In 1981, the Princeton Review “revolutionized” the way that students prepared for standardized tests: the Review showed students guessing strategies and elimination tactics to use when they were unsure of how to tackle a particular problem.
This seemed great: techniques you could use to guess when you didn’t know the material and the possibility of earning some points anyway.
Thirty years later we have a huge problem. That one simple idea, that there are ways to get around the SAT, completely disempowered students. Why? Because the trend has gone from “here’s how to tackle that last really tough question or two” to “you can’t learn this–here’s how to guess your way to a tolerable score.”
The minute you tell a student that a question–any question–is so challenging that you can’t teach her the skills to answer it and, instead, you’ll show her how to guess the right answer, she doesn’t gain confidence. Instead, she hears the following:
You can’t conquer this. This test is too hard. The SAT is smarter than you are.
Well I say enough already.
The SAT is not smarter than any of us; it’s just a test of math, grammar, and critical thinking skills.
I’ll rephrase: everything on the SAT is completely learnable. It is not the Holy Grail of knowledge, all elusive and mysterious. It’s just a really long test.
It’s high time we quit being afraid of the SAT, stop being convinced that it can outsmart us, and instead prepare ourselves with the tools necessary to achieve great scores on the SAT–skills that are transferable to improved college and professional success. It’s time to enjoy the achievement of learning new, relevant concepts and applying them in creative ways. It’s time to be smart again.
Thirty years is too long to be afraid of anything.
I’m not scared. Are you?
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
“Thirty years later we have a huge problem. That one simple idea, that there are ways to get around the SAT, completely disempowered students. Why? Because the trend has gone from “here’s how to tackle that last really tough question or two” to “you can’t learn this–here’s how to guess your way to a tolerable score.” ”
Where is the evidence for this? While I appreciate that guessing is part of what Princeton teaches, how are you establishing a trend?
After sitting with students from all over the United States one on one for the past six years, I am not hesitant to tell you that these kids are categorically, unreasonably, utterly Intimidated by the test. Guessing strategies tell students “you can’t do this.” They *own* that idea. Kaplan does it too; I’m just picking on Princeton.
I sat with a number of incredibly bright students this week who are absolutely terrified of the test and who are so indoctrinated with all the guessing baloney that it never occurs to them to stop and learn how to deductively reason through a critical reading problem or that maybe they just need to brush up on their algebra. I am furious from an educational perspective that this sort of terror and “the test is too hard” thinking has become so commonplace– it robs students of confidence and the opportunity to learn real skills, apply them, and achieve.
Have any of these students attended a TPR or Kaplan class? Have they been buying their books? Have they been trained by their tutors?
I think it’s much more likely that they are intimidated by the test because the school system itself offers so few resources for test preparation. As an equally experienced test prep tutor, I find that students are scared because the test is still literally a vast dark area on the map to them. It is an almost tangible example of the unknown.
I appreciate your think that TPR has changed the way that everyone thinks about testing. But without some direct evidence that students are drawing these kinds of conclusions outside of your own anecdotal experience, I think you are setting up a strawman argument in order to promote what basically boils down to “Learn some math on the test.”
TPR, Kaplan, Huntington, etc all teach math. You aren’t promoting any new ideas.
Funny you should ask (or assume that they haven’t been exposed to these products), because it is the students who have been exposed to these programs that are the most apprehensive–this includes students who have worked in TPR classes, students who have been tutored by tutors trained by them (at their offices or who now subcontract for more exclusive companies), and even a student who worked with Adam himself.
I’m glad to hear that you are not experiencing this problem, although it is certainly rampant with my students. I’m sure TPR will be pleased to hear that it still has at least one ardent supporter!
And you’re right, I’m not promoting new ideas. Competency, confidence, hard work, problem solving–these are all as old as the redwoods. Why you would attack me for wanting to emphasize these values is beyond me, but you’re certainly entitled to your opinion. Perhaps you missed the cart for the horse? Somehow those values have been pushed aside, not only in test preparation (a largely irrelevant and idiosyncratic moment itself), but also in our broader culture. But that’s another blog post. ~e
I’m not attacking you. I’m attacking the idea that asserting that something is true is the same as providing evidence and data. I’m not an ardent TPR supporter by any stretch of the imagination…
If you are encountering these ideas with students who were active participants in their classes, I’m glad you brought it up! That’s exactly the kind of evidence you should have included in your original post instead of asserting that it was affecting ALL students without explaining the vector of transmission.
