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WASHINGTON (AP) - Not so tricky. More straightforward. Guessing allowed. The newly redesigned SAT college entrance exam that debuts nationally Saturday is getting good reviews from some of the students who took it early this week.

The new exam focuses less on arcane vocabulary words and more on real-world learning and analysis by students. Students no longer will be penalized for guessing. And the essay has been made optional.

The College Board says more than 463,000 test-takers signed up to take the new SAT in March, up slightly from a year ago.

Because the exam is new, the College Board, the nonprofit organization that owns the SAT, has restricted the exam on Saturday to those applying to college or for scholarships, financial aid or other programs requiring a college test score. People who don't fall into these categories have been rescheduled to take the May test, which will be released at a point afterward. The College Board said it took the action because of concerns about possible theft.

Things to know about the new SAT exam:

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THE NEW STUFF

The new SAT continues to test reading, writing and math, with an emphasis on analysis. Gone: some of those obscure vocabulary words like "lachrymose" that left kids memorizing flash cards for endless hours. Test-takers will instead see more widely known words used in the classroom. Students will have to demonstrate their ability to determine meaning in different contexts.

Go ahead, take a guess. Test-takers no longer will be penalized for wrong answers.

In math, students will see more algebra and problem solving, instead of testing a wide range of math concepts. But use of calculators is limited to certain questions.

Overall, there are fewer questions - 154 on the new test plus one for the essay, compared to 171 on the old version.

Students will have a choice about whether to write the essay.

A perfect score goes back to 1,600 with a separate score for the essay.

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SOME EARLY REVIEWS

Brian Keyes, a junior at Woodrow Wilson High School in the nation's capital, says he really didn't mind the new SAT.

"There aren't as many questions where it's trying to trick you ... It was much more straightforward," he said

For math, he said, "the new version was a lot more like basic concepts, so it wouldn't be very obscure formulas that you have to remember. If you had the basics of algebra down, even if the problem was difficult, you could work your way through it."

Said classmate Isabel Suarez: "I liked it better than the old one. I thought that it was way more applicable to what we've been learning in school. The English was a lot easier for me than it was with the old one."

Isabel, a junior, said the math was a little harder. "It was more algebra based, but I think I was able to perform a lot better on it than the old one because it was stuff that I actually learned in school."

In fact, Suarez, who likes to write, said she enjoyed the reading section. "My AP English class definitely really prepared me for it. I honestly enjoyed the grammar part because I like to pick out problems in writing. It was pretty fun actually."

The exam was administered Wednesday at Wilson and other District of Columbia high schools and at schools in more than a dozen states as part of SAT School Day.

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WHAT'S BEHIND THE REDESIGN?

This was the first revision in the SAT since 2005. The head of the College Board says students taking the new SAT will find more familiar reading passages, vocabulary words and math.

"The sum of the redesign of the test is to make it much more like the work that kids are already doing in high school," said David Coleman, president and chief executive officer of the board. It was retooled, he said, "so that all kids could feel that they had a shot."

With fewer questions on the new test, Coleman said, there's more time for each of the reading and math questions.

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TIPS FROM TEST PREP EXPERTS

Some advice from Lee Weiss, Kaplan Test Prep's vice president of college admissions programs, on taking the new SATs:

"If you've been preparing and putting in your study time, then you should go in confident. If you haven't, you can take this test again or you can take the ACT, too. It's not the end of the world if you don't perform well," he said.

Don't skip the essay. Weiss said Kaplan's research of college admissions officers shows that many of the top most-competitive programs for college do look at the essay and it's an important part of their admissions process. "Make sure you are writing a good, structured essay that answers the prompt," said Weiss. "Make sure that you are varying your word choice and your sentence structure."

On reading, Ned Johnson, president of PrepMatters, said students should be literal, not literary. He said students could help themselves by coming up with their own answers before looking at the options provided.

Johnson says the new test has math problems that are much wordier than before. "Read slowly," he said. "If you read and analyze the problems piece by piece, you can avoid feeling overwhelmed and 'translate' all those words into math, you know how to do."

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FREE PRACTICE TESTS

The College Board has teamed up with online educator Khan Academy to offer SAT practice with the new exam - for free - to all students through diagnostic quizzes and interactive practice tests. The tests are available at https://www.khanacademy.org/sat.

