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

drusba
Fri, 01 Mar 2013 12:49:22 +0000

Coleman mentions he wants the test to more sharply focus on "core set of knowledge and skills.” That sounds a lot like the ACT which has always been considered the test that focuses on a core set of knowledge and skills by testing you on things you actually are supposed to learn in high school. SAT has always been thought of as a more generalized intelligence test.

For those not aware of what has happened in the last eight years, the real question to be asked here is why did it take so long for College Board to realize that it is facing potential extinction if does not make changes. Since 2005, when SAT added its writing section which made the test excruciatingly long, SAT has been losing market share to ACT to the extent that last year more graduating seniors took the ACT than took the ACT. ACT’s major growth since 2005 has been in states that traditionally were SAT stalwarts, the ones in the east and on the west coast. That was aided in 2005 to 2007 when the last of the colleges stating a preference for the SAT, including Princeton, withdrew that preference and began accepting either test on the same basis.

CB then suffered a major financial setback a couple years ago when the UCs, which have a total number of freshman applicants greater than 140,000, decided to drop the requirement that applicants submit two SAT subject tests; it became just a recommendation and for some of the UCs not even that. Moreover, some major colleges, including Rice and Columbia, have joined the group of colleges that no longer requires SAT subject tests if you submit ACT.

On top of that and most damaging to the SAT has been the no child left behind laws. The laws created the need for students to take standardized tests to prove a school’s proficiency. The ACT acted early to create its own unit to get itself into as many states as it could, becoming a huge lobbyist with the state legislatures and school officials for the use of its test which it can sell as actually testing the skills a student is supposed to learn in high school. The SAT essentially just ignored the issue for a long time and once it started to address it had a hard time selling any states on using its test because it was not believed to be a valid measure of what students actually learn. The result is that the ACT is now a required test taken by high school students in Illinois, Colorado, Wyoming, North Dakota, Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Michigan and those are soon to be joined by Wisconsin and North Carolina. Moreover, it may as well be required in Ohio because high school students need it to graduate with honors. SAT managed to capture only Maine, Idaho, and Delaware and seems to be getting nowhere with legislatures anywhere else. If your test is one required in a state, you are in the ideal situation that everyone must take it and most of those will not bother to take the other company’s test. The most depressing moment for SAT and the wake up call that has probably led to its decision to change the test was losing North Carolina to the ACT because until now North Carolina was one of those eastern states where the vast majority of students intending to go to college took the SAT and not the ACT.

In essence, the SAT has fallen behind its competition and is just now realizing it has to do something to rectify the problem, and hopes that it is not acting too late.