Brooke Higgins Uncategorized

SAT Test Optional?

Ah, the debate continues. Is the SAT a viable predictor of college performance?

One one hand, it is perhaps the only standardized measurement on a prospective student’s application. GPAs? Hardly standardized. A 4.0 at one school does not equate to a 4.0 at another school. So what can a college do? With so many college applicants, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff?

So goes the argument for the SAT: without anything else in place, it can serve as a predictor.

On the other hand, as more and more data is showing, the level of predictability is minimal. According to the latest from Joseph Soares, GPAs are indeed the best predictor of performance. Even if schools have varying standards, it seems that your GPA will determine how well you do in college. Not a standardized test.

Read more about Dr. Soares and his book, SAT Wars: The Case for Test-Optional Admissions (Teachers College Press) and see for yourself.

So where will the SAT go? Nowhere for now. But the long term future of standardized tests may be a question.

Brooke Higgins Uncategorized

Free Resource: The Khan Academy

It’s hard to argue with the premise that you get what you pay for.

However, sometimes a very valuable resource comes along that doesn’t cost a thing. The Khan Academy is just one of those valuable resources that won’t cost you a penny.

What started as an uncle creating math tutorials via YouTube for his family has turned into a major hub of educational content. Check out the videos and create an account to track your progress. (Note: you must be at least 13 years old to create an account.)

Free education at your own pace? Sounds like a lot of value for no money. Kudos Khan Academy.

Brooke Higgins Uncategorized

Irony and the S.A.T.

Peter Drucker is credited with the saying, “What gets measured, gets managed.” Drucker was one of the most influential business thinkers of all time. He developed one of the first MBA programs for executives at Claremont Graduate University and in 1987 that same institution named its school of management after him.

Ironically, Claremont McKenna College (CMC), which is a member of the consortium of Claremont Colleges, has managed its measurements unethically. As the New York Times recently reported, CMC stated that for the past six years it has submitted false SAT scores to major publications. These publications, like the U.S. News and World Report, use the scores to prepare rankings for colleges across the country.

It appears that one lone administrator at CMC has taken the blame for this egregious falsification. Richard C. Vos, the vice president and dean of admissions at CMC, has been blamed for falsely inflating the school’s rankings and perceptions via erroneous test scores. The university president, Pamela Gann, claims that Mr. Vos acted alone and on his own accord.

Regardless of blame, it seems that Drucker’s manifesto has come back to haunt the same academic institution that partly bears his name. This irony should not be lost in this ordeal.

What’s more, it makes a mockery of the entire S.A.T. process. With this incident, how should students that have to take the S.A.T. respond? Is the lesson here that students should do whatever possible–even if that means cheating–to boost their S.A.T. scores?

Maybe schools should have their own rankings for ethics? Instead of a Scholastic Aptitude Test (S.A.T.) perhaps schools should submit to a Scholastic Ethics Test (S.E.T.).

I can see it now: school administrators will need to prepare for months for the S.E.T. They would hire private tutors, take prep courses and give up Saturday after Saturday to learn how to “critically” think and verbally “reason.”

Then again, those schools will probably just figure out a way to fudge their own scores. Because after all, if it is being measured, it will be managed, even if it is unethical.

Brooke Higgins Uncategorized

Assess the Assessment

Assessments may be the most challenging job of any teacher. The purpose of any assessment is to measure learning in order to determine if a student successfully grasps the content. There are generally three assessments: formative, summative and standardized testing.

Consider formative assessments as an ongoing pulse check: a teacher may review the progress of an assignment, check in on the level of understanding with general questions or otherwise evaluate if the student is progressing during the course of study. Feedback from formative assessments is generally qualitative.

Summative assessments, on the other hand, happen at the conclusion of a particular unit or group of lessons. Students will recognize a summative assessment as a final exam, unit test or term paper. These assessments provide teachers and students with more quantitative feedback.

The other type of assessment is a standardized test, like the ACT or the SAT. The purpose of a standardized test is to compare student performance across a diverse population of test takers. Questions and answers are “standardized” so that one test can be used to compare and contrast many students. The feedback for these tests, for obvious reasons, is strictly quantitative.

Each assessment requires a unique method of preparation. As many SAT students learn, preparation for a standardized test is vastly different than preparation for a summative assessment. While most students, particularly at the secondary level, learn how to prepare for a summative assessment, few learn how to prepare for a standardized test.