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Early takers say new SAT 'wasn't so bad' and not so tricky

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WASHINGTON (AP) - Not so tricky. More straightforward. Guessing allowed. The newly redesigned SAT college entrance exam that debuts nationally Saturday is getting good reviews from some of the students who took it early this week. The new exam focuses less on arcane vocabulary words and more on real-world learning and analysis by students.

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ACT essay scores are inexplicably low, causing uproar among college-bound students

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ACT essay scores are inexplicably low, causing uproar among college-bound students

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2.12.16

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Many students are in an uproar over a change to the ACT that has yielded what they call inexplicably low scores on the essay section of the nation's most widely used college admission test.

Controversy erupted soon after the ACT introduced a revised essay-writing task in September that is being graded for the first time on the same 36-point scale as the rest of the test. Counselors across the country are complaining that many of their top students, who routinely earn marks higher than 30 on other parts of the ACT, are getting writing scores in the low-to-mid 20s.

"I know these kids well," said Michele Hernandez, a college counselor based in Vermont. "There's no way they should be getting scores that low on the writing. It's obviously out of whack."

Some students dissatisfied with their writing scores have discovered a solution: They can pay ACT $50 to re-score their essay. Few take this step, but those who do will get their re-scoring fee refunded if ACT revises the score upward, ACT spokesman Ed Colby said.

One Rhode Island student took the ACT in September, getting a 19 on the writing section and 30s on the rest of the test. "He's a pretty good writer," one of this student's parents said. "I thought the 19 was odd." The student asked for a re-score and was rewarded with a huge bump, to 31. There was no explanation for what the parent called a "very dramatic" change. "I was a little disconcerted."

This parent and some affected students spoke with The Washington Post on condition of anonymity to maintain their privacy in the college application process.

Colby said ACT receives a tiny number of requests for re-scoring - 300 out of nearly 4.3 million tests administered in the last school year. "It's a very small number of students who use it, and most of them do not receive a score change," he said.

ACT officials acknowledge that essay-writing scores are trending lower than scores in English, reading, math and science, but they say that scores in one subject aren't meant to be directly comparable to those in another.

"We urge students to understand that a particular score on the ACT Writing Test doesn't mean the same thing as a score on any of the other ACT tests," Colby said. "And colleges understand this."

[ACT's college admission testing grows, but scores stagnate]

The ACT essay is an optional 40-minute writing exercise offered after 2 hours and 55 minutes of multiple-choice assessment in English, reading, math and science. Before September, the ACT gave students 30 minutes to compose an essay taking a position on a given issue, with the writing graded on a scale of 2 to 12. The new essay requires students to "develop an argument that puts their own perspective in dialogue with others" in response to a contemporary issue. A sample topic on the ACT website is the influence of "intelligent machines."

Many colleges don't require the essay for students who take the ACT. But a number of selective schools, from Harvard and Princeton to the University of California, do require it. Typically, more than half of all ACT test-takers answer the essay question. The essay score doesn't factor into the overall composite score, which is often considered the most crucial takeaway from an admissions test.

One 16-year-old from the suburbs of Chicago said he took the test in October and got a 36 on each of the four required portions of the ACT. Those top marks ordinarily would be cause for celebration. But his writing score, he said, was a 23.

"I was expecting in the very worst case maybe a high 20 score," he said. "It really took me aback. It bothers me."

A 17-year-old who grew up in Washington, D.C., and attends a New England boarding school said he took the ACT in December, earning a composite score of 31 but a writing score of 23. "I was surprised," he said. "I consider myself a pretty good writer."

Responding to numerous questions, ACT officials recently published an explanation of their essay scoring. It said that two trained graders read each essay, using a rubric to assign points in four categories: ideas and analysis; development and support; organization; and language use and conventions. A third reader can step in to settle differences.

The ACT analysis showed that grades varied significantly among the five subjects on the overall test. The top 5 percent of students scored 32 or higher in English and reading. But they scored 30 or higher in math and science. And their scores were lower still in writing: 27 to 28 or higher.

Students "are only beginning to get experience with the new writing prompt," the analysis said. "Research suggests that as students become increasingly familiar with the new prompt, scores may increase and users will better understand the distribution of scores and how they correspond to the percentiles and predicted success in college."

