I recently read an opinion piece in the New York Times that explained the benefits of the upcoming change to the SATs: the College Board has redesigned the SAT to minimize time pressure.
Until now, the SAT has covered so much material that most students do not complete the test. But because of the recent experience with administering tests digitally, the organization had the opportunity to experiment with the length of the test. It found that allowing students to have more time to answer fewer questions created room for more success, and it decided to make these changes permanent. Starting with 2024, the board predicts that 97% of students will finish the new test.
The author of the piece, Adam Grant, lays out an argument against time pressure on tests, and I mostly agree with him. According to Grant, timed tests assess how well students perform under stress, thus underestimating the capabilities of many students. Yet many situations call for care and deliberation. Anybody who has ever had a job that requires them to be “detail-oriented” can attest to that fact.
New evidence shows that although smarter people are faster at solving easy problems, they’re actually slower to finish difficult ones. They’re well aware that haste makes waste, and they don’t want to sacrifice accuracy for speed. You wouldn’t want a surgeon who rushes through a craniectomy, or an accountant who dashes through your taxes. Even for the many jobs in which people are judged on speed, there’s no evidence that doing algebra under time pressure is useful preparation. Although it pays to be quick, it also pays to be determined, disciplined and dependable.
As a tutor of children, I applaud the change in the most important standardized test in the country. Allowing more time on that test, and all tests set up similarly so students know have experience with such a test, will create a better environment for students to show what they know.
I tell children specifically that there are some problems that are meant to be difficult and that take some time to think through. Some kids think they have to know immediately if a word problem means “add, subtract, multiply, or divide,” whereas often figuring out how to solve the problem is precisely the skill being tested. Doing so often involves reading carefully and, as one of my students once put it, pretending you are there.
On the other hand, there are some areas where, if possible, it pays to be quick, almost automatic. I make sure students I work with can spit out math facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) quickly, an ability that ultimately requires memorization. Just like young readers have to memorize the sounds made by each letter, blend, and digraph, young math students need to memorize the basic arithmetic facts. Doing so allows them to move onto higher-level activities that require reasoning and deliberation. Likewise, young algebra students need to memorize (eventually, not at first) the order of operations and steps for solving equations.
In all areas of learning there are skills we eventually learn to do quickly and some in which we must take our times to think things through. I’m glad the College Board is recognizing the value of both kinds of skills.
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