

The fact that there's a natural correlation doesn't mean the SAT's correlation is identical to the natural one. And if it's worse than it should certainly try and change that.

Of course - I never said otherwise. But the changes they're making don't seem to be simply about making the test more accessible and less elitist; they seem to invite ceiling effects, and I don't see how that helps anyone.

Rather than making test prep widely available, the College Board should strive to design a test for which the only effective prep is getting a solid well-rounded education, and they should pay no attention to the complaints that some of the questions are too hard for almost anyone to answer.

Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

#133
post #70

Am I the only one here that's bothered by a further narrowing of the expected knowledge of students? A good engineer or programmer isn't a human calculator who can bang out hundreds of caclulations per minute or recite petty facts in a very specific area. Good programmers and engineers draw on their wide breadth of knowledge, and the deep understanding it generates, to solve complex and abstract problems. Anecdotally…

"I'm seeing a substantial number, if not the majority, of CS students who can't code worth a damn, but got into the department solely because they did well in a small number of unrelated subjects."

Isnt that argument for more relevant testing? If the current selection picked up people with poor aptitude for programming or whatever, then it makes sense to change it.

Engineers needs ability to think hard and solve complex problems. So, lets measure those instead of how many arcane words they memorized, how great are they in writing self promoting essays, how much irrelevant facts they memorized or how fast they are in solving simple memorizable math problems.

There is nothing wrong with adjusting expectations to current world.

Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Real life has never sprung a random topic on me at 7:30 AM and required me to have a handwritten essay written 25 minutes later. This essay, in a wildly naive attempt to limit the subjective value of writing, was judged largely on "coherency". We had computers back in 2005, and almost all students typed their school essays out, but the college board hadn't got with it. Since it took me so long to handwrite things, I…

Real life has never sprung a random topic on me at 7:30 AM and required me to have a handwritten essay written 25 minutes later. But you knew in advance taht you were going to have to write an essay when you took the SAT, no? And while it may not have happened to you since, I can think of numerous examples where people have to do exactly that - lawyers, managers, doctors... I'm sorry you find it hard to write things…

He did knew it advance and thus memorized formulaic essay. Yes, you can also get faster at writing by practice.

The problem is that speed of writing is irrelevant in almost all contexts and training it ridiculous waste of time - unless you need SAT. Which is reasonable complaint about SAT. If they would be measuring how fast you run, then you could prepare for it by running a lot. It would not make it the best possible test.

Mangers and doctors do not write essays on random topics. They write texts about their work on topics they supposedly know well.

Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former SAT prep teacher, I'm very excited to learn about Khan Academy's partnership with the College Board. Previously, success on the SAT seemed to depend solely on how much money was spent on SAT prep. Glad to hear that the College Board is interested in leveling the playing field.

I didn't spend a dime on SAT prep and I did reasonably well (good enough to get into Caltech).

and that's why you are posting on HN, with other members of above-average baseline intelligence.

Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, maybe I'm just an outlier but I got a 1370 in 1997 without really trying, let alone actually spending money to prepare. I'm also a 100% product of public schools.

Yeah I meant more than it is very easy to go from the 400-500's range to the 600-700's range with SAT prep. Especially on the writing section -- they only test on 20ish grammar rules, many of which are subtle and wouldn't necessarily be noticed without prep.

Where are you getting this information? I've taught hundreds of kids SAT prep and I can tell you that it is definitely not "very easy" to go from 400-500s to 600-700s.

Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

#137

My immediate reaction: My score is now forever unrelatable to all except those who took the exam between 2005 and 2014. Not that anyone has asked my SAT score since I got into undergrad, but now a sizable group of people who did substantially poorer than me will seem as though they did extremely well (a 1550, for example, means something very different depending on which exam you took, while my score of above 1600 wi…

I'm not really sure why SAT scores matter to anyone other than kids trying to get into their university of choice, other than some sort of bragging rights. I had some of the highest standardized test scores in the history of my high school, but I'm certainly not the most accomplished.

Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

#138
post #55
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a striking image from NBC: https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/441295567168081920

This image tells me that wealthy kids are better educated. Why is that striking?

It isn't striking, but it does help perpetuate the cycle of the rich being rich and the poor being poor. This is one of the reasons why we have affirmative action, and why it continues to be necessary, otherwise we essentially create a walled garden for those who were lucky enough to be born to affluent families.

Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

#139

David Coleman, president of the College Board, criticized his own test, the SAT, and its main rival, the ACT, saying that both “have become disconnected from the work of our high schools.” Understatement of the year.

When I took the ACT, two of the sections were Science Reasoning and Reading Comprehension (or something similar). The thing is, they required the exact same set of skills: the ability to read a passage and answer questions based upon what you read. The only real difference between them was that the Science Reasoning portion dealt with science related topics. I scored 36 in both sections the first and only time I took the test.

Re: Major Changes in SAT Announced by College Board

#140
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Instead of teaching to the test we're going to put huge emphasis on really learning the material instead of practicing test-taking skills that won't be useful afterwards." Now how do we get the schools to actually do that?

Changing the incentives would be a start. If you give schools very specific metrics, and then judge them on how well they optimize those metrics for the least money, it's no surprise that they are going to... try to find the most direct way of optimizing those metrics. In fact, the ones who don't do that will be penalized!

"Beware your metrics, for they will improve."
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