How the Common Core Is Transforming the SAT
The college-admissions test is being restructured as an extension of the controversial public-school reading and writing standards.
High-school students who enjoy obscure vocabulary and puzzle-like math problems might want to sign up for the SAT now, before the 89-year-old college-admissions test is revamped this March to better reflect what students are learning in high-school classrooms in the age of the Common Core.
While other standardized tests have also been criticized for rewarding the students who’ve mastered the idiosyncrasies of the test over those who have the best command of the underlying substance, the SAT—with its arcane analogy questions and somewhat counterintuitive scoring practices—often received special scorn.
Even David Coleman—the president of The College Board, a nonprofit that designs and administers the SAT—readily admits that for far too long students who could afford special classes and tutoring on the test’s tricks (programs that could cost tens of thousands of dollars in some parts of the country) had an unfair advantage. Coleman, who is often called the architect of the Common Core, arrived at the nonprofit in 2012 and has since been on a campaign to make an SAT test that would incentivize students to take rigorous high-school classes and not just the best How the New SAT Test Is Taking Cues from Common Core - The Atlantic: