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Major Revisions to SAT Planned
In late June, the College Board announced plans to revamp the SAT exam, the nation's most widely used college admissions test. The first administration of the new version will occur in March 2005.
The SAT has two parts. The SAT I tests reasoning and thinking skills, and the SAT II measures how much students know about a particular academic subject, such as chemistry or American history. The revisions, which will affect only the SAT I, include a new writing test that will require students to draft an essay and answer multiple-choice grammar and copyediting questions. Other changes will replace analysis of analogies with more interpretation of reading passages and expand the math test to add topics from Algebra II and eliminate quantitative comparisons. In addition, the top score will increase from the current 1,600 to 2,400.
The SAT has come under criticism in recent years for different reasons. Some critics have charged that the exam is biased against black and Hispanic students and women from certain ethnic groups who consistently score lower on it than their white or male counterparts. Others worry that students who can afford expensive test-preparation courses have an edge over their peers from less-advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. In February 2001 Richard Atkinson, president of the University of California, proposed dropping the SAT I as an admissions requirement in favor of a test that would better assess what students accomplish in high school. Atkinson's proposal triggered a public debate about the merits of standardized tests, and some observers say it prompted revision of the SAT, because the UC system is its largest single user.
Atkinson reports that he is "delighted" by the decision to alter the SAT I. "Standardized tests perform a necessary function in American education, providing a common measure of student performance in an educational system marked by vast disparities between schools," he says. "But we need standardized tests that bear a demonstrable relationship to what students actually study in the high school college-preparatory curriculum. We also need to focus student attention on mastery of subject matter rather than mastery of test-taking skills." Atkinson believes the revised SAT I will serve these goals.
Not everyone is so sanguine about the new test. An editorial in the University of Pennsylvania's Daily Pennsylvanian argues that more drastic changes are needed to address criticism of the SAT. "Students who are . . . able to enroll in prep courses will continue to do so," the editorial predicts. And "rumblings about racial biases on the SAT" will probably not diminish, according to the editorial, because race discrepancies in scores likely result from inequities in the educational system. "While the 2005 revision is much needed, it is not a revision that will solve the larger problems of the SAT I or the college admissions process as a whole," the editorial concludes.
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