Coaching and Lasting Out New SAT :: Inside Higher Ed :: Highe...

At the board’s annual meeting Friday, officials admitted that the new writing test — a key part of the new and expanded SAT — is coachable, with significant gains possible for those who would otherwise receive low scores.

Highlighted by cburell

the new writing test — a key part of the new and expanded SAT — is coachable, with significant gains possible for those who would otherwise receive low scores.

Highlighted by cburell

The site repeats past statements that many students who are coached show little or no gain, and says that some testing companies — which the board does not name — are hurting students by telling them to memorize an essay that they can write down regardless of the essay question. This is bad advice and will hurt students, the board says.

Highlighted by cburell

But at the board’s annual meeting, Wayne Camara, vice president for research and analysis of the College Board, described research that recently found that coaching — even short-term coaching — does have a major impact on those with poor writing skills. For the research, six graduate students were assigned to put together a coaching program by signing up for a bunch of coaching services, and then developing a coaching program based on what they had learned.

A group of college freshmen were then divided in two: One group went through a nine-hour coaching program led by the graduate students and the other students were the control group. The students took the writing test before and after the coaching, and the coaching had a significant impact on those who did poorly the first time around — increasing their scores by an average of 3 points on the 12-point scale used on the essay.

Camara also said that the study had the students write two essays that are of the sort that college freshmen actually write (not the timed essay with prompt that is on the SAT). Coached students who were poor writers at the beginning did better on the actual essays and not just the SAT, Camara said. As a result, he characterized the coaching for the writing test as “not a bad thing,” in contrast to other coaching, which he said is more likely to teach test-taking skills than meaningful knowledge.

Highlighted by cburell

Lutz said that the Princeton Review commissioned a third party study on this that won’t be out until next year, but that all the evidence he is seeing from Princeton Review counselors suggests that the new writing test “may be the most coachable portion of the SAT.”

He echoed the views of many college officials who have decided not to use the writing test in saying that its approach is flawed. “It’s a bad way to measure writing skills — a 25-minute essay on an esoteric subject.”

Highlighted by cburell

Many of the SAT essay questions are philosophical in nature — the debut question, for example, was on whether majority rule is always right — and some think that the nature of the prompts contributes to their coachability as students are taught a mix of tactics to formulate good essays.

Highlighted by cburell

The board compared the rates at which students provide incorrect answers or skip questions — and those rates are constant throughout the test. If fatigue was causing problems, Camara said, the rates wouldn’t have stayed constant.

Highlighted by cburell

The SAT is considering letting people who take the test multiple times select only one part to take again, he said. For students who take the SAT more than once, many colleges allow students to take the highest score they received on each part of the SAT, so a student may be evaluated on a mathematics score from one day she took the test and the critical reading score from another day.

Highlighted by cburell