ETS and the media have ballyhooed this "improved" test, however I have
not seen a single article questioning why most of the mathematics
questions are still multiple-choice. With a graphing calculator, many
SAT problems can be answered by simply checking which choice is
correct. The December 1992 issue of FOCUS, the newsletter of the
Mathematical Association of America, contained a copy of a Japanese
University Entrance Examination in mathematics. This examination is
machine-graded, but it is not multiple-choice like our idiotic tests.
The students must enter the answer to each problem on a grid, just as
they do on a few math problems on our SATs. Why is it that the testing-
racket crowd does not use the Japanese answer sheets? Is this crowd
afraid that the pseudo-education of American students would be exposed
more fully?
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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jL_ea6bkOBo7AnSU0CHWxLvAKOmAD91C1DC81
Study: The new SAT is not much better
By JUSTIN POPE =96 19 hours ago
The writing section added to the SAT has done very little to improve
the exam's overall ability to predict how students will do in college,
according to research released Tuesday by the test's owner.
Critics of the SAT seized on the College Board's findings, which came
three years after the revamped, nearly four-hour exam made its debut.
"After all their ballyhoo about how the new test was going to be a
better tool for college admissions, it's not," said Robert Schaeffer,
director of the group FairTest. "It's longer and more expensive.
That's all you can say about it."
The College Board defended the SAT, saying that no predictor of
college success is perfect, but that the exam is a remarkably good
one. It emphasized the finding that the writing test actually does a
slightly better job of predicting freshman-year college grade point
average than do the math or critical reading sections, both of which
are multiple choice.
"Both tests are very valid, the old one and the new one," said
Laurence Bunin, the senior vice president who oversees the SAT
program. "What's im****tant here is that the new SAT places an emphasis
on writing" and offers a valid test of another skill that is "critical
to college success."
The SAT now runs three hours, 45 minutes =97 or 45 minutes longer than
the old version =97 and will cost $45 in 2008-09, up from $29.50, though
aid is available. The ACT, the other leading college admissions exam,
has an optional writing section.
The College Board added the writing test, including a 25-minute essay,
to help colleges make more finely tuned decisions about students'
skills. College admissions officers can even download a student's
essay and read it. The multiple-choice sections were also changed
somewhat in 2005.
The College Board, a not-for-profit group, claimed the test would
elevate the place of writing in high school classrooms. It backed up
that argument last year with a survey re****ting 88 percent of teachers
said writing had become a bigger priority in their schools.
=46rom the start, however, some teachers criticized the exam, arguing it
encouraged formulaic writing and was susceptible to coaching.
The findings released Tuesday are the most comprehensive study yet of
the new exam, covering about 150,000 students.
The analysis measured the connection between SAT performance for the
high school of class of 2006 and college grades.
The correlation scale ranges from minus 1 to 1. A correlation of zero
would indicate no connection between scores and grades, and 1 would
show a perfect correlation =97 basically, that high scorers on the SAT
are guaranteed to earn high college grades.
The study found high school GPA had a .54 correlation with college
grades, which is considered fairly strong. Individually, all three SAT
sections had lower correlations, but taken together they were .53
Combining high school GPA with the three SATs scores was stronger
still =97 .62. But that was just .01 higher than if the writing exam
weren't included.
There were numerous studies of the old SAT's predictive value. A 2001
analysis that combined about 3,000 validity studies found the
correlation ranged from .44 to .62.
The latest research also found that the new SAT, like the old one,
continues to predict college grades with varying levels of accuracy
for different groups. For instance, SAT scores "overpredict" the
college grades of women, and are less accurate for minorities than for
whites.
Critics contend those variations reveal fundamental problems with the
SAT that should limit how it is used.
"My view is that, systemically, these tests aren't working as well as
they should," said William E. Sedlacek, a testing expert and a retired
professor at the University of Maryland.
But the College Board noted SAT scores are still a better predictor
for minorities than high school grades are. "What that suggests is
that it's very im****tant for these minority students to have a fair
benchmark, a fair, merit-based way to be evaluated in the college
admission process," Bunin said.
Many colleges have said they would wait for research like this study
before making long-term decisions about how to use students' SAT
writing scores. Currently, some give the new section equal weight with
the math and critical reading. Others look at writing scores
selectively, while some ignore them completely.
Dozens have dropped the SAT altogether as an admissions requirement.
Stephen Farmer, director of admissions at the University of North
Carolina-Chapel Hill, said the findings echo UNC's own preliminary
research.
"What we haven't seen on our campus is that writing tells us much that
critical reading does not," he said. "For that reason we probably use
writing less than we might have."
Typically, "we've used it mainly when there's been a discrepancy
between critical reading and a writing score, when a writing score has
helped a student with low critical reading," he said.
Standardized tests are "useful if limited tools," Farmer said. "The
problems crop up when people forget either about the usefulness of
them, or about their limitations."
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