New SAT tests

[Free For All]

I think it's great that the SAT tests now will contain an essay section. It seems that writing skills have really declined; I say this based on papers I see from my students. Really bad writing skills.

The thing I wonder about is how they will be able to fairly grade this portion of the test- it's obviously much more subjective that the other parts.

Here's a story about it.

What do you folks think about this?

[mgraham333]

Really bad writing skills.

Is that a sentence fragment?

[Free For All]

Really bad writing skills.

Is that a sentence fragment?

Bet yer ass it is!

[mgraham333]

to fairly grade

And is that a split infinitive?

You're going to go back and grade all my posts now aren't you.

Edited March 14, 2005 by mgraham333

[Jazz Kat]

What do you folks think about this?

oh goody!

[Free For All]

split infinitive

I frequently utilize the split infinitive. B-)

I didn't do "real well" on the SAT tests anyway.

Edited March 14, 2005 by Free For All

[Free For All]

oh goody!

I figured that's what YOU would think!

[Free For All]

You're going to go back and grade all my posts now aren't you. 

No; I see you live in Tulsa. That's punishment enough.

[Jazz Kat]

oh goody!

I figured that's what YOU would think!

[mgraham333]

Good one, Paul. Yeah, it's a shame. I am hundreds of miles from any good jazz spots. It's torture. We have a local Kenny G knock-off, Grady Nichols. As JazzKat would say, "Oh goody!" We are, however, updating the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame which isn't all that bad.

Split infinitives are hard to avoid sometimes. Just ask the crew of the Starship Enterprise. Their mission was "to boldly go..."

[Dave James]

Let me plunge the dagger in a little further. "...fairly grade this portion or "grade this portion fairly?" "Fairly" is an adverb that modifies the verb "grade", so it is properly positioned after the action word.

Seriously though, I agee that writing skills have deteriorated markedly from when I was in high school. My limited experience tells me that kids today write in a free associative manner but rarely go back and look at what they've put on the paper, i.e. they write a lot like they talk. My S.O. has a 14 year old daugher who gets straight A's, but she's a lousy writer. To her credit, she recognizes her shortcomings and has been talking about taking a writing class, but, I'll believe this when it happens. What shocks me is that someone can get straight A's who really can't write a lick. I think that can be attributed to the dumbing down of a curriculum that's geared to lowest common denominator education. I also happen to think that writing on a computer, which almost all kids do, tends to marginalize the product. It's like they think if it's written on a computer, it has to be right. Wrong!

Up over and out.

[Big Wheel]

The split infinitive proscription is poo-poohed by many grammarians. It grew out of a 19th-century attempt to force English to obey the rules of Latin grammar, despite the two being nothing alike as far as infinitives are concerned.

[Free For All]

The problem is the system where all students have to do is regurgitate facts, dates etc. They don't have to organize/express their own thoughts.

This parallels what I view as problems in jazz education- kids leave school with technical skills on their instrument but little or no imagination or creative vision.

The split infinitive proscription is poo-poohed by many grammarians. It grew out of a 19th-century attempt to force English to obey the rules of Latin grammar, despite the two being nothing alike as far as infinitives are concerned.

....and Big Wheel, you're my new best friend.

EDIT: Matt, I was just teasing. Kansas City is hardly a jazz "mecca"!

Edited March 14, 2005 by Free For All

[GA Russell]

To consider the original question...I am opposed to including an essay question on the SATs, because I think the SATs serve a useful purpose as is without being subjective.

If the college wants to see an example of writing skills, it can ask the applicants to submit a sample. I wouldn't want my entrance into the college of my choice being waylaid by a Princeton ETS employee thinking I didn't measure up to his standards. If my writing skills are so mediocre, why did I get a good score on the multiple choice part?

[Dave James]

GA,

Not to be argumentative, but what do multiple choice questions have to do with writing skills? By the way, I agree with you that evaluative subjectiveness would have to be an issue. The only way there could be any kind of consistency would be if the same person reviewed each an every writing sample. Don't think that's going to happen.

Up over and out.

[A Lark Ascending]

The problem is the system where all students have to do is regurgitate facts, dates etc. They don't have to organize/express their own thoughts.

Well, that was certainly all I was required to do when I took my first set of public exams at 16 in 1971.

The 16-year-old kids I teach today in the UK have a much wider range of skills to master and show evidence of. For example, on history papers they have to compare and contrast written and pictorial evidence, commenting on reliability and utility to the historian for a specific purpose.

Sound factual knowledge is necessary to do that well; but just regurgitating facts without relevance to the sources or question will lead to a low level of performance.

Far more difficult than anything I had to do.

