| SAT Tips for PARENTS Yes, parents need to know something about the SAT. First, visit Mr. Vornle's Page Then learn about the uses of the SAT (according to the College Board). This explanation is reprinted from the Collegeboard.com web site Why do colleges use the SAT? Colleges use the scores to predict freshman performance in college. The SAT is a three-hour test that measures two skills related to freshman performance in college -- verbal and mathematical reasoning. It does not pretend to measure all factors related to freshman success, but its scores have a statistically significant relationship to that success. SAT scores are also better than the high school record in predicting college grades in science and other math-based courses. Colleges use the scores to make part of their admission decisions, counsel students about courses and majors, place students in appropriate courses, and identify applicants to recruit. Students use SAT scores to select colleges at which they have a reasonable chance for success. The scores also add an element of fairness to the admission process because applicants' classroom grades and courses vary from student to student, teacher to teacher, and school to school. Colleges use SAT scores to predict first-year -- not four-year -- grades because freshmen tend to take similar introductory courses. Grades in the later years of college are more likely to reflect different grading patterns, courses and rigor across majors. At four-year colleges, final grade averages resemble first-year averages, however, because most dropouts do not leave for academic reasons. Does the SAT improve college admission decisions? Yes. The SAT's standardized information enables colleges to compare the academic records of applicants from 25,000 highly diverse secondary schools. SAT scores usually reflect the student's high school record, but when they don't, admission officers make special efforts to obtain additional information about students. If grades are not available or easily interpreted, they use the SAT as a reliable gauge of academic preparation. Without the SAT, high school grades would lose some of their ability to predict freshman grades in college, because grade inflation would no longer be moderated by an objective, national standard. Today, 82 percent of four-year colleges and universities use the SAT in the application process. Although nine liberal arts colleges have made standardized test scores optional in admissions since 1969, their actions have not created a trend. On the contrary, grade inflation and the variety of grading systems may be making the scores more useful. Grade inflation may be growing. In the decade since 1989, SAT takers who graduated from high school with grades in the A+, A and A- range increased from 28 to 39 percent, while their average SAT scores fell. Is the SAT the most critical factor in college admissions? No, and research confirms this. Our guidelines on test use advise colleges to consider a wide range of factors when making high-stakes decisions, and not to base decisions solely on scores when other relevant information is available. We also advise colleges not to use "cut-off" scores unless the scores are validated and used with grades or other indicators of academic performance. Surveys of admission policies, practices, and procedures repeatedly find that colleges follow our guidelines. The surveys find that colleges consider the rigor of an applicant's academic program and high school grades more important than test scores. The more selective the college, the more other criteria come into play. Selective colleges and universities reject many applicants with top scores every year. Contrary to what many people may think, SAT scores alone do not override negative factors, get students into college, or keep students out of college. What factors affect SAT scores? Individual and group scores reflect a vast network of socioeconomic, educational, and demographic factors, including parental education, family income, and experiences and expectations in the home and school. The interrelatedness of these factors is obvious: parents with more education earn higher incomes, allowing their children to attend quality schools, participate in more activities, take challenging courses, and get high grades. Differences in scores persist despite similarities in family income and parental education, however. These score differences indicate the importance of other factors, such as little family support for and experience in higher education, years of low expectations, poor academic preparation, inadequate teachers, limited access to challenging courses, poor facilities, overcrowded schools, poverty, discrimination, and tracking into low-level courses. The SAT merely predicts first-year college grades, but it is easier to "shoot the messenger" than to address the complex factors that lead to low grades. Do commercial coaching courses make a big difference in admission decisions? No. We distinguish between coaching and "preparation." Coaching focuses on drill, tricks, and memorization, and tends to use unrealistic testing situations, claim huge score increases, and take the form of expensive out-of-school programs. We recommend test preparation, which includes a rigorous program of courses in English, mathematics, science, and other academic subjects; efforts to become familiar with the test; extensive reading to increase vocabulary and comprehension; and practice