Plug and Chug on the Current SAT? I Don't Think So!

So I've been reading some of the pro-College Board propaganda regarding the SAT redesign, and where the math is concerned, I feel the writers in question must hail from some bizarre parallel universe. I've been preparing students for the SAT for nine years, and quite frankly, the claim that the current test favors plug-and-chug mathematics over "deep understanding" and "real world problem solving" (God save me from empty buzzwords!) simply does not jive with my own experience.

Clearly, many of these folks have never worked with actual teenagers in an actual classroom; otherwise, they'd know that the solutions to apparently "simple" SAT Math problems are frequently not evident to the average adolescent and often do require critical thought. For example, take this question:

A string is cut into 3 equal parts. These pieces are then cut into 4, 6 and 8 equal parts, respectively. If the resulting pieces all have integer lengths, what is the minimum length of the original string?

This seems simple, right? Indeed, solving it only requires basic middle-school math. But in order to complete this problem - and others like it - correctly, you have to understand that "cut into equal parts" is referring to division, and then you have to make the connection to least common multiple; in other words, you have to understand what division and the least common multiple are conceptually and be able to recognize how they'd be applied in unfamiliar contexts. And can my students do this? Nope! Most of the time, they get distracted by the odd surface features and fail to grok this question's deep structure.

Real world problem solving? Word problems are already a central feature of the current SAT, and most of them can't be "cleverly back-solved" -- at least, not efficiently. You will not do well if you don't know how to, among other things: 1) calculate percents and apply them in "authentic" contexts; 2) use the concept of the average to find a requested value; 3) write and solve linear equations based on information given in a text; 4) write and solve systems of linear equations, again based on information provided in a text; 5) read tables and graphs; 6) apply basic geometric theorems to complex diagrams; or 7) interpret key mathematical vocabulary and use the basic field properties of real numbers.

There are features of the new SAT that I like. I like, for instance, that they're adding a "no calculator" section, as I think today's students are far too calculator-dependent. But in advertising this redesign, let's not blatantly mischaracterize what it will replace. It is just not honest to pull out the rare odd logic question and argue that the entire old-style SAT is like that. I know this test backwards and forwards, and I can assure you that at least 95% of its content can be connected to the in-school math curriculum -- and no, students can't skate by without thinking carefully about what things mean.

In Defense of "SAT Words" (Cross-Post)

Brobdingnagian.

If your reaction upon reading the above word is to scratch your head, that's okay! "Brobdingnagian" is not commonly used and certainly isn't "career relevant." It is, however, a word that delighted one of my sixth grade students when he heard it. When I explained what it meant - gigantic - and where it came from - Jonathan Swift - said student immediately recorded it on his smart phone and declared that he planned to use it in school the following day. (And hopefully, once he's older and a more confident reader, the joy of discovery he found in "Brobdingnagian" will inspire him to read Gulliver's Travels.)

This post is not a full analysis of the upcoming changes to the SAT. I'm reserving my final judgment until I see the framework the College Board is scheduled to roll out in mid-April. But I want to address something I'm seeing in articles touting the aforementioned revisions that I personally find troubling. Over and over again, I'm seeing variations on the following theme: "Hooray! Students will no longer be expected to study tedious flashcards covering words they will never use in real life and will probably forget once the test is over!" In my view, that attitude is profoundly misguided. 

Granted, flashcards don't foster long-term retention of new vocabulary. That requires multiple exposures in helpful contexts. Students often ask me how I happen to know so many "SAT words," and the answer is really quite simple: I read. I read all the time -- and what's more, I read in a variety of genres. I read my mother's Merck Manual, worked out that "hep" means liver and "cardio" means heart, and consequently discovered that other big, technical terms could be deciphered if broken down into their prefixes, suffixes and roots. I read fiction and learned multiple ways to describe a summer day. I pursued historical knowledge and, as a result, learned the meaning of "forge" and "churn." At no point did I ever pick up a flashcard. I didn't need to. My environment was saturated with words.

Unfortunately, while I do my best to build my students vocabulary through context rather than dry lists of words, when they prepare for the SAT, they are often forced by time constraints to rely on brute short-term memorization. But that's not the fault of the SAT. If your seventeenth year was spent anxiously cramming, the people who educated you for the first sixteen years did it wrong -- and changing the test is not going to change what isfundamentally broken in public education. It's not going to get rid of the teachers who use reading as a punishment. It's not going to get rid of curricula that deemphasize factual and cultural knowledge in favor of "critical thinking" and content-poor "skills." 

Honestly, it makes me sad to think that so many were not taught to appreciate the complexities of our language because five dollar "SAT words" are actually not as pointless as their detractors claim. English has multiple words to express, say, the concept of anger because those words are necessary to describe the many facets of that emotion -- and the same goes for any other deceptively simple idea you can name. Remove the more "obscure" terms and what you have is Newspeak -- a language devoid of humanity and nuance.  Further, as illustrated by the anecdote above, bizarre, grandiloquent words can excite children if they're presented in the right way -- as passports to a vast universe of knowledge.

And at any rate, what message are you sending to our kids when you imply that certain words are "irrelevant'? That education is a mercenary enterprise? That if it won't make you "career and college ready," it's pointless? Folks, basic competency is important, but it's only the start of education, not the end. The end should be to raise creative, curious, and (hopefully) morally-centered adults -- and that won't happen so long as we have Eustace Clarence Scrubb waiting in the wings to tell my sixth grader that a word that fires his imagination has no practical purpose and he should read a report from the EPA instead.