It was announced a few days ago that some changes would come to the SATs:
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/ed...d.html?hp&_r=0
I know a great deal of brainless sheep with good vocabularies and elaborate, intelligent sounding grunts. By sheer coincidence, I'm sure, nearly all of them are liberals.
I loathe essays. Hopefully the essay is rendered non-mandatory because the type of classes that require it are being cut from the mandatory curriculum and the associated professors are laid off.
Whoops, I guess I spoke too soon.
Presumably this is done to allow the failures to guess a few questions right and inflate the scores, thus bridging the gap between them and the kids who don't need to guess. The change is pointless of course, probably engineered to feed Team Nurture. In practice all it will end up doing is raise requirements slightly. One thing it would do is benefit lazy geniuses like me who can make educated guesses without actually knowing the answers and improve our odds. So someone like me has a slightly improved chance of stealing a spot from someone who actually studied properly, then ends up flunking because laziness becomes a higher obstacle the harder the course material gets.
None of the texts listed are important, except perhaps as cautionary tales.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/ed...d.html?hp&_r=0
Instead of arcane “SAT words” (“depreciatory,” “membranous”), the vocabulary definitions on the new exam will be those of words commonly used in college courses, such as “synthesis” and “empirical.”
The essay, required since 2005, will become optional. Those who choose to write an essay will be asked to read a passage and analyze the ways its author used evidence, reasoning and stylistic elements to build an argument.
Every exam will include, in the reading and writing section, source documents from a broad range of disciplines, including science and social studies, and on some questions, students will be asked to select the quotation from the text that supports the answer they have chosen.
The guessing penalty, in which points are deducted for incorrect answers, will be eliminated.
Every exam will include a reading passage either from one of the nation’s “founding documents,” such as the Declaration of Independence or the Bill of Rights, or from one of the important discussions of such texts, such as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s “Letter From Birmingham Jail.”
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