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: Scoring Problems Continue To Plague Sat , 03/29/06
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june06/sat_3-29.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Why do students take the SAT?

2. How do SAT scores impact students?

3. Do you think the SATs are fair?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. Why is the SAT test in the news lately?

The College Board has apologized to high school students and college admissions offices for mistakes that resulted in over 5,000 incorrect scores on the October 2005 SAT.

2. How many test scores were impacted? In what ways?

Of the 495,000 college entrance tests taken in October, 4,411 were scored too low and around 600 were scored too high.

The College Board, which runs the SAT, notified colleges, high school guidance counselors and students of corrections for lower scores. Higher scores were not changed.

3. How did the College Board discover there were problems with the October test?

The problems came to light after two students who took the October test questioned the scores they received in December.

4. How did the College Board explain the scoring problems?

The College Board said the problems are the fault of the Pearson Educational Measurement, the company that scores most of the SAT exams.

The company said the scoring problems were due to technical issues, including excess moisture that caused the answer sheets to expand before they were scanned and scanners that did not pick up some lightly marked answers.

Additional incorrect scores were discovered after the company realized it had not fully re-scanned all the October tests for errors.

5. What changes are the scoring company implementing to solve these problems in the future?

Officials at the College Board said new scoring safeguards will be added including scanning each answer sheet twice and improving moisture detecting software.

"We know we have to restore public confidence in the entire process because this anomaly occurred," Coletti told the Los Angeles Times.

6. According to the article, where will these score problems have the most impact? Why?

SAT scores are less important than a student's grades, extracurricular activities and other test scores, they say, but the real issue will be scholarships.

"With scholarships, some use flat cutoff points with the SAT score. They say if you score above 1,200 or 1,800 on the SAT, you are eligible for a scholarship. If you don't get that score, you don't get that scholarship," Donald Heller, an associate professor of education at Penn State University and financial aid expert, told the New York Times.

Discussion Activity (more research might be needed):

1. How important is the SAT to getting into the college or university of your choice? Do you agree with this level of importance?

2. What would you change about the college admissions process if you could? Pretend that you are a college admissions officer. How would you decide which students should be offered admittance to your institution? How would you decide between what seem to be two equally qualified students?

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.