Many U-32 students took the SAT this past October and November, and more will be taking them next Spring. The SAT test is a measurement of a student’s college readiness, but some believe the SAT is not an accurate measurement of a student’s potential.
Senior Jackson McCoy says, “The SAT judges how naturally smart you are, and combines what you learned so it can either be a positive reflection or a negative reflection of who someone is as a student.”
Samare Schneider sees it differently. “I am not a good test taker, so I don’t think it’s an accurate reflection of who I am as a student. I need time to process the information in order to get an answer. It was stressful and overwhelming. I didn’t feel prepared to take them.”
The new, revised SAT could be more fair, based off what students have learned inside the classroom. The test will be administered in March, 2016. It will be more closely aligned with classroom curriculums. On the new test, instead of three sections– reading, writing and math– there will be two: math and “evidence-based reading and writing.”
There will be no penalty for wrong answers, so students won’t have to worry about losing points for guessing incorrectly. For each question, there will be four choices, rather than the present five choices. Another change will be around vocabulary. Students will need to know more words. and they will also need to know different definitions of the words. There will be fewer sections, but each will be for a longer duration.
The SAT is designed to measure how well a student can strategically answer questions. For different students, studying may or may not help, but the new SAT will be easier than the previous test, and more students will have the opportunity to take it, which will be beneficial. Many will continue to take the test more than once. Nick Grace said, “I wasn’t able to finish every section, but the second time I took the SAT in October, I was really prepared for how the test would look.”
