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posted by Cactus on Friday March 07 2014, @04:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the uphill-in-the-snow-both-ways dept.

Papas Fritas writes:

"Kimberly Hefling reports from AP that the SAT college entrance exam is undergoing sweeping revisions in the first major update since 2005. College Board officials say that this is needed to make the exam more representative of what students study in high school and the skills they need to succeed in college and afterward.

The test should offer "worthy challenges, not artificial obstacles," says College Board President David Coleman. Scoring will return to a 1,600-point scale last used in 2004. There will be a separate score for the optional essay and students will have the option of taking the test on computers. One of the biggest changes in the SAT is that the extra penalty for wrong answers, which discouraged guessing, will be eliminated and some vocabulary words will be replaced with words such as "synthesis" and "empirical" that are used more widely in classrooms and in work settings. Some high school and college admissions counselors say eliminating the penalty for wrong answers and making the essay optional could make the test less stressful for some students.

College Board is also partnering with Khan Academy to address one of the greatest inequities around college entrance exams, namely the culture and practice of high-priced test preparation which critics call a tool to protect the interests of the elite. "For too long, there's been a well-known imbalance between students who could afford test-prep courses and those who couldn't," says Sal Khan, founder and executive director of Khan Academy, "We're thrilled to collaborate closely with the College Board to level the playing field by making truly world-class test-prep materials freely available to all students."

 
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  • (Score: 4, Funny) by GeminiDomino on Friday March 07 2014, @05:26AM

    by GeminiDomino (661) on Friday March 07 2014, @05:26AM (#12500)

    Now the next time some snot-nosed PFY decides to start talking smack about "greybeards", we can remind the little shit how they had to nerf exams so the darling little snowflake could handle the stress!

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    "We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
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  • (Score: 3) by GungnirSniper on Friday March 07 2014, @05:33AM

    by GungnirSniper (1671) on Friday March 07 2014, @05:33AM (#12507) Journal

    It will be fun to see the power go out in the middle of these computerized exams. They'll be mass panic attacks and scrambles for inhalers. Back in my day, we breathed in leaded smog, and we liked it!

    • (Score: 5, Funny) by juggs on Friday March 07 2014, @05:57AM

      by juggs (63) on Friday March 07 2014, @05:57AM (#12512) Journal

      PAH! You had it easy.

      In my day there were a hundred and sixty of us living in a shoe box in the middle of the road, had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before we went to bed, drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours down pit - and then propel ourselves to school using only our tongues cleaning the road as we went. Then spent nineteen hours sat on sharpened bamboo spikes whilst reciting grammar rules. One mistake and we had to peel off our skin and be beaten by the teachers for a week straight and have salt rubbed into us. When we got home our parents would beat us with broken bottles, kill us and dance on our graves. We did this every single day for eons in order to be educated.

      Inhalers schmalers.

      You had it easy. /me doffs hat to the Monty Python team and hopes they don't crucify me for horribly mangling their work.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by mister_playboy on Friday March 07 2014, @09:48AM

      by mister_playboy (2664) on Friday March 07 2014, @09:48AM (#12577)

      Back in my day, we breathed in leaded smog, and we liked it!

      You also liked committing violent crimes... http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2013/01/lea d-crime-link-gasoline [motherjones.com]

      • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Pslytely Psycho on Friday March 07 2014, @05:03PM

        by Pslytely Psycho (1218) on Friday March 07 2014, @05:03PM (#12780)

        And because of that, GTA was born. So you too, could live the dream.....

        Seriously though, there does seem to be an undeniable link between the two.
        Which makes me wonder, (correct me if I'm wrong, too lazy to google) I believe China still uses leaded fuel. And I believe they are experiencing and increase in violent crime. Perhaps a good test case for causation over simply correlation?

        (Unless of course, my belief in incorrect, then I guess I would be an unintentional troll?)

        --
        Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday March 07 2014, @03:15PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Friday March 07 2014, @03:15PM (#12695) Journal

    If and only if you took the thing between 2004 and today, maybe(since essay questions suck). It's not a widely hidden fact that for a long time, the college board has been forced to increase the difficulty of questions to keep up with increasing demands and balance for increasing scores. They use each years' scores to help guide the difficulty of questions on the next year's exam, and that has been a pretty measurable upward trend(especially in math).

    If you took the test in, say 1980, you got a joke of a test compared to what they delivered in, say, 2000.

    here is some history [erikthered.com].

    So those young upstarts you're complaining about had to deal with much more difficult questions.

    • (Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Saturday March 08 2014, @05:33PM

      by GeminiDomino (661) on Saturday March 08 2014, @05:33PM (#13241)

      Nah, they didn't. I'm not as old as I sound. I took it a couple of times (did fine, but not fine enough for my taste) around in the years around 2000. ;)

       

      --
      "We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"