The controversy comes amid flux in the national testing landscape. The ACT recently overtook the SAT as the nation's most widely used test, though the SAT remains more popular in the Washington region and many other markets. The College Board is scheduled to debut a new version of its SAT next month, when for the first time since 2005, the SAT's essay will be optional and the overall top score will be 1600. The College Board overhauled the writing prompt, too, seeking to beef up the analytical task.

[SAT to drop essay requirement and return to top score of 1600 in redesign]

How much colleges care about the ACT essay or the SAT essay is an open question.

Of 539 schools that the College Board tracks, 426 will neither require or recommend that students take the SAT essay when the new version debuts. Among them are the public flagship universities of Virginia and Maryland, as well as Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania in the Ivy League. Several highly regarded schools, including Columbia, U-Penn. and U-Va., also are dropping ACT essay requirements. U-Md. said its longstanding policy has been to not require the ACT essay.

[U-Penn. and others drop an essay requirement for standardized tests]

John McLaughlin, an associate dean of admissions at U-Penn., said any essay scores that are submitted will get evaluated along with the rest of an application. He said most admitted students who took the ACT have composite scores of 32 or higher. Asked about the flap over the ACT essay and perceived scoring mismatches, he said: "I can understand the unease."

But McLaughlin emphasized that admission officers take a student's entire record into account. "It's our job to get beyond these numbers."
This item has been updated. Read more: The SAT, now the No. 2 college test, pushes to reclaim supremacy College Board releases preview of new SAT exam questions ACT president: 'Relax. Tests don't define us, nor do they determine our future.'

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ACT essay scores are inexplicably low, causing uproar among college-bound students

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Many students are in an uproar over a change to the ACT that has yielded what they call inexplicably low scores on the essay section of the nation's most widely used college admission test. Controversy erupted soon after the ACT introduced a revised essay-writing task in September that is being graded for the first time on the same 36-point scale as the rest of the test.

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https://theconversation.com/heres-what-will-change-with-the-new-sat-53319

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What will change with the new SAT? Student image via www.shutterstock.com

Starting in March 2016, students will be taking a new version of the SAT. The redesigned SAT claims that it will,

remove barriers to college, making it possible for more students to own their future.

The redesigned SAT also claims to be returning to its original 1901 purpose, which was to create greater access to higher education for a diverse population. College Board, the nonprofit that administers the test, aims to do so through free practice tools, more waivers of testing fees and increased scholarship opportunities.

The question is: will the redesigned SAT be able to deliver on these attempts to ensure greater equity, or will it merely continue to measure the achievement gaps (disparity in educational outcomes) as they exist in our society?

As a researcher of educational equity, I know how much our nation's achievement gaps are a direct result of the underlying opportunity gaps that result from the inequities in our stratified educational system. Research has found that using standardized tests in general, and the SAT specifically, as a gatekeeper for access to higher education reinforces such inequities.

A multi-billion industry

Until 1994, the test was known as the Scholastic Aptitude Test: it was believed that the test measured innate ability. Subsequently, it was renamed the Scholastic Assessment Test in recognition that the test measured achievement rather than aptitude. And since 1997, it has been officially known as the SAT.

Today's SAT has been proven to be coachable - which means with tutoring and test preparation, students' scores can rise.

Eastern Arizona College, CC BY-NC-ND

Consequently, test preparation has become a multi-billion dollar industry in the U.S. as well as overseas. Students in elite schools in countries such as South Korea focus on obtaining perfect SAT scores. Test prep courses could well range from US$300 a course to $775 an hour in the U.S. and up to $30,000 in South Korea with college admissions counseling.

The SAT is used for college admissions as a measure to predict how successful a student will be in college. However, large-scale research conducted by the University of California in 2001 found limited correlation for an earlier version of the SAT in predicting future success in college.

This research has led to over 800 colleges an universities no longer requiring SAT or ACT.

In fact, a growing number of colleges and universities no longer require SAT or ACT, another widely used college entrance exam, in large part because of the limited effectiveness of the tests in predicting success in college.

What will change in the new SAT?

The revisions to the SAT to begin in March 2016 include a return to the original scoring system of 1,600 for combined math and the newly named "evidenced-based reading" subtests.

Writing an essay will now be optional. The current version (in use since 2004) requires the essay for a three-part test, with a maximum score of 2,400. This optional essay provides greater flexibility for students, particularly for those whose math skills may be much stronger than their writing skills. Such students will not be penalized for a lower writing score.

