High school juniors across LI poised to take revamped SAT

Thousands of high school juniors across Long Island will pull out their pencils and calculators Saturday morning for a revamped SAT college-admissions test that reflects the most extensive changes in a decade, including principles embodied in the nation’s Common Core academic standards.

The new three-hour assessment — scheduled to start around 8 a.m. — features a greater proportion of long reading passages with some vocabulary set at a college level. There is also a revised scoring system that, for the first time, does not penalize students for wrong answers.

A 25-minute essay requirement, added to the SAT in 2005, has been dropped from the new exam. The previous writing assignment has been replaced by an optional essay that takes 50 minutes to complete and that will slightly increase total testing time for students who undertake it.

Other new aspects of the test — for example, the inclusion of reading passages based on the Constitution or other fundamental American documents — run parallel to standards encompassed by Common Core. Those academic standards issued in 2011 by the National Governors Association have been adopted subsequently, either in part or whole, by New York and more than 40 other states.

Some of the Island’s educators, who have drawn on Common Core standards in designing new lessons within their own classrooms, see the latest revamping of the SAT as a positive development. Others are unimpressed.

The assessment remains by far the college-entrance test most often taken by students in this region, despite increased use of the rival ACT exam.

“The way I see it, it’s more aligned with classroom instruction,” said Russell Stewart, superintendent of Center Moriches schools, which in 2012 began revising local lessons to reflect Common Core. “To me, it makes perfect sense.”

Center Moriches High School is one of more than 30 sites in Nassau and Suffolk designated for Saturday’s testing session.

Administration of the new SAT, which follows the introduction in October of a revised preliminary PSAT, has sparked an enrollment boom in test-prep courses. Manhattan-based Kaplan Test Prep, one of the nation’s best-known test-coaching firms, reported a more than doubling in recent sales of SAT prep books as well.

“It’s not like we’re going in blind,” said Alexis Murry, 15, a junior at Malverne High School who, like many classmates, plans to take the new SAT and optional essay assignment. Her school also has been designated a testing site.

Murry is one of 45 students at Malverne High who on Wednesday completed a 10-session, 20-hour SAT prep course sponsored by their district. Tutoring was provided by Method Test Prep, a firm headquartered in Plainview that offers student training both at regional sites and online.

Malverne’s provision of after-hours SAT tutoring is part of a districtwide incentive program aimed at encouraging more students to take the SAT. Since 2008, the number of eligible local students taking the exam has risen from 43 percent to more than 90 percent, according to Rose Linda Ricca, an assistant superintendent.

Parallels between the SAT and Common Core standards are no accident. David Coleman, a former Rhodes scholar and president of College Board, a nonprofit that sponsors the SAT, was a leading architect of the standards, along with associates in a nonprofit consulting firm that Coleman co-founded.

Other officials at Manhattan-based College Board said that, in redesigning their assessment, they considered a variety of academic standards in place in states across the country, rather than a single set of standards.

“The redesigned SAT is built from the most current research on what students need to be ready for college and careers, and is therefore more reflective of what they’re learning in high schools,” said David Adams, a College Board regional vice president, in a statement. “We removed the tricks and mysteries that had previously left some students at a disadvantage — such as obscure vocabulary and the guessing penalty.”

Many guidance counselors and other educators on the Island view the latest SAT redesign, at least in part, as an effort to better compete with the ACT. That entrance exam, published by a nonprofit agency in Iowa, is heavily used in many regions outside the Northeast.

Staffers at FairTest, a Boston-based nonprofit critical of standardized testing, said the new SAT is likely to face public skepticism due to its perceived connection to Common Core. During the past several years, many teachers and parents have complained that states including New York acted too hastily in incorporating Common Core standards into tests and teacher job evaluations.

“For many families, the connection between the SAT and Common Core is not positive,” said Bob Schaeffer, public education director at FairTest.

By John Hildebrand

john.hildebrand@newsday.com@johnhnewsday

John Hildebrand is Newsday's senior education writer and has covered school news and policy issues affecting Long Island for more than 40 years.