SAT embraces illiteracy

The College Board recently implemented a massive overhaul of the SAT, replacing the three-hour long paper test with a new two-and-a-quarter-hour digital and “adaptive” exam. But it’s not just No. 2 pencils and test booklets being thrown out. While digitizing, the College Board has also significantly dumbed the SAT down.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the reading section. In the past, students answered multiple questions on each assigned passage of 500 to 750 words, roughly the length of the op-ed you are reading now. In the new test, students answer only a single question for each reading passage of a scant 20 to 150 words, the length of a tweet.

With longer pieces, authors can make robust arguments, use a greater number of more profound examples, deploy persuasive rhetorical techniques, add allusions and literary references, and develop a point with the intelligence and complexity necessary for nuanced thought. Unless you regularly read poetry, when was the last time you saw a passage the length of a tweet, text, or Instagram post do any of that.

College Board announced the change to “reflect a wider range of topics.” But having a brief acquaintance with several subjects doesn’t measure knowledge or analytical capabilities. The new test design merely mimics social media, training students to process information without depth. Instead of helping to correct the deficiencies in American education, College Board is indefensibly embracing increasing illiteracy.

This is not the first time the College Board has manipulated the SAT. In 2005, the SAT removed the analogies section. Analogies directly test the ability of students to recognize the connections between ideas and words, which is at the core of thinking.

In 2012, the College Board hired its president David Coleman, the architect of the Common Core. With Mr. Coleman at the helm, the College Board began adopting the Common Core educational method, molding itself to test takers in states that adopted the notorious educational program.

Common Core replaced fiction in favor of informational texts and forced students to endure math instruction so counterintuitive and absurd that professional comedians used it as a punching bag. Stephen Colbert once said Common Core helps students prepare “for what they will face as adults: pointless stress and confusion.” Comedian Louis C.K. said that Common Core made his once math-loving kids cry.

From Common Core analogies to social media-inspired reading samples, the SAT is becoming like Theseus’s ship—with each plank and section altered, removed, and replaced. Is the new object now fundamentally different from the old? The once rigorous SAT has changed so much that the only stable attributes are that the test is in English and that it’s still called the SAT.

When an institutional standard-bearer like the College Board fails to provide a meaningful measure of intellectual excellence, students and parents wonder: What are the real indicators of ‘scholastic aptitude’? As SAT continues to chase the latest educational fads, families are increasingly looking for genuine measures of academic success: logical reasoning, clear communication, creative thinking, etc. The SAT will not assess these attributes as long as the College Board continues to pursue the fleeting fashions of contemporary education.

In contrast to the College Board’s misguided goals, tens of thousands of families are rediscovering the benefits of studying great works as a robust form of academic preparation. The grassroots movement of classical, liberal arts education inspires a new generation to develop verbal and mathematical logic, emulate eloquent speech and writing, and imagine alternatives to the status quo—all by studying human excellence.

Ultimately, we don’t need a test to tell us whether high school students can read an Instagram post. Everyone knows they can do that. But can they understand and appreciate the foundational works of our civilization? Will they be inspired to pursue excellence in their own lives and for our common good? Maybe, but today’s SAT won’t be able to tell.

• Robert L. Jackson is the founder of Classical Commons, a digital marketplace connecting talent to local communities of classical, liberal arts education. He also serves on the board of advisors for the Classic Learning Test, a liberal arts alternative to SAT.