I like the idea that understanding the core concepts will improve student’s scores. I have found in my tutoring that working on fundamentals often results in larger score improvements than any fancy techniques. I think you and I probably agree more than we disagree.
However, I think you’re attacking TPR to promote yourself far more than to make your point….
Look, I am wildly frustrated with how many students I have who are intimidated by SAT and ACT tests because they have made the transitive assumption that we guess because we can’t actually answer– math AND reading comprehension included. That’s the point in a nutshell, take it or leave it.
And Mark, this is my blog. Of course I am using it to promote my ideas. That’s sort of the point.
As a freshman in college thrilled beyond belief to be done with the SATs and a former student of Elizabeth’s, I can say that when talking with friends and classmates about the SATs (which we did all the time), what kept coming up over and over again was “its impossible” or “you’re not meant to do well on the SAT.” While some this rhetoric is definitely a result of general teenage histrionics, the test prep culture definitely emphasized guessing strategies that made it less about skills and more about luck. I myself am personally more of a verbal girl, so when I took my first few practice exams I didnt even bother trying to work through more difficult math problems–I tried to guess and “logic” my way through them, which obviously failed. Even the questions I did manage to solve, I would double guess the answers, thinking the SAT was trying to trick me into the wrong answer. The only thing that gave me more confidence was tedious, painful but necessary work on high school math fundamentals. Once I knew that I knew how to solve the math problems, I refused to let guessing tactics scare me into rethinking my answers.
Elizabeth’s point is worth consideration. We’ve had a change in attitude toward the SAT/ACT and even GRE/LSAT over the last decades – and it’s a change that affects how all of us do our jobs, whether we prep, help with applications, or just plain raise the kids.
Mark, you’ve called on Elizabeth to provide “direct evidence” and provided none of your own. Nothing of value, just a couple anecdotes. That’s poor argumentation and is a bit priggish, both things those of us with our own sites deal with frequently and easily.
But accusing another professional, especially one in the same sector, of such dishonesty for personal gain – when there’s a valid point, no less – is too much.
Your comment links confidently to Omniac. Imagine if I suggested that you were e-fighting for the purpose of picking up a little business, or what’s more likely, hurting a competitor. It would be ridiculous. It’s far kinder – and more realistic – to suggest that you’re just plain wrong.
@Shira – Awesome! I’m glad to hear that working on fundamentals was so successful for you.
@Matthew – I’m more than willing to concede that Elizabeth has some insight here based on her experiences working with students who have taken TPR classes. If her blog post had said “I work with former TPR students and they exhibit this fear and I think it’s wrong,” I would have moved on without comment. In fact, I might have said “Rock on!”
However, her post didn’t do that. It asserted that TPR has fundamentally changed the way everyone takes the test without offering a lot of direct evidence for the ways it would do so. She didn’t cite the number of copies of “Cracking the SAT” that were sold last year or the number of schools currently working with TPR. She didn’t tell us about the number of students that TPR sees every year or the ways that other test prep companies have changed their methods because of TPR.
Instead, she simply asserted that something was true without a single link to the outside world to back up her claims. She is using TPR as a strawman for the purposes of providing an “alternate” way of taking the test. I’m not accusing her of dishonesty, I’m saying that I think this particular post is much more about selling herself than it is about convincing kids to be unafraid. That’s not wrong, but I think it’s unfair to TPR to accuse them of something you don’t have much evidence for simply to make a point about your own programs.
I think that both you and Elizabeth need to differentiate between attacking ideas and attacking people. I’ve done a lot of the former and none of the latter.