Importantly, there will be no penalty for guessing on questions - previously a wrong answer got a penalty of a quarter-point. The critical reading section, renamed evidenced-based reading and writing, will use historical documents that have inspired individuals. Examples of this would be speeches by India's leader of independence movement Mohandas Gandhi, American women's rights' activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

The math revisions are said to be aligned with the Common Core. This section will have less computation and more real-world problems.

But there are varying views on math revisions.

Schools across the nation are in different places in their implementation of Common Core State Standards. So students in different places may or may not be taught in ways that align with the revisions. For example, James Murphy, a test preparation tutor, in his article in the [Atlantic](http://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/01/new-sat-new-problems/384596/ ") suggests that the revised SAT math questions will potentially have the greatest detriment for most vulnerable students - low-income and nonnative English speakers - because of their lack of adequate preparation for these type of questions.

Some others believe these revised SAT math questions are more straightforward and require clearer demonstration of math concepts.

What will be helpful to students is the change in the vocabulary section that has been redesigned to prioritize defining more commonly used words in context rather than the notoriously obscure SAT vocabulary of previous test versions.

Philipp, CC BY

As with earlier tests, sample test questions will be available for practice.

For the transition period, many colleges will be accepting SAT scores from the previous version administered through January 23, 2016 or the revised version administered after March 5.

The College Board has created greater flexibility in the ways scores can be reported that students select by test date. For example, students can choose to report the optional essay test score for a total score out of 2,400 or report just the math and reading sections for a total score out of 1,600. The College Board says this allows students to select their best scores for reporting to colleges and comply with what various colleges are requiring.

SAT for school accountability

Of late, the SAT has not only been used for college admissions, but also as an accountability exam required for high school students under the No Child Left Behind legislation and continuing under the Every Student Succeeds Act.

This was started by Maine in 2006, followed by Colorado, Connecticut and New Hampshire, to meet the mandates of the federal legislation.

Does the test actually measure how much students are learning? Along with the proven impact of high-cost private tutoring, the use of the SAT for school and teacher deserves more scrutiny. This is especially true because standardized tests are often a primary or even sole measure used in school report cards.

In college admissions, the SAT is one of many measures of an applicants' readiness - which is how it should be.

Good measurement practice says that no single assessment should be used for high-stakes decisions. Rather, multiple measurements in multiple formats at multiple points in time provide much more robust and accurate results.

So, the college application includes test scores, GPA, cocurricular activities, early college and/or AP credits, recommendation letters and essays.

Possibly, colleges could ask applicants to create and justify a "weighted formula" that demonstrates why an applicant's total profile is a best fit for that institution for college admissions. This would require students to take ownership and advocate for their passions and successes as predictors of their future success. This type of measurement could serve everyone well.

The revised SAT can be one piece of a multidimensional system for college admissions for the over 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S.

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Here's what will change with the new SAT

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Starting in March 2016, students will be taking a new version of the SAT. The redesigned SAT claims that it will, remove barriers to college, making it possible for more students to own their future. The redesigned SAT also claims to be returning to its original 1901 purpose, which was to create greater access to higher education for a diverse population.

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AP Test Fee Waiver/Financial Aid Application with AP Exam Registration Form due by Friday, November 20, 2015!

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AP Test Fee Waiver/Financial Aid Application with AP Exam Registration Form due by Friday, November 20, 2015!

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*Attach the registration form to this application

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DEADLINE-FEBRAURY 26th!!!!!Distribution of the Registration packet has begun! 11.3.15

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PSAT Comparison from Older Version to New Version (being implemented this Octboer!)

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9th-11th grade students!!!Student Guide to the NEW format being used this year. Read through and become familiar.

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October 6th (Makeup October 8th) See Mrs. Hanson in the main office with questions

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Upcoming High School Assessments October 5th-October 9th 

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Upcoming High School Assessments October 5th-October 9th 

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Monday, October 5th- Government- Senior 1st time test takers and underclassmen repeat test takers

Tuesday, October 6th- Biology- 1st time STEM 10th grade and repeat test takers)

Wednesday-Friday- Make-up Testing

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Testing Remind Text Message Alerts-Directions

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Testing Remind Text Message Alerts-Directions