Posted on 03/05/2014 12:48:19 PM PST by edcoil
The SAT college entrance exam will no longer require a written essay or penalize students for wrong answers, part of a major overhaul announced Wednesday.
(Excerpt) Read more at theblaze.com ...
Now you get credit for right answers, but no penalty for wrong answers.
This way if you completely guess and there are 5 choices for each question, you will get a 20%.
If wrong answers are penalized you will get a zero if you completely guess.
Take the test, just don’t bother studying.
Because you're still graded on the number of correct answers. To put it simply, the change is something like this:
Old system: Score = (number of correct answers) - ((some factor) * (number of incorrect answers))
New system: Score = (number of correct answers)
The SAT had a system to try to eliminate the guessed answers by subtraction of wrong answers.
https://sat.collegeboard.org/scores/how-sat-is-scored
+1 point for questions you get correct
-1/4 point subtracted for incorrect multiple-choice
0 points subtracted for incorrect student-produced response (math section)
0 points subtracted for questions you don’t answer
You might as well ask, if you’re not impeached for not upholding the law, why uphold the law?
Note the connection to Common Core. Everybody should be working to eliminate Common Core from our education system. It’s bad enough that the materials are all highly sexualized at a very young age, what they are doing to Math is a crime in itself.
In the last 2 days my husband and I have phoned our Archbishop (yes it’s in Catholic schools too) 4 State Senators and 2 Assemblymen about this abomination called Common Core.
I guessed despite the penalty out of defiance.
The New York Times highlighted a sample of the changes coming:
The SAT’s rarefied vocabulary words will be replaced by words that are common in college courses, such as “empirical” and “synthesis.” The math questions, now scattered widely across many topics, will focus more narrowly on linear equations, functions and proportional thinking. The use of a calculator will no longer be allowed on some of the math sections. The new exam will be available on paper and computer, and the scoring will revert to the old 1600 scale, with a top score of 800 on math and what will now be called “Evidence-Based Reading and Writing.” The optional essay will have a separate score.
As I recall, wrong answers are penalized to cut down on guessing. A right answer would count as a point, a wrong answer would cause a deduction of one-quarter point, and no answer would count as no points.
The questions had five possible answers. If one didn’t have a clue, then the chance of getting the right answer was 20%, so the expected value was 0.2, but a wrong answer would be a deduction of a quarter of a point, so the chances were that a guess would be a net cost. Of course, if you could narrow the answer down to two choices, it made sense to select one of the two.
If the change to scoring is being made as reported, then one might as well answer every question - there’s nothing to lose by answering a question incorrectly and a gain if the guess is correct.
[I haven’t taken such tests in forty years, so my recollection of the penalty imposed for a wrong answer may be incorrect. I was always pretty good at such tests - I got either a 790 or an 800 on the GRE Quantitative section (I was a math/physics major, so not a surprise), and out-scored my room-mate, who was an English major and no dummy, on the Verbal section.]
Great, now I can lord my good SAT score on the old, harder test over people even more :)
If they can conceive it, they can achieve it.
Yeah, but that system never really made guessing not worthwhile. You just needed to pick the right opportunity to guess. Every SAT prep program would teach that, if you could eliminate a certain number of choices as obviously wrong, then you should guess from the remaining, because the odds would be favorable enough to risk the penalty.
I said the same thing! My cousin told me she got an 1800 or something when she took it a few years ago, and I didn’t realize they changed it the way they did. I got a 1360 the first time I took it, and I thought I was hot crap. Kids today.
Give everybody an 800 and be done with it. Don’t want to damage students’ self esteem, y’know.
They are trying to control the homeschoolers and all others by - if they don’t learn to think/ to answer/ to guess/ to recognize test questions in the NEW way, they won’t get high SAT scores and will be excluded from the ‘elite’ universities. I know they are trying to control homeschoolers!!
Gotta get those test scores up so they can claim credit for Common (rotten) core.
You can tell it’s from progressives, ‘cuz there’s a free worm inside.
“One longstanding critique of the SAT has been that students from wealthier households do better because they can afford expensive test preparation classes.”
Having just done this with a senior in hs, wealthier household pay for everything and poor get waivers and some are even paid to take prep classes.
“The Times reported that low-income students will now be given fee waivers allowing them to apply to four colleges at no charge.”
Using the commonapp, you can apply up to 400 colleges free and, I have received dozens of letters from colleges that if we use the common app fees are waived.
They are trying to control the homeschoolers and all others by - if they don’t learn to think/ to answer/ to guess/ to recognize test questions in the NEW way, they won’t get high SAT scores and will be excluded from the ‘elite’ universities. I know they are trying to control homeschoolers!!
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