Reply to Are SAT scores just higher now than the mid/late 90s?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So it's established that:

1) more people prep 
2) guessing penalty was eliminated
3) scores were adjusted/re-normed in 90s so that they are higher.

These adequately explain why scores are overall much higher. (Test Optional explains why certain colleges' median scores are much higher but that is not the question here.) But is it actually true that the questions are easier as a few PPs have suggested?

I have mixed feelings about this topic. I went to a prep school in the 80s where it was absolutely the norm to prep. I vaguely remember the the money-back guarantee that prepping would raise SAT scores by 200 points. As a scholarship student, I did not prep. If prepping exists at all--and, yes, it is unfair that it does--better that more be included than a select few.

I don't know why the College Board decided to re-norm but I also don't see the change as a huge problem.

I am genuinely curious whether the questions are actually easier as suggested.[/quote]

The SAT is easier because the fundamental nature of the test changed during the redesign in 1994. In 1990, the College Board created a commission to update and change the test to stay relevant and address growing criticism basically. Link to the original report: https://www.erikthered.com/tutor/beyond-prediction.pdf

The SAT was redesigned to measure "achievement and developed ability" instead of aptitude, which aligned the SAT with IQ tests. The College Board renamed the test from the "Scholastic Aptitude Test" to the "Scholastic Assessment Test." The then-president admitted to renaming the test "to [b]correct the impression[/b] among some people that the [b]SAT measures something that is innate[/b] and impervious to change regardless of effort or instruction." Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/1993/03/27/sat-changes-name-but-it-wont-score-1600-with-critics/c8bf8809-2c0f-4582-9911-9e5f74ed4c6d/

The current SAT measures preparedness for college. The significant number of students scoring >1400 since the 1990s indicates that more students are prepared for college; however, the test can no longer determine if someone has the aptitude (intelligence) to do well in college. I would argue that excluding students with learning disabilities and testing anxiety, most students who don't score well on the test (1300+) have learning gaps due to a number of reasons, such as underresourced schools, weak math curriculum, never learned grammar/writing conventions, etc.[/quote]

Don't forget about the racist origins of the SAT ( see Carl Brigham and eugenics).[/quote]

This may be true, but it is completely irrelevant to the discussion of whether SATs are effective for predicting which students can succeed in college. He was a terrible person, but that  doesn’t change he fact that standardized tests are the best thing we have for college admissions. The data is very clear that SAT scores are much more  than GPAs at determining whether students are likely to succeed in college. This is even more true now that high school GPAs are very unreliable due to rampant grade inflation. Darwin was a terrible person too, but that doesn’t mean his conclusions about the theory of evolution are wrong.[/quote]

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