The Education Wonks
I've proctored (regular and extended time), administerd, dealt with stand-bys, and assisted in supervising a test center and I've come to a few conclusions about the SAT:
1. Its big business, it won't go away. Sure you can get around it by going to community colelge then transfering, but as long as the colleges endorseit its here to stay.
2. You can easily over think parts, especially the reading comprehension. The effect of english teachers is big, if they tech kids to read things in stories that aren't there, (ie. Shakespeare's plays are all about homosexuality) kids will get confused because you can then rationalize any answer as correct.
3a. You can buy a higher score, the test prep classes can easily add 200 points to your score. If you can afford them.
3b. The now eleimnated score-choice option was a benifit to families with money
4. Not all kids can handle the stress built in to the test. "You need to do well to get into college" Infact the whole set up is not conducive to many student to do well.
5. Proctoring the SATs is easy money for half a day's worth of work. Extend time proctoring pays the best, especialy if they take longer than 4 hours.
6. The same kids are always on standby each month.
7. They no longer send the tests to be scored via US Mail, due to the anthrax scare and they had to destroy a bunch of exams.
The more I have done the SATs the less I like them.
I am not a big fan of the SAT's new writing (essay) component. Even though the graders will use a rubrik to assign scores, I think that there will be too much subjectivity. The whole point of the SAT was to have a standardized OBJECTIVE testing instrument.
Plus I thought that is why they made the SAT II Writing test, if the school so deemed it.
Objective scale and make lots of money.
Lots of money...You should see how much some of these teacher certification tests costs. Some cost several hundreds of dollars.
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