- When Falls the Coliseum - https://whenfallsthecoliseum.com -

The new SAT: No more mandatory writing

Posted By Scott Warnock On In education,virtual children by Scott Warnock | 7 Comments

Part 8 (of 874) in an occasional series about how standardized tests are destroying education.

The redesigned SAT, debuting in 2015, will feature new approaches to language skills, and the writing test will be optional. We’ll return to the old 1600-point scale that we all knew so well. With the College Board admitting/recognizing that the writing test, which was introduced in 2005, is flawed, some are wondering if this presents an opportunity to reassess all mechanized writing tests, to now see them all for the education-draining entities that they are.

A recent New York Times Magazine piece [1] about the “SAT Overhaul” opened with a description of a meeting between College Board president David Coleman and Les Perelman, a writing researcher who has been one of the writing test’s “harshest and most relentless critics.” (I wrote last year about how Perelman has revealed absurdities in the tests [2], and I included a sample, inane essay he concocted that received a high score. His essay is worth checking out.)

While the article demonstrates how Coleman laudably wants the new writing exam to be driven by evidence-based writing, certainly a valuable skill, and it depicts Coleman as someone who wants education to be better, Perelman poses this tough-to-rectify question: “When is there a situation in either college or life when you’re asked to write on demand about something you’ve never once thought about? I’ve never gotten an email from a boss saying: ‘Is failure necessary for success? Get back to me in 25 minutes?’ But that’s what the SAT does.”

Kent Williamson, executive director of the National Council of Teachers of English [3], in a U.S. News & World Report [4] article about the upcoming changes, also said it is difficult for colleges to accurately determine a student’s writing abilities from one timed writing test, and that while the new analytical rather than open-ended essay can measure an important skill, one sample is too restrictive. “If that becomes your only vehicle for measuring writing competence, it’s a pretty narrow slice,” Williamson said. “When you think about the range of writing students will be doing in college, it’s one important piece, but it’s just one piece.” In our digital era, he asks, why not collect several samples and create a portfolio? (The NCTE has a position statement on these writing tests [5].)

Other language components of the test will also change, especially the cryptic vocabulary sections. Williamson did express hope about the new test’s language components, saying the SAT’s long use of “arcane vocabulary” seemed to be a “bit of artificiality that was maybe put in place to segregate people with certain knowledge from others.”

These changes, especially eliminating the mandatory writing test, seem good. Will this create an opportunity to open up a broader conversation, maybe empowering teachers and parents to more effectively resist these tests? As Paul L. Thomas says in his Alt.Net piece [6], “Now That the SAT’s Writing Section is Gone, It’s Time to Rethink How We Teach Composition”: “[…] considering the importance of writing in human agency and education, any effort to standardize the assessment of writing or to use writing assessments as gatekeepers for any child’s access to further education are essentially corrupt and corrupting.”

Keith Rhodes, a Michigan writing professor, emphasized well the toll on education. He wrote in a March listserv message on the NCTE Spokespersons’ Network that research has shown that “writing was decreasing in volume and complexity as students moved from middle school toward the end of high school. As test prep takes over, writing diminishes. It takes an unusually brave secondary teacher just to teach writing better and figure students would then do better on the tests.” He too reinforced that standardized writing like the SAT and ACT continue to be poor predictors of “how well our students would do at college writing.”

Rhodes says that these high-stakes writing tests have “had a strong gravitational pull moving teachers away from using practices they know are better toward reductive preparation for these dead-end timed writings.” He shares the optimism of some others that “ that getting rid of the SAT timed writing will help secondary teachers use more of what they know to be better approaches to writing. We can only hope that other guilty parties will follow SAT’s lead.”

The millions of school hours spent preparing kids for these writing tests is a colossal failure of human imagination. There is a bill [7], bipartisan at that and supported by the NEA, hoping to reduce the number of standardized tests that can be imposed on schools. Here’s hoping other guilty parties will indeed follow.

You could jump in here if you like: https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/direct-department-education-congress-remove-annual-standardized-testing-mandates-nclb-and-rttt/1lSSvnYK [8]

[11]

Scott Warnock [12]

Scott Warnock is a writer and teacher who lives in South Jersey. He is a professor of English at Drexel University, where he is also the Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education in the College of Arts and Sciences. Father of three and husband of one, Scott is president of a local high school education foundation and spent many years coaching youth sports.
[11]

Latest posts by Scott Warnock (Posts [13])