Given the current trend of using standardized test scores more frequently to evaluate student and/or teacher performance, students and teachers alike may need to shift their assessment focus from summative to standardized. You may disagree that standardized tests are the best measure of student performance, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore standardized test preparation.

Brooke Higgins Uncategorized

Who is the Smartest?

Highly recommended reading: a recent article in the New York times regarding the correlation between intelligence and grades. By all means check it out.

webimageaforgood.jpgIt seems that some students are rewarded with good grades based on compliance, such as in turning work in on time, writing legibly, sitting in front of the class, etc. However, come test time, these students sometimes falter.

In contrast, students that are less compliant and perhaps only earn average grades seem to perform better on tests. Interesting stuff.

But don’t take my word for it. Read it right here.

Some major questions arise as to grading procedure, student performance and the future of education in this country.

Brooke Higgins Uncategorized

When is it Too Early to Prepare for the S.A.T.?

When is it too early to prepare for the S.A.T.? Never.

It’s never too early to prepare for the S.A.T. Any preparation is better than no preparation with one significant caveat: do not create more stress.

Stress is the absolute enemy of successful S.A.T. test-taking. Stress punishes those that take just about any standardized test.

Sure, there is a small segment of the population that strives on stress. If you are one of those people then kudos to you.

For the rest of us, stress creates major mental blockages that results in poor test performance. I’ve seen it too often to not believe in its devastating effects.

The best way to avoid stress is to prepare in advance. The more time you have to prepare, the better you will perform. Only you know how much time you need. Some students can prepare in a week, others may need a year and yet others may need several years.

The bottom line is that it is never too early. Get going on a study guide, check out www.collegeboard.com to register for the question of the day, or invest in another study tool like vocabulary flash cards or something similar.

I usually recommend at least six months of preparation. Take two or three months to prepare and take a practice test (or sit for a real test, but call it practice just to get yourself a benchmark score). After the practice test, take another two to three months to hone your skills and then take the test for real. If you’re still not achieving your desired score, try again one more time but keep in mind that after the third time your score will not move very much. All things being equal, you will see the biggest increase from the first to the second time you take the test. After that, only small improvements are most common.

So it’s never too early to start preparing. Just don’t cram the night before. Cramming creates stress and stress will punish you.

If you want the best score possible, start early and often. Start with ten minutes a day, then increase to 30 minutes a day and soon you’ll be primed for the 4 hour marathon that is the S.A.T.

Brooke Higgins Uncategorized

Two Secrets to a Better Essay

Back to School time means essay writing time. My guess is that most students, regardless of level, will be assigned some essay topic about your summer in the next coming weeks. For primary grades it might be a short paragraph about your summer. For secondary grades it might be about summer reading.

Regardless, start your school year with the two secrets to a better essay:

1) Make Your Point Clear: next time you are faced with an essay, think about who will read your essay. Put yourselves in their shoes and ask, “what number one point do I want the reader to understand?” Also known as your thesis, your main point should be very clear from the first sentence to the last. The worst type of essay is the one where the reader asks herself, “what did I just read?” Ouch! Ensure that your reader will walk away from your essay understanding your point very clearly. If you are writing about your summer vacation, make it clear how you spent your vacation. Was it fun? Boring? Short? Long? Whatever it was, make your point as clear as day. If you are writing on deeper subjects, like your summer reading, make sure your main point is the most obvious argument or statement in the essay. It never hurts to repeat your main point several times in a given piece.

2) Use Concrete Examples: I wrote about how a good essay is a “C” in a previous post. In this example, C was for concrete. The more concrete your essay, the more powerful the message. Trying to communicate that your summer was boring? Well, it’s one thing to say it was boring. It’s another thing to describe how your mind endlessly idled in a holding pattern while channel surfing through Judge Judy reruns on afternoon television programming. Or if you need to argue a point from a summer reading book, make sure you pull actual evidence from your story to paint a concrete picture of your point. For example, if you want to argue that Animal Farm is an allegory for the Russian Revolution, then use excerpts from the book to specifically connect actions and descriptions of Napoleon the pig to similar actions and descriptions of Stalin.

If you make your point clear and use concrete examples, your essay writing will drastically improve. Sure there are other things you can work on–like grammar, structure and vocabulary–but if you start with a clear point supported with concrete examples, your Back to School essays might cause your teacher to think you spent all summer studying!