Sunday, April 6, 2014

Ready for college

Clay Hensley, director, international strategy and relationships, College Board, talks to Poonam Jain on the redesigned SAT.

What is the reason behind redesigning SAT?

SAT has been redesigned to focus on the few things that, evidence shows, matter most for college and career readiness. The redesigned SAT aims to be more relevant in changing times. It builds on the remarkable care and expertise statisticians have used to make the exam valid and predictive, while becoming more focused, useful, clear and open than ever before. Each change in the redesigned SAT focuses on the knowledge and skills that are most essential for college readiness and success. The exam is also modelled on the work students do in high school. 


How do the changes benefit students? 

The redesigned SAT is based on the few things that, evidence shows, matter most for success in college and career. 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. The exam will also be clearer and open than ever before. We will release additional information, including sample items for each section on our website on April 16. There will also be freely available practice material through Khan Academy for those who take both the current and the redesigned SAT. We will ensure students know what to expect and how to prepare for the exam. 

Please discuss the partnership between College Board and Khan Academy. 

College Board is partnering with Khan Academy to provide the world with free test preparation material for the redesigned SAT. College Board and Khan Academy will build this material together for launch in spring 2015. This means that for the first time, students who want to take the SAT will be able to prepare for the exam, practise, and identify gaps in their learning, for free. 

In the meantime, students who will take the current SAT can now go to Khan Academy to work through hundreds of previously unreleased practice problems from actual SAT exams, accompanied by more than 200 videos that show how to solve the problems step by step. 

When is the redesigned SAT likely to be launched? 

The redesigned exam will be first administered in spring 2016. College Board will release the full specifications of the exam along with extensive sample items for each section in April 2014. 

Key changes to SAT 

It will use a score scale of 1600, unlike the current 2400.The (i) evidence-based reading and writing and (ii) maths sections will each be scored on a 200- to 800-point scale. Scores for the essay section will be reported separately. The length of the exam will be about three hours, with an added 50 minutes for the essay. Precise timing will be finalised after more research The essay will be optional No points will be deducted for incorrect answers Calculators will be permitted only on certain portions of the maths section The maths section will draw from fewer topics Vocabulary will be focused on words widely used in college and beyond, and not on obscure words The reading and writing sections will be evidence-based. For instance, they will include questions that require them to cite a specific part of a passage to support their answer choice In the reading and writing sections, students will be asked to analyse both text and data in real-world contexts, including correcting inconsistencies between the two They will get source texts from science, history, and social studies, analysing them the way they would in those classes at school.

No comments:

Post a Comment