Press Releases
More Than 9,000 Educators Nationwide Answer the College Board's Call to Help Score Essays for the New SAT®
12/14/04
NEW YORK—The College Board today announced that more than 9,000 teachers and professors from throughout the United States have submitted applications to join a team of highly qualified and well-trained readers to score essays for the new SAT®. In recruiting the readers, the College Board has implemented a rigorous selection process and has also created a comprehensive training program to ensure that readers score the essays with consistency and fairness.
"We believe the positive response from the education community reflects broad support for improving writing in high school and college—and we are gratified by the response from teachers who have applied to help promote the importance of strong writing skills," said Photo Anagnostopoulos, senior vice president for the College Board, which sponsors the SAT. "The College Board is assembling a highly qualified, rigorously trained and supervised team of high school teachers and college faculty members to score the student essays."
The new SAT, which will be given for the first time in March 2005, will measure a student's critical-thinking skills in three areas—reading, writing, and math. It will feature an essay component in which students will have 25 minutes to articulate and develop a point of view on a specific topic.
The new writing section, and the essay in particular, will allow students to demonstrate their writing skills to colleges. "We know that writing skills are important for academic and career success, and we hope that the addition of writing to the SAT will generate support for educators who emphasize writing," said Anagnostopoulos.
"Research shows that students who can successfully write a short, timed essay are likely to succeed in college writing courses," said Brian Bremen, an English professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who is also a member of the writing test development committee responsible for making recommendations to the College Board about the new SAT. "Students can rest assured that their essays will be scored in a consistent and fair manner by readers who have undergone comprehensive and rigorous training."
Rigorous Selection Process
To qualify as new SAT essay readers for the College Board, applicants must hold a bachelor's degree or higher and currently teach, or have taught, a high school or college-level course that requires a substantial amount of writing. Retired educators also are encouraged to apply.
Close to 80 percent of the more than 9,000 applicants hold a master's or doctorate degree. Almost 44 percent have more than 10 years of teaching experience, and more than 50 percent are college faculty members.
The SAT is the only college admissions test with a prospective applicant pool of readers with this level of teaching experience.
Comprehensive Training
Readers selected to score essays will participate in a mandatory training course. Readers will be trained to assess students' ability to think critically and to write effectively under time constraints similar to those they will encounter on essay examinations and in class assignments in college courses. Readers will be trained in the principles of holistic scoring to read supportively, rewarding what is done well, rather than taking points off for errors in grammar and spelling. The essay will be scored with the understanding that it is a first draft.
The College Board has contracted with Pearson Educational Measurement of Iowa City, to train the readers and supervise the scoring. Pearson is a leader in performance assessment scoring.
Consistent Scoring
The scoring process will include thorough controls and supervision to ensure consistency and fairness. Two scorers will review each essay independently and assign it a score within a range of 1 to 6, for a total combined score of 2 to 12. An experienced third reader will be called upon if scores differ by more than one point. A supervisor will monitor the original scoring in real time to further ensure accuracy.
The College Board has been measuring writing skills for the past 50 years. In 2003 alone, essays were scored for the more than 300,000 students who took the SAT Subject Test™ in Writing.
A Difference in Prompts
Focusing on the critical-thinking skills needed in college, the essay assignments or "prompts" for the new SAT will be markedly different from those used in other standardized exams.
"Our prompts are designed to help admissions directors assess a candidate's preparedness for college-level writing," Anagnostopoulos said.
"The new prompts are also designed to be easily accessible to the general test-taking population, including students for whom English is a second language."
To become acquainted with the new SAT, students can take an official new SAT practice test and receive an individualized score and skills report free of charge at the SAT Preparation Center™.
Learn more about the new SAT essay and how to become an essay reader at the new SAT website.
For more information, please contact the Public Affairs office at 212 713-8052.