Changes to the SAT

The professor said at orientation: The biggest difference between college courses and  graduate school courses is the rigor of the testing. While multiple choice exams are the assessment of choice in undergraduate classes, multiple-multiple choice exams are the assessment of choice in post graduate classes.

In other words:  gone were the days of picking out the correct answer from the 5 or 6 listed after each question. I was now going to deal exclusively with things that read something like A only, B only, A and C only, All of the above or None of the above.

It was a whole new layer of choice.

The objective of this exercise in assessment was to be discerning. The intent was to measure academic skill; but in all this type of assessment measured was one’s gaming skills. One was forced to gamble whether in the sea of almost correct answers, which one, if any or some or all or neither tipped the scale into fully correct.

Every multiple-multiple choice was a calculated lottery pick.

Which circles me into to the SAT and its new upcoming changes. Because whereas things like analogies ( e.g. minutes is to recorder as trick is to…..) have been edited out of the exam for about 10 years now, the grading system  has remained the same for just about eternity.

The college board finally figured out that the exam, by nature of the fact that correct answers receive a point, unanswered questions received no points, and wrong answers received a -1/4 point penalty, played havoc with a student’s decision making process. Every filled-in #2 dot was a gamble. It was a situation such that understanding the gaming was as important as understanding the expected content.

And so finally the SAT will be scored fairly---no more penalties for wrong answers. Students may focus on the best choice and not whether that choice will hurt them.

Students will no longer have to worry about  how to take the exam---they will only need to worry about straight-up performance.

It will level the playing field.

Because games ought to be played only on fields and x-boxes, and not in classrooms  as a part of high stake academic assessments.

And minutes  is to recorder as trick is to trickster---not educator.