Back To The Future - The "New" SAT

The SAT is re-designed and 1600 is once again “perfection”

Aiming to make the SAT exam more relevant and reflective of students’ true capabilities, College Board President Daniel Coleman, announced Wednesday major revisions to the widely used standardized exam for college entry.

Among the changes that will come into effect in the spring of 2016:

• Replacing mandatory essays with an optional essay;
• Eliminating the famous vocabulary test renown for its utilization of obscure words;
• Removing the penalty for guessing wrong on multiple-choice questions;
• Reverting back to the iconic 1600 (with no comma) as the perfect score;
• Students will also be able to take the test in either paper-based format or on a computer.

Coleman explained, “the road to college success has always been the practice of excellent work in our classrooms. It is time for an admissions assessment that makes it clear that the road to success is not last-minute tricks or cramming, but the challenging learning students do each day.”

College Ready or Not?

Through this implementation, according to Coleman, the College Board has committed to moving from delivering assessment to delivering opportunity.  Currently, only 43% of U.S. students are ready for college, revealed Coleman. This percentage has remained flat for 5 years, which Coleman called “a call to action to do more and do better."

The SAT was launched in 1926 and was not significantly revised until 2005 when a third section focused on writing, including a 25-minute essay writing component, was added. In addition, a perfect score of 2400 became the new goal for aspiring college attendees. The essay section was subsequently much decried for its short time frame and lack of analytical component.

Testing Competition

The SAT has faced significant competition lately from the ACT; a rival exam focused more on student achievement and also has a science section and an optional essay portion.  The ACT is seen as being more highly correlated to high school curriculum and is now used in thirteen states with more considering adopting it over the SAT.

However, the College Board views what is assessed on both tests as being disconnected from what is learned in high school classrooms. As a result, the newly announced changes are intended to move from measuring to acting.

Essay Optional

In addition to an optional essay section on the SAT, the time frame will be expanded from its current 25 minutes to 50 minutes.  The essay will require the test-taker to read material, analyze evidence presented and then explain how the author builds the argument.  The previous essay questions required students to simply write about their experiences and opinions with no need to provide valid evidence to support assertions.

The removal of the writing component also means that there will be only two sections to be scored on the SAT’s well-known 200-800 point scale meaning the Holy Grail of a perfect score of 1600 is back.

Math Fluency

The mathematics portion of the exam will focus on problem solving, algebra, data analysis and topics more often seen in advanced math.  The use of calculators, currently allowed, will only be permitted during certain sections, which will result in the exam better testing a student’s “math fluency.”  There will be three core areas tested: linear equations, complex equations or functions and ratios, percentages and proportional reasoning. 

Analytical Writing And Goodbye Flashcards

The re-named “Evidence-Based Reading and Writing” portion will include multiple-choice writing questions and expanded analysis of writings in science, history and social studies.  A significant new addition will be the inclusion of passages from documents crucial to our nation’s history, so called “founding documents," such as the Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights or the writings of Abraham Lincoln or Dr. Martin Luther King, which the test-taker will now have to analyze.

A key change will be to the vocabulary section, which is renown for the obscurity of test words and lead to generations of test takers walking around with flash cards to aid in memorization of SAT favorites. Gone will be phlegmatic, deprecatory and membranous and in will be words such as synthesis and empirical, terms considered more likely for college students to encounter.

Coleman stressed that the intent of the redesign was to have the SAT re-enforce the skills and evidence-based thinking that high school students should be learning.  As an example, students will be asked not only to select the right answer to a question but to also choose from quotes from the related text that provides supporting evidence for their answer.

Coleman admitted that few teachers, estimated at 20%, view the SATs as a fair measure of a student’s work and that high school grades are a much better indicator of success in college. Coleman, a leading advocate of the controversial Common Core Curriculum initiative in the United States, will need to wait until current 9th graders take the new SAT in 2016 to learn whether the changes he initiated will succeed in making the assessment a relevant and accurate indicator of college success. Students in grades 10-12 will continue to take the current version. 

Click here for more information on the College Board's redesign.