Monday, January 01, 2007

Biggest SAT Score Dip In 31 Years

Are recently released national score results an anomaly, or further evidence that the SAT is a on the way out?

My vote is with the latter conclusion.

Ever since the Princeton Review and others began to expose the glaring weaknesses and basic uselessness of the SAT as an assessment of “college readiness” two decades ago, this dinosaur of the standardized testing universe has been racing toward extinction at an ever-increasing pace.

The administrators of the SAT1 recently debuted another major rewrite of the test (the third such revision in approximately 20 years undertaken) out of frustration with truth tellers like the Princeton Review and desperation caused by threats from the likes of U.C. Berkeley and others to drop the SAT from their admission requirements.

There’s still a bit of life in the old beast ... but the writing is on the wall. I give the SAT around 10 years to go the way of the Dodo. We shall see.

A Washington Post article begins:

“The first national results from the revamped SAT show the biggest annual drop in reading scores in 31 years and a significant edge for female students over males on the new writing section of the test, the College Board reported yesterday.

The report on SAT scores for the high school Class of 2006 illuminated how the introduction of the writing section – including a much-dreaded essay question – and revisions to the mathematics and reading sections have changed an assessment tool still used for admissions by most colleges and universities.”

For the complete text of the article, click here.

Another article on the same news item is found here.

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