New SAT writing section scores low
Answer the questions below on the basis of what is stated or implied in this oped. For each wrong answer, you'll receive a quarter-point reduction. Don't stress. Your score on this test is worth about as much as your entire high school transcript put together. Ready ... begin!
I've been a high school English teacher for 10 years, and if there's one thing I hate worse than the SAT, it's the idea of a new SAT, which, incidentally, hits testing centers next month for the nearly 1.5 million high school students who take it annually.
It's not that I'm against assessing kids. I give my own students eight to 10 assessments each marking period, though my assignments don't look anything like what students encounter on these high-stakes national exams - which kids would like to jettison as quickly as the suggestion that their parents chaperone the prom.
The new SAT consists of three parts: math, critical reading (a new name for the old "verbal" section), and a writing section, which is a misnomer. Each is worth between 200 and 800 points, for a total maximum score of 2400. Quantitative comparison questions have been dropped from the math section; in its place, more Algebra II and geometry. Analogies have been tossed from the critical reading section, leaving room for more reading passages.
The writing section is entirely new - 70 percent of it is composed of pesky multiple-choice grammatical questions (where students aren't writing anything - they're blacking in ovals), while the final 30 percent is reserved for a persuasive essay that our teenagers are supposed to draft and complete in 25 minutes.
Put your pencils down. Readers, I'm not kidding.
Gaston Caperton, the ambitious new head of the College Board, which administers the SAT, is not shy about his goal of changing the way that teens are taught: "When I saw what the College Board was and, more important, what it could be, I saw the power to do much more than they were doing in the past to improve education.... This [new] test is really going to create a revolution in the schools."
I'm not so sure. Graded solely on its ability to "improve education," the old SAT scored an "F" in my gradebook. The new version doesn't do much better.
The entire "writing" section of this new test is the kind of assessment that most teachers of writing would run away from. First of all, the idea that during the writing of this blitzkrieg essay - from the official SAT exam preparation booklet - "You should take care to develop your point of view, present your ideas logically and clearly, and use language precisely" in under half an hour and under extreme pressure is ridiculous.
We're not talking e-mail here. This article of mine you're reading now, for example, took several hours to compose - not to mention the fruitful give and take between the paper's editors and me.
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