The improved SAT test that The College Board is coming out with seems to accommodate high school students better than before. Students take time and effort to pass this hard test to help the chances of getting accepted to their ideal school. The test should be an accurate representation of how well a high school student will fair at the college level. It helps determine how a student stands academically and helps judge them whether or not they are adept in the materials covered by the SAT. The new revisions to the SAT should be an effective way to tell if high school students are ready for higher education. The new changes to the test should be in the best interest of the average high school student. Eric Hoover, a journalist for the New York Times, explains some of the changes that are being made to the test. The College Board states in the first paragraph, “Instead of being a riddle to solve, it would correspond with high school curriculums and better reflect what students have learned.” (qtd. In Hoover). With that said, it shows that The College Board is trying to make the test more in favor of the high school student rather than against. The new changes make the test more …show more content…
Zinsheteyn goes on about extensive test prep, “And the College Board is arguing that the new SAT more accurately reflects what students learn in school, rebuffing criticism that acing the SAT requires mastering a separate curriculum through extensive test-prep services.” Many parents are willing to spend a large amount of money to see their kid succeed. Some test-prep services can cost up to $1,000 or more depending on the type of service you choose. Some families do not have that type of income to send their kids to elite test-prep programs which help even out the fairness for the test
In “A History Of The SAT In 4 Questions”, Cory Turner and Eric Westervelt write about the SAT and how it is changing. The authors discuss the new version of the SAT and how the College Board is going to change things. The Board “hopes the redesign will provide a more accurate measure of a student’s college and career readiness.” (Turner and Westervelt, A History Of The SAT). For example, Cyndie Schmeiser, the chief of assessment of the College Board, says that the new test “will include vocabulary, but within a reading passage.
In the web article, “Behind the SAT: The Good and Bad of the 2016 Redesign,” Bidwell discusses the pros and the cons of the new 2016 SAT. The changes of the SAT are attempts to better align the test with the concepts that are taught in schools. The changes also reflect the desire for students to choose to take the SAT over the ACT. For the SAT, the focus of mainly math and English is a method to prepare students not only for college but also beyond it. Nevertheless, a con with the SAT becoming easier is that it has become a race to the bottom.
Over time, the SAT’s format has changed to better measure a student’s ability and potential. Excessive stress is put on students to do well on the SAT’s, and causes them unnecessary strain. As college admissions become more and more competitive, the need for higher test scores has increased, despite fatal flaws in the SAT test itself. Although the SAT is used by thousands of colleges and taken by millions of students, many students' scores do not reflect their true abilities, and therefore the SAT test is useless.
For years, standardized testing has been colleges’ favorite way to consider a high school student for admission. One of these tests, and possibly the most commonly known and taken, is the SAT. This school year, the College Board has decided to change the format of the SAT and administered the first round of the new SAT on March 5, 2016. When asked about whether the changes are really necessary, coordinator Olga Henderson stated that “it is difficult to say because this has been the second time that it [the SAT] has been changed.
As students start their senior year of high school there are many changes in their life. This is the time of a student’s life when they decide what they want to do after they graduate high school. Students can decide to join the military, work, or continue their education at a college or university. For the students who continue their education they have many things to do before they finally get accepted. A common step they take is taking the The American College Test (ACT) and the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT).
Some students might not have the privilege of attending a good public school; they also may be extremely smart, but their grades do not reflect that. The SAT gives these students the opportunity to demonstrate their intellectual capabilities by allowing them to take an exam that measures their aptitude on a standardized scale, giving them a shot at their dream school. The article "Why is the SAT Falling Out of Favor?" explains this claim quite well. The article states that when high school grades do not suffice, the SAT is another way to demonstrate smarts (Cooper). Not only does this show how the SAT is beneficial for students, but it also shows how helpful this could be for colleges.
