Changes in the SAT

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The SAT has changed over the years, and I found this article eye-opening.

The College Board notes on page 13 of its Digital SAT Suite of Assessments technical framework that two of the primary goals in changing the exam were to make it shorter and to give students more time per question. To make this happen in the new “Reading and Writing” section of the test, they shortened reading passages from 500-750 words all the way down to 25-150 words, or the length of a social-media post, with one question per passage…

Nevertheless, the College Board takes the view that the rigor of the Reading and Writing segment is unchanged. They claim in the assessment framework that the eliminated reading passages are “not an essential prerequisite for college” and that the new, shorter content helps “students who might have struggled to connect with the subject matter.”…

But, rather than hold students to a clear and rigorous standard, the College Board is catering to students’ declining performance and social-media-induced attention-control issues.

This extends to the changes made in the new SAT math section, as well. College Board now serves test-takers fewer questions but did not reduce the amount of time for the section correspondingly…Researchers at the University of Cincinnati trained an AI program to do SAT math questions going back to 2008, and it found that the test has been getting easier by about four points per year.

DB2

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Well, universities were complaining, a few decades ago, about the increasing number of college applicants that were not capable of doing college level work. So, “common core” was established, to set voluntary minimum competency standards for high school graduates. Then “common core” was demagogued as some “big gummit” conspiracy.

So, with high school graduate quality declining, and the standards to establish minimum quality driven out of the system, how do the universities keep their classrooms full? Dumb down the test, so more qualify?

Steve

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ah but it is has gone from 5 passages to 54.