College entrance exam to get revisions
By: BEN FRUMIN - Staff Writer | ∞
ENCINITAS ---- High school students who took the Scholastic Assessment Test on Saturday got one of the last looks at the high-stakes exam before it undergoes a major face-lift this spring.
Beginning in March, analogies and quantitative comparisons will be gone, and a written essay, more advanced math questions and short reading passages will be added to the test, which has traditionally been a main factor in the decisions of college admissions offices.
About 2.2 million high school students take the 78-year-old test each year, said Kristin Carnahan, a spokesperson for the College Board, the nonprofit association that administers the exam.
"It is the most widely used admissions test in the country," she said.
Carnahan said the new test is intended to "better reflect what students are doing in their high school classrooms ... bring a greater focus back onto writing in the classroom" and help colleges and universities make more informed admissions and placement decisions.
The test will be given once more, on Jan. 22, before the new format takes effect. High school juniors, who will graduate in June 2006, make up the first class to be affected by the changes to the test.
The revisions will be the first since 1994, when antonym questions were removed, longer reading passages and open-ended math questions were added, and calculators were allowed.
In the scrapped antonym section, students were given a word and asked to select its opposite from five options. The math questions added in 1994 require students to produce their own response, instead of being presented with multiple-choice answers.
Students who take the new exam will get three scores instead of two, all of which will still be on the 200 to 800 scale. A perfect score will no longer be 1600, but 2400.
A student's math and critical reading scores on the new test can be compared with the existing exam's math and verbal scores, though the new exam's writing score is brand new, officials said.
It will take about three hours and 45 minutes to take the new test ---- 45 minutes longer than is allotted for the existing version.
The write stuff
In the new one-hour writing section, students will have 25 minutes to compose an essay by adopting and supporting a position on an issue and 35 minutes to answer multiple-choice questions by identifying sentence errors and improving sentences and paragraphs.
Educators last week applauded the addition of the writing section because of the importance of language and communication skills to college and career success.
Ray Wilson, director of assessment for the Poway Unified School District, said writing is "exercise for the brain" that is "an effective measure of a person's ability to think."
For the essay, students will be asked to respond to open-ended questions such as "Do people have to be highly competitive in order to succeed?" and "Do people need to keep secrets or is secrecy harmful?"
Students and teachers alike said such writing assignments are common in area classrooms. Speed Farris, an English teacher at La Costa Canyon High School in Carlsbad, said he begins nearly every class by asking students to write a persuasive paragraph in response to an open-ended question.
Though many students said they are pleased that they will be tested on something as familiar as essay writing, they expressed concern that they would only have 25 minutes to organize and craft an argument.
"When people are timed, they're a lot more nervous," said Kilee Johnson, a 10th-grader at La Costa Canyon.
Several students said their work would drastically improve if they had about an hour to plan their essay response. Educators said preparation time would undermine the quick-thinking and critical-analysis skills that the essay portion aims to gauge.
"It's what I call writing under pressure," said Jack Tierney, coordinator of assessment for the San Diego County Office of Education. "It's good for kids to do this."
Because there is "not a single college major that you can enroll in that doesn't require extensive writing," the addition of an essay will make the new test a "better predictor of college success," said Suzanne O'Connell, executive director of curriculum and instruction for the San Dieguito Union High School District, which serves nearly 12,000 students from south Carlsbad to Carmel Valley.
The essay will be scored separately on a 6-point scale by two high school or college teachers. If the two scores are more than a point apart, a third person will resolve the difference. The essay score will constitute a third of the score for the writing section, which comprises a third of the total score for the exam.
Colleges and universities to which a student sends his test score will also have the opportunity to read the student's essay.
Educators said admissions offices will be able to determine a great deal from a student's writing ---- critical-reading and thinking skills, organization, articulation, communication and the ability to cogently analyze a problem and synthesize an argument.
"It is going to give colleges a whole other dimension or insight into the student that's applying," O'Connell said.
Getting into college
Scores on the revamped assessment test will continue to be one of the main factors ---- along with high school grade-point averages, personal statements and extracurricular activities ---- used in admissions decisions at UC San Diego, said Mae Brown, assistant vice chancellor for admissions and enrollment services.
Brown said that while scores on the writing section will "absolutely" be weighed in admissions decisions, university officials would not necessarily read student essays themselves.
"A lot has to still be worked out as to just how we're going to use this," Brown said.
While the University of California requires all applicants to submit scores from the Scholastic Assessment Test or American College Test, the state's other public university system, California State University, only requires scores from applicants who did not maintain a "B" average in high school.
For those applicants to the 23-campus California State system, scores from the new test's writing section will be used as a placement tool, and not as a factor in admissions decision, said Allison Jones, California State University's assistant vice chancellor of academic affairs.
If a student demonstrates proficiency on the new writing test, they would be eligible to bypass remedial English classes, Jones said.
Conflicted students
Students last week exhibited mixed reactions to the new exam content.
Some said the changes were "stupid" and "sucked," while others seemed delighted with the revamped test.
Pleasing to most students was the prospect that analogies will be scrapped from the exam.
In the analogies section, students are asked to compare relationships between word pairs. Students would select, for instance, "splinter is to wood" from five options to complete a sentence such as "crumb is to bread as ..."
"I hate analogies," said Fred Haeckl, a 10th-grader at La Costa Canyon. "Analogies suck."
Carnahan, the College Board spokesperson, said analogies have become "a little antiquated" and are often absent from classroom instruction.
"I don't specifically focus on analogies unless it relates to the text that we're reading," said Farris, the Carlsbad English teacher.
Students may also find the test easier because of the absence of quantitative comparisons, which are also presented in a format that is unfamiliar to those who haven't taken test-preparation courses, O'Connell said.
Those questions present two quantities, such as 3m and 5m, or the number of positive divisors of 12 and 21, and ask students to determine which is greater, if the values are equal or if a relationship cannot be determined.
The new math section will instead include more advanced topics such as exponential growth, absolute value, and negative and fractional exponents.
Some students said they were frustrated that the test was adopting a new format. Briana Maldonado, a La Costa Canyon 10th-grader who has taken the high-stakes test or practice exam five times, said she almost feels as if her preparation was in vain.
To help students become familiar with the new exam, the San Dieguito district signed up for an online interactive service this year that allows all of its students to log onto a Web site to take timed practice tests, get explanations for incorrect answers and pick up test-taking tips.
La Costa Canyon counselors also give students lists of reference books, test-preparation services, community resources and tutoring centers, counselor Lori Musel said.
Tierney said he is in the process of developing a handbook loaded with test tips and practice questions, including 13 sample essay prompts, that he wants to make available to every high school in the county.
The format and content of the Scholastic Assessment Test will undergo some big changes in March. Below is a comparison of the existing and new tests.
MATH SECTION
Existing test: 75 minutes. Multiple-choice items, student-produced responses, quantitative comparisons.
New test: 70 minutes. Multiple-choice items, student-produced responses.
VERBAL/CRITICAL-READING SECTION
Existing test: 75 minutes. Sentence completions, reading passages, analogies.
New test: 70 minutes. Sentence completions, reading passages.
WRITING SECTION
Existing test: Not applicable.
New test: 60 minutes. Multiple-choice items and student-written essay.
Contact staff writer Ben Frumin at (760) 943-2313 or bfrumin@nctimes.com.
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