The College Board had an optional SAT II Writing test that any college could require a student take. Fewer than 100 colleges did. The University of California did require the writing test, so it already had the writing sample. For some reason, however, it required that the writing test and the math/reading test all be issued on the same day.

The College Board could have added an optional writing section to meet this requirement. Instead, it made the writing test mandatory.

Why? About $18 million. That’s a year.

As for what the essay tests–it doesn’t test writing skills at all. A poorly written essay that provides examples and states a position will receive a higher score than a beautifully written essay that relies on analysis. The test, for what it’s worth, tests reasoning skills via written expression.

The essay is supposed to be a test of writing ability, not a test of knowledge about any topic other than English.

‘Do it on the radio’

wouldn’t pass.

As the professor said to ‘Rita’, that is an argument, not an essay.

However, to write is to put thoughts on paper. If your thoughts are jumbled, so is your writing. Yet if your grammar is good, and the sentence structure easy to comprehend it does not follow that the thinking behind it is even adequate. It can ’sound’ right yet still be nonsense.

The question is really ‘what are they testing?’ and the follow up question would be ‘why?’

“He was stunned by how complete the correlation was between length and score. “I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one,” he said. “If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you’d be right over 90 percent of the time.” The shortest essays, typically 100 words, got the lowest grade of one. The longest, about 400 words, got the top grade of six. In between, there was virtually a direct match between length and grade.

He was also struck by all the factual errors in even the top essays. . . .”

I remember one of the tenured, at the place I studied, was said to have thrown the tests down the flight of stairs in the lecture theater. Those that slid all the way down to the front row got the highest marks.

The issue of length is far more interesting. Pearlman (whose MIT credential are flashed promiscuously) seems to have based his conclusions on 54 essays selected by ETS to be representative. It may be true that ìeverything at MIT is backed by data,î but thatís just plain lousy data. Iíd be interested to hear how Pearlman graded the essays (assuming he went by the ETS anti-Joe Friday rules). In a 20 minute essay, there would certainly be a positive correlation between length and a studentís writing ability. Iím sure that ETS will respond to this, and it will be interesting to see how.

Since it is in the NYT, we are taking a big chance in assuming that any of the article is accurate.

Amen.

That being written, factual errors aren’t an issue and volume is actually something that might lend this element of the test some meaning provided it is clear that what is being tested is the ability to write extemporaneously in a limited amount of time without any source/reference materials and the ability to rewrite.

The SAT is not a teaching tool; it’s a testing tool. Is what is being tested of any real importance? Was it ever? Will anyone look back on the test and remember anything but his or her score a few months later? I didn’t even remember that after a year or two at Cal.

Remembering what my writing habits were like in high school, I think I would have done very well. The classmates for whom I occaisionally wrote (financial remuneration being the reason) would not. I once wrote a hundred-plus page essay inwhich I misspelt a single word over forty times. I still got the highest grade in the class. I did check facts (encyclopedia, almanac, etc.), but I didn’t rewrite—and, obviously, I wrote in a time when spell-checking meant looking in the dictionary and/or noticing how words were spelt while reading source material.