谁说只有中国学生学习负担重呢？看来天下学生都一样。连向来自诩学习负担轻的美国人也撑不住了，SAT也许是进入“常春藤”的敲门砖，但是想要得到这块砖可不那么容易哦
When it comes to get into college, a good score on your SAT is themagic ticket. Or is it? Carol Costello is taking a look at the changingstandards for Standrdized Test in an "A.M. Original," "EducatingAmerica."
Never has one test cost so much angst. That's a-n-g-s-t, a feeling of anxiety.
"Are you nervous? Are you excited?"
"Oh, I'm so nervous."
Hence, this class designed to beat the test.
"And that's enough to guess E over D."
Parents pay The Princeton Review and other organizations anywherefrom 600 to $8,000 for special classes or private tutors so their childcan literally beat the SAT. 16-year-old McKenna Baskett from Missouri......
"I got the gist of it."
......is spending her summer in SAT class.
"I'm really a bad test-taker and they're really hard questions, so I'm just hoping I can get through it."
Imagine, all of this a-n-g-s-t for a test that many say doesn't even measure how smart you are.
"There's a whole word list you can do."
Ed Carroll tutors students to take the test.
"There are people who think naturally and incorrectly that the SATis a measure of intelligence and it never was. The only thing the SATis really good at is predicting how well you do on the SAT."
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Carroll says it's not that a student needs to take special coursesto ace the SAT. But once a student realizes there are patternsinvolved, sort of like Sudoku, it's a whole lot easier.
"A squared plus B squared equals C squared. On this test the numbersthat you will see most frequently, three squared plus four squaredequals five squared. So if I tell students, three, four, five, that'swhat you need to know. You don't need to know all the terms and all thediff kinds of solutions. You need to know three, four, five."
"That's just wrong."
Laurence Bunin overseas the SAT for The College Board.
"The SAT is a test of the basic skills that one needs to succeed in college."
"Does it show you how smart a kid is?"
"Well, it shows you how much they've learned in school."
But many universities are now saying the SAT says very little aboutwhat a student can do. Some 850 of them have now made the SAT optionalfor most applicants including ten this year, some of them highlyselective top tier liberal arts schools.
"Would you like to see the SAT go away?"
"I would love to see it go away."
"Am I clear?"
"Crystal."
Shawn Toler, principal at the KIPP school in Baltimore for inner city kids, says the deck is stackedagainst lower income children. They're generally not able to attendelite high schools or afford expensive tutors. According to the collegeboard's own stat, in 2009, kids whose parents make up to $20,000 ayear, scored an average 1,321 on a scale of 2,400. If a kid's parentsmakes above $200,000 a year, that score shoots up 381 points to anaverage of 1,702.
"What you're really seeing is that the playing field isn't fair.It's not the SAT that's the problem. It's any measure of educationalachievement that's going to show the same thing."
But if the playing field isn't fair to begin with, educators likePrincipal Toler wonder why a perfect 2400 on the SAT seems to matter somuch.
Keep in mind, universities use the SAT as just one indicator of whata child is capable of in college. They also use things like high schoolgrades, activities and written essays. All of those things weigh in.
[ 本帖最后由 goodbyekiss 于 2009-12-31 14:48 编辑 ] |
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