on real tests in actual testing situations. Scores rise as students improve their verbal and mathematical reasoning skills, which develop over time, in and out of school, and are related to academic success in high school and college, and to college graduation rates. In general, scores rise a total of about 50 points every year in high school, particularly if students take an intensive program of college preparatory courses and engage in other learning activities, such as outside reading. How much do commercial coaching programs raise SAT scores? One of the most objective and scientific studies of commercial coaching was published this year in the Journal of Educational Measurement. This study compared the actual test scores of matched groups of students who did and did not attend out-of-school coaching programs between tests. It found that students who were not coached gained an average of 43 points on the SAT's 400-1600 score scale, and those who were coached added another 26 points. The 26-point total is within the test's standard error of measurement -- 30 points up or down on the each part of the test, for a total of 60 points. Most gains were on the math, not the verbal, part of the test. Does a 26-point gain from coaching make a difference in college admission? Probably not. Most admission people know that such a difference is not meaningful and place greater importance on the high school record than test scores. High test scores alone do not guarantee admission, particularly at selective colleges and universities. How should students prepare for the SAT? We tell students to work hard in the most challenging courses available. This is the activity that colleges value more than test scores, and the activity that helps students prepare for college -- and for the SAT. Before taking the SAT, students should review algebra and geometry; become familiar with the test's format, directions, question types, and patterns; and learn how to navigate the answer sheet and guess wisely. We provide free materials for this purpose, including Taking the SAT I: Reasoning Test and sample practice tests, and on the web at www.collegeboard.org. We are developing additional materials that will be even more widely available when we launch collegeboard.com next year. Students should also take advantage of other free or low-cost methods, such as preparation programs in their schools, videos, and books of actual practice tests. Why does the College Board tell students to take demanding courses in high school? We do this because these courses enable students to get higher grades in college and higher scores on the SAT. These courses are especially helpful for African American and Latino students. The U.S. Department of Education released a study by Clifford Adelman this year, showing that by the time students enter college, the courses they took in high school are more important than test scores, class rank, or grade averages. Adelman found that course work reflects 41 percent of the academic resources students bring to college, followed by test scores (30 percent) and class rank/academic grade averages (29 percent). He also found that an intense, quality curriculum has a greater positive impact on African American and Latino students than any other pre-college indicator of academic resources. This impact is greater for those two populations than for Asian Americans or whites. Why aren't SAT averages the same for males and females? The average SAT scores of female seniors were 7 points below those of men on the verbal section and by 35 points on the math section in 1999. People who accuse the SAT of gender bias may not know that certain factors account for these differences. One factor is population size. Female SAT takers outnumber males. In testing, as numbers go up, scores tend to go down. Female SAT takers also come from families with lower incomes and have parents with less education than men, implying that they are the first in their family to go to college. They also take fewer challenging math and science courses in high school and aspire to fewer careers in these fields than men do. Male and female scores may also reflect different interests, learning styles, and strengths at various stages of development. Despite lower SAT scores, females comprise 54 percent of test takers and 54 percent of college freshmen, with highest percentages at the most selective institutions. Does the act of testing affect scores? Claude Steele of Stanford University has found that the testing situation itself may reduce scores when students are told that a test is for high stakes or that minorities and women perform at lower levels than other groups. Some of his methods do not apply to the SAT, since examiners do not introduce the test by stating that members of certain groups perform poorly on the test, or that scores are critical or unimportant. However, expectations probably do affect performance to some degree. SAT scores are accurate predictors of freshman grades in college, so if expectations raise or lower scores, they must also raise or lower freshman grades. And if this is true, perhaps expectations produce group differences in elementary grades, high school grades, class rank, graduation, and other academic factors -- perhaps to the point of discounting demographic and socioeconomic factors and knowledge of subject matter. Do low average scores for some groups reveal problems in education and society, or test bias? Faced