Was the SAT ‘dumbed down?’
After finishing up on the Common Core State Standards project, a key writer of those standards moved on to take over the College Board, which creates the SAT college entrance test.
Critics of Common Core were quick to charge that the SAT would become watered down.
A new SAT was indeed created and came into use in March 2016.So, were the Common Core critics right? Maybe so.
"The College Board, the group that administers the SAT, has redesigned the test. Due to the changes, the new minimum score for acceptance at WKU is a 1020. The accepted score on the old test was a 940."
The article continues:
“The new required score will apply to students who took the SAT after March 1 of this year. The old score will continue to be accepted if students took the SAT prior to March 1.”
Complicating all of this are some comments I’ve heard that the entire scoring scale for the SAT was revised. It will be interesting to see if there has been a sudden rise in the proportion of students scoring higher on the new SAT, something I have not seen discussed, so far.
In any event, WKU certainly doesn’t think an old SAT score is the same as one from the new SAT, and that is a fact.