Is the new SAT ready for prime time?

YES
Edward Hardin
It sends a strong writing message

In April 2003, the National Commission on Writing issued a report, The Neglected “R”: The Need For a Writing Revolution. The commission argued that writing instruction is being neglected in the United States. Given the changing economy of the 21st century, this neglect could have devastating consequences for the next generation of American workers. As the report concluded, “writing today is not a frill for the few, but an essential skill for the many.” The College Board and its many member advisers strongly believe that adding a required writing section to the SAT will send a strong message about the importance of writing for success in college and the workplace.

The new SAT writing section has received a lot of attention, most of it focused on the 25-minute essay. Many students interviewed after the first test administration on March 12 described positive experiences with the essay. The New York Times reported on March 13 that: “most students spoke of it [the test] as being more engaging, with a format that was less rigid than before.” Critics of the writing section have feared that the essay will negatively affect the teaching of writing because it might lead teachers around the country to focus on “formulaic” writing. The College Board shares this concern, and has been working to dispel the notion that a “five-paragraph” essay is required or even encouraged.

The teachers and professors who score the essay are cautioned against either rewarding or penalizing an essay for following a particular formula. The SAT Writing Committee also made the important decision to include critical thinking as one of the elements of writing featured in the SAT scoring guide. An essay that uses critical thinking to develop one example fully will likely receive a higher score than a “five-paragraph” essay that provides three slight examples with little support or analysis. According to the scoring guide, a typical essay receiving the highest score of 6 “insightfully develops a point of view” and features “smooth progression of ideas,” not formulaic repetition.

Students should also know that the essay only counts for 30 percent of their writing score. The remainder comes from the multiple-choice section, which tests a student’s ability to improve sentences and paragraphs, and to identify errors in sentences. These questions test knowledge of grammar and usage, but they also test a student’s ability to use language to connect ideas logically. With its two mutually reinforcing components, the essay and the multiple-choice items, the new writing section is expected to add significant value to the SAT as a measure for predicting a student’s likelihood of success in college and beyond.

NO
Pat Welsh
It's just more of the same

College Board president Gaston Caperton can crow that “this new test [the SAT that made its debut on March 12] is really going to create a revolution in the schools.” In truth, the “new” SAT verbal sections are little more than a combination of the old SAT I (minus the analogies) and the one-hour SAT II writing exam, which until 1994 was called the Achievement Test in English Composition. Like most revolutions education bureaucrats propose, the new SAT is simply more of the same, relabeled.

I have no objection to dropping the analogies, though they were an excellent way of distinguishing the sharpest thinkers. But as an English teacher, I can’t help but object to making the 25-minute essay mandatory. My biggest problem with the writing test is that it isn’t really going to help kids learn how to write good essays. It will reinforce the belief that popping off one draft of a five-paragraph essay is all it takes to be a solid writer. Filling up a page or two, instead of analyzing in depth and crafting and polishing, will be the idea.

And I worry, too, whether the kids’ essays will get a fair reading. At least the SAT II writing was graded by teachers brought together in a central location by the Educational Testing Service, which did the scoring. Groups of eight teachers would read the essays together at large tables. There was constant calibration by table leaders so that they could maintain a consensus on the quality of the papers. With a much larger volume of papers pouring in from the SAT exams, the College Board has removed this check and farmed out the grading to a British company that has developed a computer network to make grading at individual computers possible.

I had to laugh, though, when I read the advertisement for New SAT graders on the College Board Web site. It promises applicants “Convenient online scoring from ... home or office.” Graders supposedly will be required to have three years of teaching experience and a bachelor’s degree, but it looks as though, actually, anyone can apply. And it encourages essays to be read “holistically.” In my mind, that’s a euphemism for ripping through the piece as fast as possible and grading on first impression. Graders will be paid by the hour, but they’ll be expected to knock off a good number of essays in the time they’re given. And the fact that Big Brother, in the form of an Uber-grader, will be popping into graders’ computers to see how things are going will only add to the pressure. The National Center for Fair & Open Testing calls the New SAT the equivalent of “painting lipstick on a pig”—and as far as I’m concerned, they’re right on the money. The new test doesn’t seem to have been devised to help colleges make better decisions about whom to accept. In my experience, the old test was already an accurate assessment of a student’s verbal talents.