with unpleasant news, it is human nature to seek a scapegoat or kill the messenger. Those who claim that score differences are the result of test bias must ignore the group differences cited above and the unequal educational opportunities that reporters, educators, and researchers have documented for decades in barrios, inner cities, and isolated rural areas. How can you be sure the SAT is fair? Every SAT question must pass eight rigorous steps before it can appear on an operational form of the SAT. Test development is handled for the College Board by the Educational Testing Service. At every stage, ETS's professional test developers review all questions and each test for fairness. They follow detailed guidelines to ensure cultural, racial, and ethnic diversity, and sensitivity to the changing connotations of certain words and phrases. Reviewers are on the lookout for stereotyping language, inflammatory materials, language with inappropriate tone, and inappropriate underlying assumptions. ETS then subjects all questions to a sensitivity review by trained staff and external professionals, including women and minorities from different geographical areas, disciplines, and institutions. The sensitivity review ensures that individual questions, the test as a whole, instructions and any descriptive materials contain no language, symbols, words, phrases and examples that might be regarded as sexist, racist, or otherwise potentially offensive, inappropriate, or negative toward any group. Specific efforts are made to evaluate materials and questions from the perspectives of women, individuals with disabilities, and all minority and ethnic groups. Tests are also reviewed to ensure that they contain positive references to the contributions of women and ethnic groups. What else does Educational Testing Service do to ensure fairness? It also includes questions in pre-testing sections before they are used in a section of the SAT that counts toward a score. Then, it conducts statistical analyses to examine the difficulty of each question and its relationship to student's total score and other questions. It conducts Differential Item Functioning (DIF) studies to determine how different groups of students (gender, ethnic/racial groups) perform on each question during the pre-testing. To avoid using questions that are more difficult for one group than another, ETS compares the performance of females and racial/ethnic groups with the performance of white and male students of the same ability. It assembles each form of the SAT to minimize group differences across all questions and to meet test specifications of the number and type of questions required at each level of difficulty. Next, special committees of trained high school and college educators review all questions and tests before they are used operationally. These reviewers examine every aspect of every test to ensure a balance of questions in terms of cultural diversity and diversity of background and again check the language and tone of each question. After tests are administered operationally, all questions and tests are analyzed to ensure the fairness of SAT scores. Does the SAT measure intelligence? No. Intelligence is a mix of many factors, and the SAT only measures verbal and mathematical reasoning skills. It is not a complete or adequate measure of intelligence, nor was it designed to measure intelligence. Does the SAT open doors to college and enhance diversity? Colleges are trying to diversify their student populations by looking at high school course work, grades, and community and school activities as well as test scores. The SAT opens doors by helping colleges identify students whose backgrounds do not match those of traditional college populations. This is particularly true at highly selective colleges, which select students from large pools of highly diverse and competent applicants. Does the SAT help students who are not members of an "academic elite?" The SAT identifies able students from every race and stratum of society with no reference to family, academic, or professional connections. The belief that the curriculum and standards of American education are set by a privileged elite in order to keep others from achieving them is ironic in a nation devoted to the democratization of educational opportunity. In fact, colleges introduced the SAT to eliminate unfair barriers to higher education based on privilege, to give all students an equal opportunity to demonstrate their academic abilities regardless of income, class, connections, or social status. The SAT continues to expand opportunity. More first-generation college students take it every year. http://www.careerexplorer.net/articles/sat.asp The article was adapted from articles found on www.collegeboard.com www.oocities.org/teachers2teachers/vornle.html << my friend Vornle’s views Now that you have stopped worrying about the SAT, why not focus on getting your child to study issues and items that are important for later life? Instead of an extra year of advanced math, how about more foreign language? See JUST ENOUGH MATH Why not learn about another culture? OK, back to the SAT Prep page. Print a list of words and start practicing with your child. Ask your child to confert 1/7 into a percent. Ask for a conversion, 6 gallons into liters. (not required for SAT, but it's a good exercise... the conversion is about 3.7 or 4 liters to one gallon) Convert 200 miles into kilometers. (10 miles, 16 kilometers) |
