Inside our neat little tweet stream, there is a particular article that is both intriguing and disturbing. This article is about the SAT standardized test that is used mainly to negotiate college admissions. As a quick summary, in 2005 the SAT introduced a new portion of the test that was a 25-minute speed writing assignment. After studying the results of some of the tests and looking at what was actually written down, MIT writing professor Les Perelman found a strong correlation between the amount of words written down and the score of the test. The more words used, the higher the grade. Using complex words and quotes also helped improve the grades, even if they were used completely incorrectly. In the end, the speed writing portion of the test is now optional, although Perelman is still advocating for the diminishing of the use of the five paragraph formatted essay, which includes an intro, three body paragraphs, and a conclusion.
While this may not seem like a big deal. the SAT (and any other standardized test) is very controversial and there is a reason for that. It is hard to prove the reliability of these test scores as an indicator of future success. To be sure, the higher one's test score is the better college they are likely to go to and therefore the better education they are likely to receive. And when one has a good education, they are more likely to get a good job. Some arguments against that would be the outside factors that influence one's test score. For example, funding to high schools. If the high schools don't have enough money, then the education they provide is considerably lacking. Therefore, it stands to reason that the students would get a worse grade on the SAT. As a side note, if they use the test scores from the SAT to determine how much funding they should give the schools, then it creates this sort of "catch 22". The students do poorly because the school doesn't have enough money, and the school doesn't have enough money because the students do poorly. It's very sad, if you ask me.
To note Perelman's comments on the well known 5 paragraph essay, I would have to agree with him. As a society, we push this on our students as the only form of writing until late high school and college. It does not, however, prepare us for high school or college. While these nice, structured, and simply formatted essays are easy to grade, they do not represent life fairly. As Perelman states, "You need to train students that the universe doesn't nicely divide. Everything is not three different things." That sums up the argument pretty nicely. We are not preparing our future generations to be creative thinkers and experienced writers by only showing them one way to write because it is easily graded.
http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2014/03/13/the-man-who-killed-sat-essay/L9v3dbPXewKq8oAvOUqONM/story.html?event=event25
