The College Board announced this spring that it is redesigning the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT), with the changes to take effect in the spring of 2016.
Students entering their sophomore year will be the first ones to take the SAT with the changes. Rising juniors and seniors are unaffected. Though the changes to the SAT are a few years off, being aware of them now can help parents and students ensure that they are as prepared as possible.
“Our objective with the redesign is to make the exam useful by ensuring that everything students encounter when they take it is widely applicable to their work in college and career training opportunities,” says College Board spokeswoman Carly Lindauer. “The exam is also more clear and open than ever before, with full test specifications and sample questions already available online.”
What are the changes to the redesigned SAT?
Lindauer says some of the changes include a shift in the vocabulary section—with an emphasis on more relevant and less obscure words—and the essay section will be optional, so the top score will once again be 1600. Students who opt to complete the essay will now be expected to analyze a source rather than basing essays on personal opinion.
Questions will now focus on real-world context, meaning they will be directly related to the work performed in college and career. In reading, each test will include a passage from one of the U.S. founding documents, such as the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights or the Federalist Papers, or from a text from the “global conversation,” which the College Board indicates could include writings by Edmund Burke or Mahatma Gandhi.
Another big change is that the SAT will no longer penalize wrong answers, meaning that guessing will not carry a penalty. Christine Brown, Executive Director of K-12 and College Prep Programs for Kaplan Test Prep, says that will result in a change in test-taking strategy.
The College Board is partnering with Khan Academy to offer SAT prep materials online for free. Lindauer says the purpose of the partnership is “to combat one of the greatest inequities around college entrance exams, namely the culture and practice of high-priced test preparation.” She says the College Board selected Khan Academy because of both its impressive technology as well as its commitment “to both evidence and continual improvement.”
“We think that’s great, actually,” Brown says. “They are doing something that we’ve been doing for years, which is making test preparation free. It is validation that preparation works. That’s a shift for the College Board, which for a long time said you could not prepare for the SAT.”
The College Board is also expected to make more announcements in the coming months.
Why make the changes?
The College Board’s 2013 SAT Report on College & Career Readiness revealed that 57 percent of SAT takers in 2013 were academically prepared for the rigors of college-level course work.
“Over the past year, we’ve listened to and worked with teachers and educational leaders in K-12 and higher education. Members of these communities have helped shape the exam, review items and test forms and advise on other technical issues,” Lindauer says. “Their advice and counsel factored heavily into our decision to better align the SAT with rigorous classroom work. We also listened to feedback and concerns from students and parents.”
Matthew Pietrafetta, Ph.D. and founder of Academic Approach, says the changes will move the SAT closer in alignment with the nationally emerging set of Common Core Standards that are intended to define college and career readiness in American education.
Reaction to the redesign
Lindauer says the College Board is receiving “very positive feedback for the exam thus far.” Brown applauds the College Board for making the SAT more transparent, and she says a Kaplan survey indicates a positive response from parents and students.
“While students are excited about most of the changes, they are tentative about the planned move to a digital test,” Brown says. “That seems counterintuitive from kids who are on their phones all the time, but a lot of them still really like using paper and pencil.”
Brown’s advice to students: Don’t panic. “There’s quite a bit of time before these changes roll out, lots of time to familiarize yourself, take practice tests, take a program.”
Kristen Kaczynski, Director of College Counseling at North Shore Country Day School in Winnetka says students and parents seem to be taking the news in stride, largely because changes don’t take effect until 2016.
“We have always encouraged our students to remain focused on their high school coursework as the best preparation for standardized tests, and, with the changes to the SAT, this advice will be even more important,” Kaczynski says.