| A general statement from an SAT Coach I believe that your child knows the math principles, but your child just needs to see that there are a variety of ways to apply the principles. Sitting with Number2.com is helpful! www.number2.com Most of the student's work is to look through the tests for difficult problems. When your child finds a difficult problem (that s/he can’t do in one minute or less), then s/he needs to put a question mark on the page and then we will meet to discuss the lesson. S/he has the tips that s/he needs for the reading and other verbal skills… so the rest of the work will be a focus on math. WHAT CAN PARENTS DO? Introduce difficult words… Get the words at SATWORDS and at freevocabulary.com Your child must do the work, but you can help your child enjoy the rewards. When the score goes up 200 points, it will be because s/he put the time in to boost her/his vocab score. For math, the student's job is to find the problems that flummox her/him and my job is to show the short cuts. I have a fun book call 100 Math Tips and that should be good for your child to work through. Again, I am not worried about your child's ability to get a good score on the SAT. The SAT coach needs only to point in the direction to go. And it will be a pleasure to work with your child. School and SAT Coaches teach: Patterns Trends Rules Singular situations Exceptions to the rule List of results Mansoor, Kuwait Before 810 (M 420, V 390) After 1070 (M 580, V 490) Up 160 Math, up 100 Verbal |
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| Play the CDs... some of them contain material that needs several exposures. Did you get the GREAT SPEECHES CD? How about the 600 books? Use the Videos for a Portfolio to get your kids thinking about a "performance portfolio" |
| TIP Most kids learn by talking and listening. Vocabulary is learned through stories. Tell stories about how your remember "vicarious" and the guy named Gregory who is very gregarious That's a stupendous dress. He is inebriated... that's why he lost his driver's license for a year. |
| Many colleges accept a portfolio from studients who come from homeschools. I don't know why other parents aren't making their kids submit portfolios of their best work... as long as the portfolio has a theme, I'm sure it adds to the candidate's chances. |
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| Touch typing helps... |
| Dear Parents,
SAT is about preparing for college. Your child wants to get into college, so you are helping your child prepare by studying for the entrance to college. How else can your child prepare for college? What can YOU do to set an example? TALKING POINTS 1. What did Bill Gates say about education? See www.whatshouldstudentslearn.com 2. What have you done to prepare your child for living in a college? I found a range of articles at www.kidpower.org that make good starting points for discussions. http://www.kidpower.org/Articles/men's-safety.html http://www.kidpower.org/Articles/women's-safety.html http://www.kidpower.org/Articles/Safety-tips.html We know that most people do not learn just by reading. Talking, hearing stories, discussing issues and watching videos help students with the other learning styles make 3. Colleges use letters of recommendation, extracurricular activities, the personal statement letter, grade point average, standing in the class (class rank) and ACT and SAT results. What are other ways or items that colleges use to “measure” the student? Interviews and portfolios. Watch “Private Universe.” It is a powerful demonstration of the power of a “personal explanation” that pushes away a generally accepted explanation. Ask your child “Why is the sky blue?” and “What causes the seasons – why do we see winter and summer?” and “explain why we see full moon and half moon – describe how the light gets to the moon in its various phases.” Watch Jay Leno’s “Jaywalking” where he asks people on the street common questions from grade school – embarrassment can be a strong motivator to learn how to “perform your understanding.” Talk about the “elevator talk.” Can you make a presentation in 30 seconds about something you believe in? Discuss “When am I ever going to need that?” See "Just enough math" Enough Math2 Enough Math 3 What is the purpose of knowing the story of Moby Dick? What is the “moral” or lesson behind the story? Frequently Asked Questions – starting points for a discussion ============================ When should my child take the SAT? How many time should my child take the exam? Should my child be studying to prepare for the exam? What can I do to help my child prepare for the exam? Can I use a calculator? (GRE no, SAT yes, but not a scientific or programmable calculator) General points – mentor by example Do you read a newspaper every day – even just the front page? Do you listen to NPR instead of music? (for at least part of the day) Do you show your child web sites where they can put informational podcasts on their listening device? Do you listen to podcasts through your computer? (You can get speeches and interviews by going to web sites or just ask a teacher to give you podcasts on a CD). Do you continue learning? Do you show your ways of learning? Do you adapt your environment to help you learn faster and better? If you are an audio learner, do you have a CD player around you? If you are a visual learner, do you use videos and colored pens? Go back to the SAT Home Page and print some tips... |