Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Colleges Weigh Scores Of Revised SAT Applicants, 10/26/05
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/july-dec05/sat_10-26.html

Initiating Questions:

1. What have you heard about the new SAT?

2. Have you taken it? What did you think?

2. How important are the SATs?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. When and how was the SAT most recently revised?

In March, the College Board, which owns the SAT, changed the test, most significantly by adding an essay section.

2. How do many English teachers view the new SAT essay section?

John Ritter, a veteran English teacher at Parkland High School in Allentown, Pa. said the 25-minute essay section "denigrates the process of reading, thinking, experiencing, and, above all, revisiting, that writing represents."

In his opinion, "if colleges and universities wish a true read, let students write. Give them a writing task, a library, and some time to research, reflect, and write."

Tracy Beck-Briggs, a teacher at Moravian Academy, a small private high school in Bethlehem, Pa. echoed Ritter's sentiment.

"We believe that the SAT essay section is absolutely not the most effective way to assess writers," Beck-Briggs said. "It fails to account for the hard work of revision and does not provide the insight a formal graded essay does."

3. What is the opposing teacher view?

But Curtis Sittenfeld, who teaches English at St. Albans School in Washington, D.C., disagrees. In a New York Times Op-Ed, she wrote that unlike the verbal analogies that were eliminated, "the essay will test a skill that really does matter both during and outside of school."

"As for the notion that such training stifles creativity, I've read enough writing by both high school students and graduates to know that stifling creativity might not be such a bad thing. Ultimately, learning to express yourself clearly will take you much further than learning to express yourself poetically," she said.

4. What changes have guidance counselors noticed since the new SAT took effect?

Guidance counselors also have noticed a change. Marilyn Albarelli said she is troubled by the intensity of the current testing phenomenon at Moravian.

"Beginning last spring and again this fall, I see more students taking the ACT than ever before. Then when they see both sets of scores (SAT and ACT), they choose the highest set to send to college. Regrettably, some students are spending more time testing than in previous years," Albarelli observed.

5. How are admissions officers viewing the SAT test changes?

Admissions officers at top universities are waiting to see how the new SAT will impact the college admissions process.

"Its predictive value related to college performance won't be able to be determined for several years," said Margit Dahl, who served as the acting dean of admissions at Yale University from July to October 2005.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. What is your opinion of the newly revised SAT? What is both good and bad about testing of this kind?

2. How important is the SAT in getting into college? How important do you think it should be?

3. If you could change one thing about the process of getting into college or university what would it be and why?

Write a 500-800 word essay on any of these topics providing clear examples. Send your completed editorial to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org]. Exceptional essays might be published on our Web site.