The SAT Challenge

Parents Forum
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<p>Are bloggers dumber than high school kids? If you want to know the answer to this burning question, then take a few minutes (away from posting on CC) to look at The SAT Challenge results. Devised in response to the recent NYT article on the CB writing skills essay, The SAT Challenge, which ran from September 15 to September 20, 2006 “invited bloggers and blog readers from around the world to test their skill at writing SAT-style essays under test conditions. They were given 20 minutes to answer a sample SAT question.” The entries were collected and sent to 6 volunteer graders, either with college writing or SAT prep experience who used the holistic, official standards provided by the CB.</p>

<p>The average score was 2.9. When put into SAT form (adding the grades, rather than averaging them), the average was just 5.32, which compares rather unfavorably to the average high schooler’s score: 7.2. </p>

<p>The originators of the Challenge were curious to find out just how unfair it is “to put a microscope to highschoolers’ prose written in just 25 minutes based on a prompt they had never encountered before.”</p>

<p><a href=“http://scienceblogs.com/challenge/[/url]”>http://scienceblogs.com/challenge/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>While not scientific, the Challenge might indeed give some insights on what the CB graders are looking for, and suffering through, as they read and grade the essays. </p>

<p><a href=“http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2006/10/the_sat_challenge_the_essays_h.php[/url]”>http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2006/10/the_sat_challenge_the_essays_h.php&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>Point being…?</p>

<p>636</p>

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<p>Point being, stop overthinking the whole thing and chill. </p>

<p>Apart from that, the links provided to the comments generated from the study are
quite interesting: I especially liked this one: “I found this exercise personally very timely. My son, a junior in high school, is treading into the world of placement exams and standardized tests. He loathes the essay, but perhaps, by witnessing how poorly avocationally inclined writers scored, he can better bear the essay writing coming his way.”</p>

<p><a href=“http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2006/10/the_sat_challenge_the_essays_h.php#c232059[/url]”>http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2006/10/the_sat_challenge_the_essays_h.php#c232059&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;