****! They're changing the SAT AGAIN!?!?!?!?!?!?!

SATQuantum
Thu, 07 Mar 2013 20:05:14 +0000

@drusba @Wood5440

Wow, I am just impressed with the fascinating insight that both of you have given on this topic. These are comments that will rarely see the light of the day in mainstream media. Thank you so much.

To me SAT seems like a dilute form of an intelligence test and the level of content is honestly very low if we compare it to international tests. I would much rather have students take the American Math Competition for Grade 8, which is of much higher quality and has some meat in it. Okay, may be AMC 10 would be better.

There is in general seems like an opposition to testing and ranking students in US, and instead pursuing some sort of an egalitarian structure. I personally disagree with this because we don’t have equal abilities, we can certainly push ourselves to the best of our abilities but in every aspect of human life there is a gradation. It is natural.

As for the ACT and SAT and Pearson and ETS/Collegeboard, of course it is all about making money. This is reflected in the fact that they zealously guard their questions with copyright infringements. They make money from selling their books and tests and online courses. This is completely unacceptable, a company that writes a test should not be allowed to profit from selling those very tests. In the rest of the world the questions that appear in these types of tests become part of the public domain and any publisher can republish them. Not in the US.

I agree with Wood5440’s comment regarding a shift towards utilitarian education in US. Sometimes I wonder what is the purpose of taking a ball and throwing it in the air and passing it through a hoop attached to a pole. How is that different from studying three dimensional geometry? Or the works of Shakespeare?

But in the end as Wood5440 noted, the ones who do well on the old SAT, ACT, will continue to do well on whatever new tests show up. This is pretty clear when you look at the SAT scores of students who do well on the AMC 10 and AMC 12.