The Merionite Ardmore, PA, 19003
March 31, 2014
The official student newspaper of Lower Merion High School since 1929 www.themerionite.org Volume 85, Issue 5
This month College Board redesigned the SAT. What does this mean for LM students?
Julia Bell
Class of 2015
The SAT is one of the most daunting obstacles an LM student will face in high school. Encompassing four hours of time, ten sections, and seemingly arbitrary material, the SAT has confounded students for decades. Even the letters S-A-T don’t stand for “Scholastic Aptitude Test” anymore. College Board announced changes to the SAT on March 5, 2014 for implementation in the 2016 testing season. The redesigned SAT will once again be scored on the 1600 point scale by combining the Reading and Writing portions into one section. Instead of memorizing infamously arcane vocabulary, students will see relevant words whose meanings will change by usage. The renamed “EvidenceBased Reading and Writing” section will also integrate graphics into a new range of texts that ask students to support their answer with evidence from the passages. For example, College Board has promised that on every SAT there will be an excerpt from a founding American document or a text from “the ongoing Great Global Conversation.” The math section will be divided into three areas of mathematics, such as “Passport to Advanced Math” that are more accurate for “college and career training.” The most striking change is to the formulaic SAT essay. The essay portion was the first section on the old SAT, but now it will be optional. Students will read a passage and analyze how an author builds an argument from an unchanging prompt which is released in advance. Once a standard 25 minute section, the new essay will take an estimated 50 minutes. Finally, the penalty for wrong answers has been removed, allowing students to guess without fear of points deducted. The sweeping changes were motivated by criticism that the SAT does not represent what students learn in high school. According to College Board CEO David Coleman, the SAT had become “far too disconnected from the work of our high schools.” To rectify this, the new SAT will have more emphasis on analysis and justification than memorization and studying. A recent study found that SAT scores are directly correlated to parents’ in-
come, so College Board is trying to level the playing field by diminishing the advantages of students who can afford tutors and prep courses. LM offers a Princeton Review course after school for a fee, but many schools do not have such amenities. Part of the redesigned SAT includes other campaigns to reverse the income advantage outside of the test itself. College Board peddles its own line of test prep materials ($21.99 for the thick blue book called the Official SAT Study Guide), but recently it teamed up with Kahn Academy, an online video instructional service, to offer a comprehensive free test preparation program available for all students. College Board has already released a line of free Kahn videos for the current SAT. Certain educators have observed that the changes to the SAT may not be in the spirit of fairness, but competition. The SAT’s closest competitor, the ACT, has recently overtaken the SAT in numbers of test takers. In 2012, 1.6 million students took the SAT and 1.8 million took the ACT. The trend has continued into 2013 and possibly led to the February announcement that “major changes” would be coming to the SAT, which was just reformatted in 2005 to the 2400 point version. College Board is registered as a non-profit organization, but earned $84,600,000 million in revenues last year from the SAT alone—not including AP exams and SAT IIs, which it also administers. The interest group Americans for Educational Testing Reform has criticized College Board for violating its nonprofit status and holding a monopoly on certain tests. Many of the changes to the SAT may be a ploy to make a test more similar to the ACT, which has no obscure vocabulary, no penalty for guessing, and an optional essay. Educators have broached worries of the devolution that could occur if both tests try to compete to create a more student-friendly, and therefore easier, test. Laurel Yaros, a junior agreed that she thought the ACT was easier because, “it tests what you already know and the essay is much easier because it’s always related to high school.” However, Mel Friedel, also a junior who has taken both tests, thinks that, “the SATs are easier because I always have extra time at the end of each section.”
College Board encourages inquiries to be sent to a panel of “standing by” representatives. When contacted by telephone, a College Board spokeswoman unhelpfully said that the changes had “nothing to do with the ACT. It was a decision made by College Board,” after asked several iterations of the questions with increasing volume. When asked how College Board justified calling itself a nonprofit, the line disconnected to an automated message, although that may have been because of the the garbled connection. The new SAT will run the initial redesigned test for the first time during the current freshmen’s testing season. Until then, juniors and sophomores will have to continue taking the 2005 version of the SAT, which has already been deemed unrepresentative of high school curriculum. Anna Skillings, junior, said, “I think it’s kind of ridiculous that we have to take a test that College Board has admitted is wrong and doesn’t measure anything and yet I still pay for a tutor to prepare for this test… It’s frustrating.” On the other hand, sophomore Marie Payne said that she didn’t mind the change because, “they have classes and books to prepare you for the SAT and people taking the new one might not have as many materials to prepare. Chris Ruehl, an SAT tutor from MJ Test Prep, which many LM students go for SAT tutoring, said “This isn’t actually the actually first time the SAT changed—it changed in 1995 and 2005. We won’t know for sure how to study for the new test until mid-April when College Board begins releasing questions.” Even though the new SAT is supposed to diminish the effect of preparation, she even said, “No, I don’t think it will change [for MJ Test Prep]. This is the third time they’ve changed it, and I don’t think it will affect how kids prepare for the test.” In any case, students from LM will be taking two different SAT tests. The changes won’t be fully understood until College Board begins releasing more preparatory materials and the official version is released in 2016. Until then, the current juniors and next year’s sophomore can continue to shell out that $21.99 for a prep book.
Photo by Julia Bell/Staff