'New' SAT Tests Start This Weekend

High school students around the country face an old challenge with a new twist this weekend: the redesigned SAT.

The SAT, a standardized test administered by College Board, an independent nonprofit organization, purports to measure academic aptitude. It is used by many universities and colleges around the country as a significant factor in admission decisions.

This year, the SAT looks pretty different than it has in the past. Here are some of the major changes:

• The 2400 point scale will revert to the old 1600 point model;
• Students can now choose whether to write an essay;
• Wrong answers will no longer be penalized with negative points;
• Notoriously obscure SAT vocabulary words will be replaced with words more relevant to college studies;
• The math section will now focus on problem solving and data analysis, core algebraic concepts, and the foundations of advanced math.

Why all the changes? According to College Board, the new test will better measure preparedness for higher education and the job market, better connect to classroom learning, and encourage more productive test preparation.

Criticism of the SAT

The SAT was originally designed as an objective measure of comparison across all students applying to colleges. Many critics have found fault with the test over the years, citing evidence which suggests that race, socioeconomic status, and gender are all strongly correlate with the test results.

“I don’t blame the SAT,” Joseph Soares, author of the book SAT Wars, told the New York Times. “But they’ve inadvertently ended up with a statistical algorithm that is systematically biased against racial minorities and women.”

Recently, the Justice Department opened an investigation into the SAT, as well as the similar ACT test, regarding the treatment of students with disabilities.

Defenders of the test argue that the SAT is predictive of performance in college and that it actually helps to highlight inequities “by putting every student on equal footing.” Since schools vary in areas of strength and overall quality, it is helpful for colleges to have a universal metric with which to assess all applicants.

But many members of the public are suspicious of the test and standardized testing generally; a 2014 Rasmussen poll found that only 27 percent of respondents thought the SAT should be a major factor in college admissions.

Dr. Leon Botstein, president of Bard College recent disparaged both the SAT and the ACT as measures of student ability on Fox News. He called the tests “ludicrous,” “dumb,” and “useless.”

It’s not clear yet if the new changes can alter the widespread negative perception of the test. Opinions on the changes fall into essentially three camps: those who think the changes don’t solve the test’s fundamental problems, those who see them as improvements, and those who see the changes as indicative of lower standards.

Some reports suggest that students taking an early version of the test haven’t found it particularly challenging.

Photo Credit: Alberto G. via Flickr