SAT changes

[Darth Executor]

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.

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.

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.

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.

Whoops, I guess I spoke too soon.

The guessing penalty, in which points are deducted for incorrect answers, will be eliminated.

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.

[Paprika]

What would you consider a good way to do standardised testing for college admissions? Or do you think there shouldn't be any?

[Cerealman]

Just took a PACT just yesterday,I've taken 5 so far but I haven't seen the PSAT since freshmen year.

[Epoetker]

Let's not forget who else it benefits-the Tiger Children of Test Prep:

sat-act race.jpg

The main change in SAT results since scores were boosted by recentering in 1995 is that Asian average scores have been exploding (the upward sloping yellow line above). This has generated a lot of resentment of Tiger Mothers among upper middle class white moms, but these feelings have to be recoded into an attack on white male affluent privilege.

Natively intelligent white movers and shakers like me and Darth can score fairly high with a minimum of studying (I recall getting 1340 on my first SAT sophomore year, way before the essay section was implemented) but those whose parents get them the latest and greatest test prep kits will always have an edge in performance, though not always in creativity.

Lest you think I'm piling on Asians, they have fairly good reasons for this monomaniacal focus on test scores:

Why is remediation a huge issue in state colleges? If high school grades meant anything, schools could just accept students with high grades and hey, presto. Problem solved.college GPA is worthless for much the same reasons that high school GPA is