This spring, high school students throughout the U.S.—including those at Cy-Fair ISD—will be introduced to an entirely redesigned SAT as the College Board, a nonprofit organization that designs and administers the SAT, has drastically changed one of the most popular college aptitude tests in the country.

Beginning in March, students will take a redesigned SAT that, according to the College Board, does away with the difficult vocabulary section and adds in more straight forward questions based on real-world college and career concepts.

When changes to the test began to circulate last year, CFISD quickly began planning the district’s approach to preparing students, said Linda Macias, associate superintendent of curriculum, instruction and accountability. Officials started training teachers last spring and have been introducing the new format and content to the students throughout the school year, she said.

“We have an SAT prep course and a scholars course where the curriculum is based on preparing students for the SAT,” she said.

Cyndie Schmeiser, chief of assessment at College Board, said the changes to the test came after the discovery that of the 1.7 million students who took the SAT in 2015, only 42 percent were ready to enter college without the need for remedial courses. She called the statistic “staggering.”

“As we stepped back, we thought we needed to rethink assessment and not only help more kids become prepared for college or career, but we need to connect them with opportunities to help them navigate that pathway to college, which is not always a clear one,” Schmeiser said.

She said the College Board stays on top of curriculum changes at the high school level and regularly adjusts the test to follow those trends. The last time the test received a major change was in 2005.

“We redesigned the SAT to focus very clearly and specifically on those skills that are necessary for college readiness and success. These are the skills that students are learning every day in the classroom, but we are focusing very clearly on really what matters,” Schmeiser said. “We are not measuring everything students learn but those that research has told us are most important.”

New test, new features

The new SAT, which will be administered for the first time to CFISD students beginning March 5, will continue to test math, reading and writing. The way those subjects will be tested, however, has changed, Schmeiser said.

“The test is a little shorter—there are fewer questions—but we are still focused on testing kids’ college-readiness skills in reading,  writing and math, and there is also an optional essay,” she said. “The subject areas are still the same, but the approach within and what we are measuring in those areas have changed quite a bit. To make [the test] the most consumer-friendly, we thought making [the essay portion] optional or allowing each higher education system to decide whether to require it gave our constituencies the most flexibility.”

The College Board also changed the way students study for the test. Instead of paying for costly SAT practice courses and study materials, the College Board partnered with Kahn Academy to offer SAT practice materials online for free.

Over three-quarters of a million kids have already gone into satpractice.org and have practiced with over 15 million problems, Schmeiser said.

“We are getting feedback from kids stating that the new test is more of a reflection of what they have learned in school,” she said. “We are getting a lot of reinforcement from kids and colleges as well. Frankly, they are finding the questions to be very clear and straightforward, so we are excited and very optimistic and are looking forward to the first test date in March.”

CFISD adjustments

Macias said the transition to the new SAT should be seamless for CFISD students and educators.

“We are testing more of what our kids are already learning in the classrooms,” she said.

One of the most noteworthy elements of the change is the test has become more transparent, Macias said.

“It’s more fair to all students,” she said. “It tests them on content that is more relevant to real life and is more accurate to determining college and career readiness. The math problems focus on more important skills instead of giving a shallow test of a wider range of skills.”

CFISD administers the PSAT, an SAT prep test, to all sophomores and juniors each October. Although sophomores will have ample time to prepare for the new test, juniors took the old PSAT in October 2014, which only gave them one opportunity to practice with the new format.

Wilson Book, a junior at Cypress Ranch High School who also helps tutor other students, said he does not think the 2015-16 junior class has been put at any significant disadvantage, citing the Kahn Academy partnership as a big step up in creating more useful study materials.

“For the most part, I think that students will be as prepared for the new SAT as they want to be,” he said. “As for students in my class, everyone I have talked to is happy about the changes because they think that it is going to be a much easier test.”

Yvonne Cumberland, owner and director of the SAT prep company Texas Educational Consultants, said it could take three or four tests before students really figure out the new SAT and educators can really gauge how students are handling it.

“It’s going to be interesting,” she said. “Only time will tell at this point.”

Cumberland said, because the sections are not broken up in the way they were before, students are going to need to have more stamina.

“They questions will come in bigger chunks; all of the math and reading questions will come together,” she said. “For students who struggle with a certain subject, they’re going to have to be able to do it for a longer period of time. It’s good to use breaks to get up, walk around, stretch or get a drink of water.”

Cumberland said changes to the math and reading portions could throw some students off in the early stages as well.

“Math is definitely harder,” she said. “The old [SAT] stopped at Algebra 2, but the new one includes more questions on statistics and trigonometry. The reading section is going to include more charts and graphs, kind of like how the science section of the ACT is designed. They want to make sure students can interpret charts and graphs.”

Meanwhile, CFISD continues to encourage students to take advantage of the prep materials offered online at www.collegeboard.org. Macias is confident the changes will be beneficial to students.

“It just lines up more with the curriculum and content that they are already learning,” she said. “We think the changes are going to be a positive thing for all students.”