[Molten]

If the SAT is supposed to be a metric to compare students, shouldn't the average be kept around 500 at most? Otherwise, how are you going to tell who is excelling and who is behind? I read about a test that got rid of their out-of-context questions(such as analogies) and added in-context questions. This was a more accurate indicator of the skills needed to excel in society. This is just one of the many things SAT makers need to consider doing. Also, part of the reason test scores are low is because the strategies promoted to take the SAT. They suggest to only answer questions your confident about and thats good if your not comfortable with a subject. However, if you are comfortable with the subject matter you should answer every question. I had a friend that was taking BC calculus in high school and scored a 500 on math his first time around. I gave him this advice and he went up to 720. This just shows one of the flaws in society. Not only do we have a one-size-fits-all test, but we also promote a one-size-fits-all strategy to take it.

Considering many people commenting how poor the test is at testing academic skill, how would you test it? How would you change the test?

I would change the math questions to involve more applicable word problems and less that don't make sense. I would add some multiple choice questions that asked about math theory rather then just math practice. That way we can accurately tell how many people knew the approach. Questions such as, which method of factoring would be appropriate for this problem? For english, I would get rid of words that nobody has used. Usually they just test for who prepared for the SAT rather then who knows the word. I would combine the english and the writing into one test. They are both part of the same subject and should be dealt with as such. The writing should have more papers to write and be shorter in length. That way you can ensure each person talks about something they know and something they don't.

Full disclose: I got a 800 on the math, 580 on the english, and 420 on the writing. The math wasn't because I was great at math rather because I am fast and cautious with my math, english was largely luck(I guessed on half of the analogies), and the writing was because it was a very weird topic for me to write about. I state this because it shows clear implications into my feelings of the test and should show any bias that I may have.

Jason