College Board Adds Essay to SAT
Thu Jun 27, 3:57 PM ET
By ARLENE LEVINSON, AP National Writer
NEW YORK (AP) - College Board trustees voted Thursday to add a handwritten
essay to the SAT, drop its analogy section and include higher-level math
questions in an overhaul following complaints from the exam's biggest
customer that it fails to test what students know.
The changes were approved by the board's voting trustees, representing a
spectrum of high schools and colleges, during a meeting at the College
Board's Manhattan headquarters. The 102-year-old nonprofit owns the SAT.
Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, said the changes will "only
improve the test's current strengths by placing the highest possible
emphasis on the most important college success skills - reading and
mathematics and, now, writing."
This is the second major revision in less than a decade to the college
entrance exam, taken at least once by 1.3 million of last year's high school
graduates. Like that previous reform, the latest version of the SAT is
supposed to better reflect classroom learning.
While the College Board maintains that improving the SAT is a constant
effort, the makeover follows highly publicized doubts about the SAT's value
raised by Richard Atkinson, president of the 170,000-student University of
California system.
At one point, Atkinson proposed dropping the exam as a requirement for
undergraduate admission. But he applauded the revisions Thursday as a shift
toward measuring what students learn, and away from measuring just their
test-taking skills.
"It marks a major event in the history of standardized testing," he said.
The current exam is three hours and mostly multiple choice. Its two
sections, math and verbal, are each graded on a scale of 200-800 points.
Changes in the exam, to be introduced in March 2005, include:
* Adding a third, writing section with a 25-minute essay question and
multiple choice grammar-usage questions modeled on the current SAT II
writing test, introduced in the 1990s.
Also scored on a 200-800 scale, the new section will boost the top SAT score
to 2,400. Each student's essay will be read and scored, then scanned onto a
Web site for college admissions officials to read.
* Renaming the verbal section "critical reading," and dropping
analogies while adding more, shorter prose passages to test reading ability.
The passages will be from various academic disciplines, such as science,
history and literature.
* Adding to the math section, over a period of years, questions from
third-year high school math, specifically algebra II. The math section will
also drop quantitative comparisons, such as asking a test-taker to use an
algebraic equation to compare the volumes of similar geometric objects.
The new test will take up to 3.5 hours to complete and cost about $10-$12
more than the $26 it will be this fall, though low-income students will
continue to be eligible for a fee waiver. The test will also include a
feature to provide test-takers feedback on skills that need improving.
Details will be worked out as the changes are developed by Educational
Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., the nonprofit contractor that designs
and administers College Board exams.
In early 2001, Atkinson, a research psychologist, told national higher
education leaders the SAT fails to measure what applicants actually learn in
school. He also proposed that the UC's eight undergraduate campuses stop
requiring the SAT for admission.
The UC Board of Regents ultimately decided to see if the new SAT meets the
system's needs.
Outside Thursday's meeting, a few students protested against the exam. Josh
Fisher, an 18-year-old student at New York University, said the SAT
revisions are just "cosmetic," and don't solve the problem that dependence
on testing stifles diversity and creativity on campuses. "I don't think I
should be judged by a number," Fisher said.
Among 2001 high school graduates, 1.3 million took the SAT at least once,
many repeatedly. In the school year ending June 2001, 2.3 million SATs were
taken.
Makers of the rival ACT, taken by nearly 1.1 million 2001 graduates
nationwide, assert that their exam already tests what students have learned.
But earlier this year, the nonprofit Iowa company said it would include an
essay question for applicants to California universities - and possibly
begin adding it nationwide later.
Along with high school grades, the SAT is supposed to predict academic
performance the first year of college. Critics have long assailed the SAT as
unfair, saying it tends to favor students who have wealthier families,
attend better schools or have access to test-preparation courses and tutors.
In the 1990s, the SAT underwent its first major remodeling in two decades.
On its debut in 1994, the College Board said the new SAT would do better at
testing classroom curriculum and critical thinking. In 1995, SAT scoring was
"recentered" to better reflect the diversity of test-takers.
FairTest, a Cambridge, Mass.-based group that advocates less reliance on
testing, says 391 schools out of the nation's 1,788 four-year institutions
do not require entrance exams, or exempt some applicants because of high
class rank or grades.
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