Word: grammars
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...point decline (out of a possible 1600 on those two sections) isn't much. It's less than the value of a single question, which is about 10 points. Also, the SAT was radically changed last year. The College Board made it longer and added Algebra II, more grammar and an essay. Fewer kids wanted to take the new 3-hr. 45-min. test more than once, so fewer had an opportunity to improve their performance. Scores were bound to slide...
...right. For instance, the new test favors girls more than the old one did. It is a long-standing tenet of testmaking that girls outperform boys on writing exams. For reasons I am not foolish enough to speculate about in print, girls are better than boys at fixing grammar and constructing essays, so the addition of a third SAT section, on writing, was almost certain to shrink the male-female score gap. It did. Girls trounced boys on the new writing section, 502 to 491. Boys still outscored girls overall, thanks largely to boys' 536 average on the math section...
...right. For instance, the new test favors girls more than the old test did. It is a long-standing tenet of testmaking that girls outperform boys on writing exams. For reasons I am not foolish enough to speculate about in print, girls are better than boys at fixing grammar and constructing essays, so the addition of a third SAT section, on writing, was almost certain to shrink the male-female score gap. It did. Girls trounced boys on the new writing section, 502 to 491. Boys still outscored girls overall, thanks largely to boys? 536 average on the math section...
...seven-point decline (out of a possible 1,600 on those two sections) isn?t much. It?s less than the value of a single question, which is about 10 points. Also, the SAT radically changed last year. The College Board made it longer and added Algebra II, grammar and an essay. Fewer kids wanted to take the new 3-hr., 45-min. test more than once, so fewer had an opportunity to improve their performance. Scores were bound to slide...
...standard error of measurement of about 30 points for each section. In other words, if you got a 500 on the math section, your ?true? score was anywhere between 470 and 530. But the new writing section, which includes not only a multiple-choice grammar segment but the subjective essay, has a standard error of measurement of 40 points, meaning a kid who gets a 760 on the section may actually be a perfect 800 - or a clever-but-no-genius 720. In short, the College Board sacrificed some testing reliability in order to include writing...