For many years, there has been a great deal of controversies on whether standardized tests should be used for college admissions. Standardized testing started in America over 50 years ago and are today, more pressure-packed and ubiquitous than ever before. The first standardized test was developed in 1959 by Professor Everett Franklin Lindquist. Many admissions counselors depend on a student’s ACT and SAT scores a great deal when determining if they should accept the student or not. Though many feel that these tests are a good thing and should continue to be used, others disagree due to the numerous problems that have been discovered when reviewing students SAT and ACT scores.
High School guidance counselors have to remind students that test scores are just one part of the college process. The National Association for college admission counselors in Arlington VA, has shown that SAT scores have been consistently ranked third in importance behind students grades and strength of high school curriculum (Adams 1). When being a student it can be hard to remember a majority of different tools are used to determine if you will be accepted to a college, not just you SAT score. Most students have the idea that their scores are their only hope, and that’s what will be getting them into their dream school.
Introduction Standardized tests may be used for a wide variety of educational purposes. For example, they may be used to determine a young child’s readiness for kindergarten, identify students who need special-education services or specialized academic support, place students in different academic programs or course levels, or award diplomas and other educational certificates. Thesis Statement Standardized tests should not be eliminated completely, but should rather be evaluated in addition to other factors such as grades, extracurricular activities, and volunteer hours. This would take pressure off of students during standardized tests, allow colleges to see how well-rounded the students are, and give students who are better in other areas
The SATs were created to be as objective and fair as possible. They were meant to bring more equality. If even they cannot deliver an entirely objective assessment, it is impossible to fully trust standardized tests. In addition to that more than standardized tests is needed to assess every single skill a person can possess.
As a student in high school did you ever feel like the standardized test are helping you or making you get in to a better college? Have you ever thought about how many hours students and teachers spend preparing for the standardized test? Many hours and studying are being put into those test but are they really effective and are the test doing the students good in life? Standardized tests are really just to effective, teachers and students spend too much time on them and it’s not doing the students any good, and even it’s not doing the teachers any good. Standardized tests in schools today in Ohio should be stopped because they are causing for teachers to be evaluated by the test results of how the students do on the tests, they are having the students more stressed about school and do they benefit you in colleges and university and do they really look at how well students do on them test.
SATS and ACTS have been used for numerous years as a way to gauge a student’s academic success while in college. Students have the choice which test they would prefer to take and most colleges do not prefer one test over the other. There are a few key differences between the SAT and ACT, which may make one test more suitable than the other for those taking the tests. Many studies have proven that the SAT and ACT are not the best judge of future success, and that colleges should focus their applications more on past grades and accomplishments to decide which students should be accepted to their university. SATs and ACTs are not an effective measure of college readiness and future academic success.
Should one test really determine it all? Not only are standardized test scores like the SAT a waste of time, but they lack to demonstrate students full academic ability and only shows that a student has good test taking skills. For many students their dream is to one day to get accepted into their dream college. For many this is hard, but it can become even harder if students lack good test taking skills.
This method will prevent students from gaining the knowledge they seek and will not work to their advantage later on in the future. Most high school classes are teaching students how to take tests rather than teaching them how to skilfully answer them and master them. This causes students to enter college and university unprepared as they develop little skill-making abilities. High-stake standardized testing, such as the SAT, is burdensome for students. The standardized test scores that a student receives determine which university a student can attend and this greatly impacts his or her future.
More and more of society has begun to question and reconsider these tests, especially after the 2020 pandemic caused a massive number of schools to shut down and allowed very few students to take any of the tests in the 2019-2020 school year, which also caused lasting effects into the 2020-2021 school year. Further, several parents have complained that “[students] spend too much time on state testing and the stakes are too high” (“The Truth About Standardized Testing In Texas – Texas Business Leadership Council”). The State of Texas has taken the feedback into account and has begun to edit their state testing, STAAR, process. At the University of Massachusetts Lowell, professor Lauren Turner emphasized “education is the great equalizer, but the SAT is a barrier to access. It became this fiery hoop you had to jump through … some kids test well and some kids don’t test well, but the SAT is not an accurate indicator of intelligence or a student’s likelihood of success in college” (Wesnofske and Webster).