I don't know what it's like in the States, but in the UK there are far too many educational experts who've not spent more than an hour or two per year in a school for decades (and that's just some of the teachers!).

Spend a week working in a classroom with kids and it all starts to look very different.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Yes, same in the US with the experts.

My feeling is that one can't rely on the school for everything. I learned a huge amount outside of school - both from my parents and from reading on my own. I don't think that a lot of the kids I have worked with (high school and now elementary school) are doing the kind and amount of reading that I was doing at their age. Poor readers make poor writers - and the Internet is largely useless because so much of the writing is unedited. It would never have been published and available twenty (or more) years ago, so a kid would never have seen it, but now it's immediately available. It's quicker and easier for a kid to look something up on the Internet than to go to the local library - and guess which option gets chosen.

Mike

[GA Russell]

GA,

Not to be argumentative, but what do multiple choice questions have to do with writing skills? By the way, I agree with you that evaluative subjectiveness would have to be an issue. The only way there could be any kind of consistency would be if the same person reviewed each an every writing sample. Don't think that's going to happen.

Up over and out.

Dave, multiple choice questions don't have anything to do with writing skills. That's my point. What the SATs do measure, knowledge of specific subjects, they do well.

Adding subjective writing skills to the mix muddies things up.

By the way, it's my belief that writing skills are already tested in high school on a regular basis. I imagine there is a grade inflation problem related to that, but I also imagine that kids with good writing skills get good grades.

The SATs are the kids' only chance to show the knowledge they have retained over the years.

[Free For All]

By the way, it's my belief that writing skills are already tested in high school on a regular basis.  I imagine there is a grade inflation problem related to that, but I also imagine that kids with good writing skills get good grades.

I don't know what they're doing in the high schools, but as one who teaches at a college I have witnessed a steady decline in writing skills of freshmen. I have my improv class write reviews of concerts they attend and what they turn in is frequently of poor quality. If this new SAT makes them focus on writing skills (at least enough to get through the test) it's a good thing IMHO.

I do agree that there are potential problems in the subjectiveness of grading these essays. This will be where the problems (read *lawsuits*) come from.

[A Lark Ascending]

I'm suspicious of the argument that there is a general decline in writing standards.

Now I certainly experience plenty of poor writing from 16-18 year olds - I'm currently being driven crazy trying to decipher coursework.

But two other things are at work (in the UK at least):

1. Far more students are staying on at school beyond 16. 25 years ago I was lucky to have an Advanced Level group of 10. Today I have three groups totaling over 50 students. Many of the poor writers we have in our classes today would have been down the pit or in the factory in 1980.

2. I'm also suspicious of our memories of our own skills at 16. I know I was still getting my grammar pulled apart at university.

The biggest weakness I see in my students is an unwillingness to read, something that inhibits their ability to write well themselves. Although I accept these are problems that need working on - even if writing skills are the same as in 1980 we should still be trying to make them better - I suspect there are other things that need thinking about.

Above all communication through reading written text is no longer the only means of exchanging information. We need to be a bit careful in thinking that because it appears that kids are not as skilled in things that were considered essential in our youth, that all is lost. There's every chance they have made up for that in developing other skills that we have failed to acknowledge.

I'm all in favour of pushing reading/writing skills - kids who lack those skills are disadvantaging themselves. But debates like this run the risk of descending into inaccurate nostalgia (a sort of parallel to jazz musicians ain't what they used to be...of course they're not, they're doing something else).

Edited March 15, 2005 by Bev Stapleton

[BruceH]

The split infinitive proscription is poo-poohed by many grammarians. It grew out of a 19th-century attempt to force English to obey the rules of Latin grammar, despite the two being nothing alike as far as infinitives are concerned.

Nothing alike in a lot of other ways, too.

What gets me about the SAT change is that it supposedly grew out of the traditional SAT's percieved unfairness to the poor and/or minority students. OK then, but the essay inclusion would seem to make it harder for such students. So I don't get this. Perhaps it's the testing company's wish to be seen doing SOMETHING, however inane.

[Michael Fitzgerald]

Folks - the educational assessment thing is a BUSINESS. ETS and others make huge amounts of money on this stuff. Let's not kid ourselves that this is not a factor. Unlike the school systems, the ETS people aren't held responsible for the results. They just care whether every single college-bound kid takes it. If enough colleges stopped requiring SAT scores, ETS would be in deep trouble. So ETS dances around every so often changing things - "New!" "Improved!" "Essay!" "Recalibrated!"

The initial intent of the SAT was to predict success in the college freshman year. It has now been bent and twisted to try to do a helluva lot more. It probably doesn't even do a good job on its original intent now.

Mike

[alankin]

This sentence no verb.