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New SAT trains bloggers and politicians

May 5, 2005

SAT Essay Test Rewards Length and Ignores Errors: Dr. Les Perelman a director of undergraduate writing at MIT did his doctoral work on testing and develops writing assessments for entering M.I.T. freshman. He's quoted in the NYT's as saying,

It appeared to me that regardless of what a student wrote, the longer the essay, the higher the score.

Sounds like a old-time filibuster to me. He went on to say,

I have never found a quantifiable predictor in 25 years of grading that was anywhere near as strong as this one," he said. If you just graded them based on length without ever reading them, you'd be right over 90 percent of the time....r. Perelman contacted the College Board and was surprised to learn that on the new SAT essay, students are not penalized for incorrect facts. The official guide for scorers explains: "Writers may make errors in facts or information that do not affect the quality of their essays. For example, a writer may state 'The American Revolution began in 1842' or ' "Anna Karenina," a play by the French author Joseph Conrad, was a very upbeat literary work.' " (Actually, that's 1775; a novel by the Russian Leo Tolstoy; and poor Anna hurls herself under a train.) No matter. "You are scoring the writing, and not the correctness of facts."
How to prepare for such an essay? "I would advise writing as long as possible," said Dr. Perelman, "and include lots of facts, even if they're made up." This, of course, is not what he teaches his M.I.T. students. "It's exactly what we don't want to teach our kids," he said.

Could the new SAT be a training ground for today's politicians and bloggers???