by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 22, 2016 | Blog, The New SAT
Apparently I’m not the only one who has noticed something very odd about PSAT score reports. California-based Compass Education has produced a report analyzing some of the inconsistencies in this year’s scores.
The report raises more questions than it answers, but the findings themselves are very interesting. For anyone who has the time and the inclination, it’s well worth reading.
Some of the highlights include:
- Test-takers are compared to students who didn’t even take the test and may never take the test.
- In calculating percentiles, the College Board relied on an undisclosed sample method when it could have relied on scores from students who actually took the exam.
- 3% of students scored in the 99th percentile.
- In some parts of the scale, scores were raised as much as 10 percentage points between 2014 and 2015.
- More sophomores than juniors obtained top scores.
- Reading/writing benchmarks for both sophomores and juniors have been lowered by over 100 points; at the same time, the elimination of the wrong-answer penalty would permit a student to approach the benchmark while guessing randomly on every single question.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 20, 2016 | Blog, The New SAT
Following the first administration of the new SAT, the College Board released a highly unscientific survey comparing 8,089 March 2016 test-takers to 6494 March 2015 test-takers.
You can read the whole thing here, but in case you don’t care to, here are some highlights:
- 75% of students said the Reading Test was the same as or easier than they expected.
- 80% of students said the vocabulary on the test would be useful to them later in life, compared with 55% in March 2015.
- 59% of students said the Math section tests the skills and knowledge needed for success in college and career.
Leaving aside the absence of some basic pieces of background information that would allow a reader to evaluate just how seriously to take this report (why were different numbers of test-takers surveyed in 2015 vs. 2016? who exactly were these students? how were they chosen for the survey? what were their socio-economic backgrounds? what sorts of high schools did they attend, and what sorts of classes did they take? what sorts of colleges did they intend to apply to? were the two groups demographically comparable? etc., etc.), this is quite a remarkable set of statements. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 9, 2016 | Blog
This is courtesy of a commenter on Diane Ravitch’s blog who goes by the handle RageAgainstTheTestocracy. I wish I could take credit for it, but alas, I’m just not that good. Definitely the funniest piece of Common Core commentary I’ve read since Akil Bello’s Skills, Skills, Skills.
All I can say is that David Coleman may have taken the humor out of the SAT, but at least he’s giving the people who follow the exploits of the tester-in-chief a field day.
Oh well, better to laugh than cry.
The Sorting Test
A thousand thoughts or more ago,
When I was newly known,
There lived four wizards of renown,
Whose names are still well-known:
Bold Billy Gates from Microsoft,
Fair Rhee from her DC stint,
Sweet Duncan from Down Under,
Lord Coleman from Vermint.
They shared a wish, a hope, a scheme,
They hatched a daring plan,
To test all children in the land,
Thus Common Core began.
Now each of these four founders
Stack ranked to find the best
They value just one aptitude,
In the ones they had to test.
By level 1, the lowest were
There just to detest;
For Level 2, the closest
But failed to be the best;
For Level 3, hard workers were
Barely worthy of admission;
And power-hungry Level 4s
Were those of great ambition.
While still alive they did divide
Their favorites from the throng,
Yet how to pick the worthy ones
When they were dead and gone?
‘Twas Coleman then who found the way,
He whipped me out of his head
The founders wrote the standards
So I could choose instead!
Now slip me snug around your brain,
I’ve never yet been wrong,
I’ll have a look inside your mind
And tell where you belong!”
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 6, 2016 | Blog, College Admissions
Frank Bruni wrote a column in yesterday’s The New York Times, in which he expounded on the virtues of college admission committees’ decisions to look past marginal test scores in a handful of underprivileged applicants in order to diversify their classes.
Depending on your perspective, what Bruni describes can either be construed as a noble undertaking or the symptom of a corrupt system that unfairly disadvantages hardworking, middle-class applicants, but I’m actually not concerned with that particular debate here.
Rather, my issue with Bruni’s column is that it perpetuates a common straw man argument in the debate over college admissions — namely, that test scores have traditionally been the be-all end-all of the admissions game, and that only now are a handful of intrepid admissions officers are willing to look past less-than-stellar scores and consider other aspects of a student’s application. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Mar 3, 2016 | Blog, SAT Reading
1) Start with your favorite passage(s)
You’re going to be sitting and reading for over an hour (well over an hour, if you count the Writing section), so you don’t want to blow all your energy on the first couple of passages. Take a few minutes at the start of the test, and see which passages seem easiest/most interesting, and which ones seem hardest/least interesting. Start with the easy ones, and end with the hard ones. This is not the ACT; you have plenty of time, and taking a few minutes to do this step can help you pace yourself more efficiently. You’ll get a confidence boost upfront, and you’ll be less likely to panic when you hit the harder stuff later on.
2) Be willing to skip questions
Unless you’re absolutely set on getting an 800 or close to it, you don’t need to answer every question — in fact, you probably shouldn’t (although you should always make sure to fill in answer for every question, since the quarter point wrong-answer penalty has been eliminated). If your first reaction when you look at a question is that you have no idea what it’s asking, that’s probably a sign you’re better off moving onto other things. That is particularly true on the Reading section because questions are not presented in order of difficulty. A challenging question can be followed by a very easy one, and there’s no sense getting hung up on the former if you can answer the latter quickly. And if you truly hate graph questions or Passage 1/Passage 2 relationship questions, for example, then by all means just skip them and be done with it.
3) Be willing to skip an entire passage
This might sound a little radical, but hear me out. It’s an adaptation of an ACT strategy that actually has the potential to work even better on the new SAT than it does on the ACT. This is especially true if you consistently do well on the Writing section; a strong score there can compensate if you are weaker in Reading, giving you a respectable overall Verbal score. Obviously this is not a good strategy if you are aiming for a score in the 700s; however, if you’re a slow but solid reader who is scoring in the high 500s and aiming for 600s, you might want to consider it.
Think of it this way: if four of the passages are pretty manageable for you but the fifth is very hard, or if you feel a little short on time trying to get through every passage and every question, this strategy allows you to focus on a smaller number of questions that you are more likely to answer correctly. In addition, you should pick one letter and fill it in for every question on the set you skip. Assuming that letters are distributed evenly as correct answers (that is, A, B, C, and D are correct approximately the same number of times on a given test, and in a given passage/question set), you will almost certainly grab an additional two or even three points.
If you’re not a strong reader, I highly recommend skipping either the Passage 1/Passage 2, or any fiction passages that include more antiquated language, since those are the passage types most likely to cause trouble.
4) Label the “supporting evidence” pairs before you start the questions
Although you may not always want to use the “plug in” strategy (plugging in the line references from the second question into the first question in order to answer both questions simultaneously), it’s nice to have the option of doing so. If you don’t know the “supporting evidence” question is coming, however, you can’t plug anything in. And if you don’t label the questions before you start, you might not remember to look ahead. This is particularly true when the first question is at the bottom of one page and the second question is at the top of the following page.
5) Don’t spend too much time reading the passages
You will never — never — remember every single bit of a passage after a single read-through, so there’s no point in trying to get every last detail. The most important thing is to avoid getting stuck in a reading “loop,” in which you re-read a confusing phrase or section of a passage multiple times, emerging with no clearer a sense of what it’s saying than when you began. This is a particular danger on historical documents passages, which are more likely to include confusing turns of phrase. Whatever you do, don’t fall into that trap! You will waste both time and energy, two things you cannot afford to squander upfront. Gently but firmly, force yourself to move on, focusing on the beginning and the end for the big picture. You can worry about the details when you go back.
by Erica L. Meltzer | Feb 29, 2016 | Blog, The New SAT
This just in: earlier today I met with a tutor colleague who told me that the College Board had sent emails to at least 10 of his New York-area colleagues who were registered for the first administration of the new SAT, informing them that their registration for the March 5th exam had been transferred to the May exam. Not coincidentally, the May test will be released, whereas the March one will not.
Another tutor had his testing location moved to, get this… Miami.
I also heard from another tutor in North Carolina whose registration was also transferred to May for “security measures.” Apparently this is a national phenomenon. Incidentally, the email she received gave her no information about why her registration had been cancelled for the March test. She had to call the College Board and wait 45 minutes on hold to get even a semi-straight answer from a representative. Along with releasing test scores on time, customer service is not exactly the College Board’s strong suit. (more…)
