By Maggie Robak
Copy Editor
Recently, the College Board announced a complete redesign of the SAT Reasoning test in order to better fulfill its purpose as an assessment of a student’s intelligence. Although its new initiatives are vague, if specifics are added to the College Board’s plan, the revamp will make this currently outdated test useful and relevant again.
According to the Associated Press, the ACT surpassed the SAT as the most popular college admissions exam last year. This decrease in popularity, as well as the recent appointment of new College Board President David Coleman, one of the creators of the new Common Core State Standards, prompted these planned changes. The Common Core State Standards is an initiative to standardize testing that has passed in 47 states, and, if it functions in coordination with the SAT, it will help better prepare students for the test.
According to College Board Vice President Peter Kauffmann, the changes will be driven by three broad objectives: to focus the test on a set of “core knowledge and skills” useful in college and careers, to ensure the test is an “accurate predictor of college success,” and to guarantee the content of the test “reflects excellence in classroom instruction.” All of these objectives have the end goal of increasing the value of the SAT for students, but no timetable is set for the initiatives.
According to Bob Schaeffer, a director at FairTest, a nonprofit dedicated to ending the misuse of standardized tests, the lack of substance in the test led to the popularization of the ACT, and to more than 80 additional universities becoming testing-optional.
The SAT places too much emphasis on a student’s test-taking abilities, which do not accurately represent a student’s actual potential. With the popularization of SAT tutoring companies, such as Compass and Kaplan, it has become easier for students to study hard and earn a higher resulting score. These resources again give unfair advantages to wealthier students who can afford these pricey tutors, making the SAT more of a judge of how much a student was able to prepare for the exam, rather than their ability and intelligence.
In order to fix these problems, the College Board must create a test that accurately assesses intelligence and should function similarly to an IQ test. Instead of assessing students’ abilities to study or their levels of knowledge, both of which can be represented by a student’s GPA, the SAT should test the intellect and critical reasoning of a student, a more indicative measure of a student’s potential success in college.
Changing the SAT in coordination with the implementation of Common Core will help gear students toward critical thinking that will help them take the SAT later when they are in high school.
While the SAT has neared the point of becoming a futile test, these proposed changes have the potential to make it a valuable tool for college admissions once again, as long as the College Board is able to accurately adhere to its objectives.
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