College Board Overhauls SAT Test – Students No Longer Penalized for Wrong Answers
The SAT Test may be due for updating but look at the College Board’s bullet list of changes below. The fourth item jumped off the page for me.
Lynn O’ Shaughnessy of CBS News reports.
College Board unveils sweeping changes to SAT test
The College Board plans to overhaul the SAT test in a move to better align the college entrance exam with what students should learn in the classroom.
The changes are the first since the College Board in 2005 introduced the essay portion of the test, which also includes sections focusing on math and critical reading.
“In a way I see this as a breath of relief,” College Board president David Coleman said in a news conference on Wednesday to unveil the shift. Students will no longer be expected to learn “fancy new skills,” he added, while the revamped test will assess the high school work they have doing.
In acknowledging that the revised test is likely to cause anxiety for families, the College Board will give students and test-prep providers a full two years to prepare for the changes. Students will begin taking the new test in the spring of 2016.
Coleman also revealed a partnership with the test-prep service Kahn Academy, saying that the goal is to create “the best SAT-test preparation in the world.” The new service will be free for anyone who plans to take the exam.
Following are some of the key ways in which the SAT will change:
-Questions on the test will be more grounded in the real world and relate directly to the kind of students will do in college and in their careers.
-The SAT will narrow its focus to key concepts that are deemed critical for college success.
-The exam will return to being scored on a 1,600-point scale, rather than 2,400 points.
-Students will no longer be penalized for wrong answers.
-The essay portion of the test will be optional and scored separately.
-The exam will last three hours, with an additional 50 minutes for the optional essay.
Comments
This is from the Onion, right?
That was exactly my first thought.
Professor, it’s not as bad as you make out with that headline. On the current SAT, you are penalized if you guess wrong — in other words, leaving a question blank is *better* for your score than getting it wrong. The idea behind penalizing ‘wrong’ answers more than ‘unanswered’ questions was to discourage guessing. But most standardized tests don’t do this, including the ACT – the SAT’s biggest competitor. The LSAT doesn’t penalize you for wrong answers. Nor does the GRE. All the SAT is doing is getting in line with most of the big standardized tests.