Here we have a student complaining about grade inflation! Or rather, test-score inflation. Still, it's noteworthy if not unique. I have mixed feelings about his conclusion, which is that the SAT essay test is too easy and need not be taken seriously. For him, perhaps that's so. For many students, writing the kind of essay Shar scoffs at may be the best they can manage, and for them, following his advice would be unwise indeed. On the other hand, I'm NAIVEly skeptical that the SAT essay test is a very useful measure of student writing ability, so I'm kind of sympathetic to Shar's scoffing.
By MICHAEL WINERIP
Published: May 4, 2005 in The New York Times
CAMBRIDGE, Mass.
IN March, Les Perelman attended a national college writing conference and sat in on a panel on the new SAT writing test. Dr. Perelman is one of the directors of undergraduate writing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He did doctoral work on testing and develops writing assessments for entering M.I.T. freshmen. He fears that the new 25-minute SAT essay test that started in March - and will be given for the second time on Saturday - is actually teaching high school students terrible writing habits.
Monday, March 14, 2005 Posted: 10:18 AM EST (1518 GMT) at CNN
(AP) -- After being drilled in a test-prep class, Sheryl Nagy wasn't fazed by the new essay section of the revamped SAT exam.
She just wasn't sure the test -- 45 minutes longer this year and nearly 4 hours in all -- would ever end.
"After a while you just stop caring and want it to be over," Nagy, a junior at Burbank High School in California, said after Saturday's test. "They added a lot of reading comprehension, and it was just hard to keep reading and reading and reading."
Some 330,000 mostly grumpy high-schoolers became the first to officially take the revamped SAT college entrance exam this weekend. While the new, 25-minute essay at the start of the test generated much of the buzz and anxiety, students quickly discovered they were hardly home free after finishing it.
Monday, February 21, 2005 Posted: 10:39 AM EST (1539 GMT) at CNN
(AP) -- It's no mystery what sent a record flood of students to SAT test-prep courses this year: anxiety over the new, written portion of the college entrance exam.
But while the essay has generated most of the buzz surrounding the debut of the new SAT on March 12, it's only one of several changes.
"I've heard from some teachers that some of their students are asking, 'Why are we not spending half the class on the essay?"' said Andy Lutz, vice president for program development at test-prep company Princeton Review.
