Essay addition to SAT exam would add new challenges

NEW YORK -- An expected overhaul of the SAT college entrance exam looks likely to include a handwritten essay, creating a new challenge for college-bound students, a big logistic chore for test administrators and more emphasis on writing in high school.

"If there's a writing test that helps kids get into college, then schools are going to spend more time writing, which can't be a bad thing," said UCLA professor Eva Baker, co-director of the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing.

"The change could be profound if it had the impact that we hope it would have on the high school."

The essay is one of several SAT revisions expected to be proposed and put to a vote when College Board trustees meet June 27 in New York.

A nonprofit membership organization, the College Board owns the SAT and other tests and programs that have become staples of the college admissions process.

Writing samples are already part of many standardized tests, from government tests in grade school to graduate school admission exams. About 60 colleges already require applicants to take the SAT II writing test, one of 22 such subject tests the College Board offers.

But an essay would present a radical departure for the SAT and, among other things, would require a legion of readers to score it.

Though essays were used at the inception of the College Board's admissions test in the 1920s, the tests have been largely multiple choice since the 1940s.

Criticism more than a year ago from the University of California system, the largest single user of the SAT, spurred the movement to revise the exam. UC system President Richard Atkinson, a psychologist who has researched learning, complained that the SAT failed to find out what applicants actually learned in school, and he suggested it be dropped as an admissions requirement for his eight undergraduate campuses.

The criticism induced makers of the rival ACT exam to commit to adding an essay question for applicants to California universities, and the Iowa-based company may expand that nationwide. The ACT was taken by more than 1.9 million students in 2000-01.

Besides an essay, other proposed changes to the SAT are the gradual inclusion of math questions based on more advanced courses, such as algebra II and trigonometry, and replacing analogies with a text and questions that better gauge reading ability.

But the essay would be the most dramatic change.

Professor Walt Haney at Boston College's Center for the Study of Testing welcomes the idea of an essay.

"We ought to be assessing students not just in all the subjects we think are important, but in all the formats we think would demonstrate their skills," he said.

Research indicates an essay is apt to favor females over males, and upper- and middle-class students over those from lower income families, he said. And his own research suggests youngsters used to writing on computers don't perform as well writing longhand.

He also cautioned that scoring on essays is historically unreliable -- meaning the same piece of writing can yield widely differing assessments. College Board officials say that scoring of their essays is highly consistent.

Plans are to roll out the new test in spring 2005, said Wayne Camara, College Board vice president of research.

If approved, specifics would be worked out in development, but Camara described a general outline:

--The essay questions would be modeled on the 20-minute essay of the SAT II writing test, but test-takers would probably get more time to lessen the pressure on them. A sample question from the SAT II: Respond to "Novelty is too often mistaken for progress."

--Essays would be scored separately from verbal and math sections, which are now on a 200- to 800-point scale. The essay section could use that scale or some other.

--The price to take the SAT would be raised to cover the greater labor cost for scoring. Currently the SAT costs $25, rising to $26 this fall.

While tests will someday be taken on computer, Camara said, the proposed revision would remain handwritten and hand-scored.

Development and scoring of the SAT is now done under contract by the Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J.

ETS employs 10,000 teachers and college faculty it trains to score roughly 4 million essays a year on the College Board's SAT II, Advanced Placement and other tests, said ETS spokesman Tom Ewing. Most gather in study halls and gymnasiums nationwide to evaluate essays on the various tests. At least two people read each essay.

How many more scorers might be needed if the SAT adds an essay is unknown, Ewing said. But it could increase the annual number of essays ETS evaluates by about 60 percent.

Among 2001 high school graduates, 1.3 million took the SAT at least once, and many took it repeatedly over the years. For the school year ending in June 2001, 2.3 million SAT tests were administered.