The College Board on Wednesday will release many details of its revised SAT, including sample questions and explanations of the research, goals and specifications behind them.
"We are committed to a clear and open SAT, and today is the first step in that commitment," said Cyndie Schmeiser, the College Board's chief of assessment, in a conference call on Monday, previewing the changes to be introduced in the spring of 2016.
She said the 211-page test specifications and supporting materials being shared publicly include "everything a student needs to know to walk into that test and not be surprised."
One big change is in the vocabulary questions, which will no longer include obscure words. Instead, the focus will be on what the College Board calls "high utility" words that appear in many contexts, in many disciplines — often with shifting meanings — and they will be tested in context. For example, a question based on a passage about an artist who "vacated" from a tradition of landscape painting, asks whether it would be better to substitute the word "evacuated," "departed" or "retired," or to leave the sentence unchanged. (The right answer is "departed.")
The test will last three hours, with another 50 minutes for an optional essay in which students will be asked to analyze a text and how the author builds an argument. The essays will be scored for reading, analysis and writing, and those scores will be reported separately from the other sections of the SAT. The current test includes a required 25-minute essay in which students are asked to take a position on an issue and which is graded without regard to factual accuracy.
The new test will have a 65-minute critical reading section with 52 questions, a 35-minute written language test with 44 questions, and an 80-minute math section with 57 questions. The language and math sections will each be scored from 200 to 800, and the top composite score will be 1,600. While the current test allows calculator use, the new one will have some sections that do not. Also, instead of five multiple-choice answers, the new test will have four.
Interpreting graphs will be an important part of the test, not just in math, but in analyzing science and social science texts.
Many of the college admissions officers who will be using the test results praised the effort to align the test with what students should be learning in high school, and what they will need to know to do well in college, but cautioned that it would be years before there was any evidence that the new SAT does a better job of predicting college performance than the current one.
"I like the desire on the part of the exam to assess students' analytic skills, and the direction they're taking with the changes in the essay," said Christoph Guttentag, Duke University's admissions director. "But we'll still have to examine the evidence to see if there's any change in the predictive validity within our context."
David Coleman, who is president and chief executive of the College Board, and spearheaded the process of revising the test, was a key architect of the Common Core state curriculum standards for schools, a set of guidelines being introduced — and often stirring controversy — in classrooms throughout the nation. And to some extent, the College Board's vision of the new SAT continues that alignment.
William Dingledine, an educational consultant in Greenville, S.C., said, "It's a positive step that they're trying to align the test with what students should be learning in school, and what they need for college, since the current SAT doesn't do that very well, but it's going to be interesting to see the SAT align with the Common Core standards while there are lots of states now trying to get rid of the Common Core."
Many college admissions officers expressed skepticism about the College Board's claim that the new SAT would narrow the gap between rich and poor students' scores, and eliminate the edge gained through test preparation courses. Nor do they expect that the new test will hold any less stress for students.
Even if everyone becomes familiar with the format, said Jim Rawlins, director of admissions at the University of Oregon, "there's still going to be a lot of anxiety, since it's still a high-stakes test."
So what will be the effects of the new SAT?
"It's like that SAT response: 'cannot be determined with the information given,' " he said.
"We are committed to a clear and open SAT, and today is the first step in that commitment," said Cyndie Schmeiser, the College Board's chief of assessment, in a conference call on Monday, previewing the changes to be introduced in the spring of 2016.
She said the 211-page test specifications and supporting materials being shared publicly include "everything a student needs to know to walk into that test and not be surprised."
One big change is in the vocabulary questions, which will no longer include obscure words. Instead, the focus will be on what the College Board calls "high utility" words that appear in many contexts, in many disciplines — often with shifting meanings — and they will be tested in context. For example, a question based on a passage about an artist who "vacated" from a tradition of landscape painting, asks whether it would be better to substitute the word "evacuated," "departed" or "retired," or to leave the sentence unchanged. (The right answer is "departed.")
The test will last three hours, with another 50 minutes for an optional essay in which students will be asked to analyze a text and how the author builds an argument. The essays will be scored for reading, analysis and writing, and those scores will be reported separately from the other sections of the SAT. The current test includes a required 25-minute essay in which students are asked to take a position on an issue and which is graded without regard to factual accuracy.
The new test will have a 65-minute critical reading section with 52 questions, a 35-minute written language test with 44 questions, and an 80-minute math section with 57 questions. The language and math sections will each be scored from 200 to 800, and the top composite score will be 1,600. While the current test allows calculator use, the new one will have some sections that do not. Also, instead of five multiple-choice answers, the new test will have four.
Interpreting graphs will be an important part of the test, not just in math, but in analyzing science and social science texts.
Many of the college admissions officers who will be using the test results praised the effort to align the test with what students should be learning in high school, and what they will need to know to do well in college, but cautioned that it would be years before there was any evidence that the new SAT does a better job of predicting college performance than the current one.
"I like the desire on the part of the exam to assess students' analytic skills, and the direction they're taking with the changes in the essay," said Christoph Guttentag, Duke University's admissions director. "But we'll still have to examine the evidence to see if there's any change in the predictive validity within our context."
David Coleman, who is president and chief executive of the College Board, and spearheaded the process of revising the test, was a key architect of the Common Core state curriculum standards for schools, a set of guidelines being introduced — and often stirring controversy — in classrooms throughout the nation. And to some extent, the College Board's vision of the new SAT continues that alignment.
William Dingledine, an educational consultant in Greenville, S.C., said, "It's a positive step that they're trying to align the test with what students should be learning in school, and what they need for college, since the current SAT doesn't do that very well, but it's going to be interesting to see the SAT align with the Common Core standards while there are lots of states now trying to get rid of the Common Core."
Many college admissions officers expressed skepticism about the College Board's claim that the new SAT would narrow the gap between rich and poor students' scores, and eliminate the edge gained through test preparation courses. Nor do they expect that the new test will hold any less stress for students.
Even if everyone becomes familiar with the format, said Jim Rawlins, director of admissions at the University of Oregon, "there's still going to be a lot of anxiety, since it's still a high-stakes test."
So what will be the effects of the new SAT?
"It's like that SAT response: 'cannot be determined with the information given,' " he said.