I too have a blog, as you so noted. I would be happy to have you come to my site and debate my evidence, arguments, conclusions. In fact, I would be ecstatic for you to do so! The blogosphere is a tough place. Ideas get challenged, old ways of thinking can be torn down. But only if we talk to each other and stomach a bit of intense questioning. I’m not hear to pick up business or tear down a competitor (I doubt that EK is close enough to me geographically anyway), but to engage in the conversation that she started.
I have been in education for over thirty years, so I have a good handle on trends. Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there lived educators who taught something called “fundamentals.” These people took children and taught them the raw basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic. Children were given books to read, essays to write, and problems to solve. The joy of discovery brightened the faces of many a lad and lassie. Then, something strange happened. As those educators died out, they were replaced by new educators who had been indoctrinated by the ideas of James, Darwin, and Kant. Suddenly, there was no longer a system of propositional truth–rather, truth was what you believed to be true. So, public education no longer taught facts qua facts; it encouraged students to create their own truth and value systems. Since students could no longer drop their anchors into the rock of propositional truth, they suddenly found themselves swept along by every wind of ism out there. Foreign students entered American PhD programs en masse; test scores for American students dropped; and America high school students felt they were losing in the college entrance battle. Enter the big test prep companies. By addressing a psychological need (“I am unable to do this ACT/SAT test”), these companies have grown to gargantuan sizes. Like the federal government, which is now saying to Americans, “You, the taxpayers, are unable to solve your problems; we will do it for you,” the test prep companies are saying to students, “You are unable on your own to master this test; we will help you–but with a catch.” And so, we have cartoon characters invented who, when the student “lives himself into them,” will be able to guess correctly on the tests. Joe Blog is born. Students enter into his psyche, and thus are able to score high enough on the tests to enter their dream schools. I used TPR for my test prepping at school for several years. Students who used this material thought it was a joke. Moreover, none of the students scored higher than a 29 ACT. Enter Outsmarting the SAT. I purchased this book last summer. We used it first semester, and, oh my goodness, here was the book I had been looking for. My students have scored 2000+ on the SAT, 31+ on the ACT, and 220+ on the PSAT. This book works because Elizabeth does not insult the kids’ intelligences; she, like the educators of old, actually teaches the raw basics of reading, writing, and arithmetic; and she uses examples that model the actual questions AND ANSWERS of college board and ACT tests. TPR tests do not even come close to modeling actual tests. I know because I have taken so many actual tests that TPR and Kaplan tests read like a foreign language. So, I strongly disagree with the gentleman who is accusing Elizabeth of making a straw man out of TPR only to knock him down to promote her book. Her book, which I have read now about ten times, can stand on its own. For less than 20 bucks, Outsmarting the SAT is not only helping students outsmart that test–it is also giving them something money can’t buy: the ability to walk into that test room and tackle any question with confidence.
Mark,
Little of your reply is valid. Elizabeth wrote a short post – 250 words? – with a provocative point for everyone’s consideration. It wasn’t a dissertation and it wasn’t a scientific study [which was a wonderful decision - I'll get to that]. She wrote primarily about her experiences – which is perfectly appropriate for her own site. I didn’t agree with every word, but I found her opinion interesting and worth revisiting.
Your point about ‘attacking ideas’ is a mix of guilt and fiction. You suggested that another professional was intellectually irresponsible for the purpose of personal gain – and at the expense of another outfit in the sector, too. Attacking one’s motivation and then trying to take some logical/argumentative high road aren’t compatible. You hit a pothole.
It’s worth noting that there really isn’t any available evidence that could back up Elizabeth’s claims. That’s unfortunate in a way, but it also means we’re fortunate to hear a unique, informed perspective that isn’t readily available as a bar graph. None of the examples of evidence you cited would be worthwhile to prove/disprove Elizabeth’s claim, and aside from a massive, comprehensive study on student attitudes before, during and after prep and the test itself, I can’t think of any data or evidence that would stand up to a challenge. If we can’t do a bit of social science properly, it’s best not to pretend or try. That’s responsible social science.
Heal thyself, Mr. Truman. A blog with a post tendentiously titled “University of California Rejects the SAT Subject Tests and Focuses on Stuff That Matters” with no cited evidence isn’t a blog that should be calling out others.
Great article about Princeton Review