Wake Forest drops the SAT

The New York Times reports that Wake Forest and Smith College no longer requires prospective students to take the SAT. They are not alone.

This is not a new debate, of course, but nevertheless I'm going to toss in my 2 cents. Whatever else the SAT and ACT may be, money plays a large part of the game. Applicants have to pay to take the exams, and pay to have the scores forwarded to the schools. Test Prep Company and its competitors make a lot of money on the test as well. So wherever the SAT may be headed, it's not going to vanish without a fight. (Not convinced? Consider also the 2005 revision of the exam, which were arguably due to the University of California's decision to stop using the SAT in its application process unless the exam underwent a major overhaul. UC attracts a lot of applicants, which means a lot of test takers and a lot of money.)

My position? I'm currently making money off of the system, but I hope not to have to do so for very long, and I wouldn't mind seeing this exam cast aside. Since it is a money game, since affluent parents can afford test prep programs and aids, I'm not sure how students' exam results can fail to reflect their SES. And really, is SES the criteria by which we should be basing entrance to higher education?

Fifty percent of people use algebra at least a few times a week

According to this survey, fifty percent of people out there use algebra at least a few times a week. So all of that algebra I'm teaching these kids in class does have use in the real world.

It looks like a blackberry

Following fertilization, the egg cell undergoes several rounds of cell division, eventually forming a solid ball of cells that looks something like a blackberry, and this is the comparison that I make in class when discussing embryology for the DAT and MCAT. Yesterday, when I made this comment, one of the students look very confused, so I continued, "or a raspberry".

"Oh," she said. "That makes more sense. I was thinking the PDA."

Wave, particle, photon

Light is a puzzling thing, since it exhibits behaviors of a particle, and of a wave. David Morgan-Mar includes an interesting, understandable (that is, I understand what he's saying, though some of the finer points of the phenomenon escape me) discussion of this as part of his annotations on this strip: http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1944.html

You may need to scroll down a bit.

A cogent reply to Ben Stein

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiNGK3y5Ypg

Bananas prove God!

More on the missing student

So, my Student was missing again in class this week, and I took the opportunity of dropping off the attendance roll to bring the issue up with the Principal/Vice-Principal/administrator (the class takes place in a high school, which is covering some or all of the cost (the class is only open to their students)). He was able to log on to her file and see her in-school attendance and grades. Student had been in school that day, though she'd had several absences in the recent past, for which she had provided notes. So, clearly, something is up, though whether she's been ill, or had some family issues, or something else I don't know.

The administrator phoned what I presume was her home phone, and left a voicemail asking Student to stop in and see him on Monday. I hope I haven't gotten her into trouble.

Student MIA

One of my SAT students has vanished.

On its surface, that's not terribly surprising. SAT students forget to come to class, sometimes intentionally, I suspect, from time to time. MCAT students do the same. But typically, I can predict which students are likely to forget. The surprize absences are typically explained with an email either before the event or after it. This student is one of the most dedicated SAT students that I have, who was apologetic when she had to miss class earlier due he participation in mock-trial, so her unexplained absence is unexpected.

Normally, in these situations, I email the student to find out what's up, voice my support, etc, but I don't have an email address for her.

Very frustrating.

The 'Aha!' moment

Like any job, teaching has its down sides. This is perhaps particularly true of teaching SAT prep, as the kids are present because they've been forced to go, typically, and you're teaching them either after they've already put in a full day of school, or you're interrupting their holy weekend. For the most part, they really don't want to be there, and I don't blame them.

But there's the rewarding side, too. Yesterday I had one of my SAT classes and we came to the math subject of functions. For those who don't remember, functions are those questions that look like "if f(x) = 2x + 3, then what does f(9) equal?"

I've never been clear on why some students have great difficulty with these problems, as they're really nothing but simple replacement exercises, but the fact is that some of them do, and when the word functions came out of my mouth, one of my students immediately said, aloud, though more-or-less to herself, "oh, I suck at these."

I didn't acknowledge her comment, but launched into my explanation of functions as the fancy substitution exercises that they are. Maybe three minutes in she spoke up again, again to herself, "oh," as in "oh, I get it."

That's what makes teaching worth it - that 'aha' moment, particularly when it's a subject the student has tried to learn before, but been unsuccessful at.

Online editor

As writing moves away from traditional publishers run by professionals with on-staff editors to at-home and on-line printing with no editor save the writer and his computer, editing has fallen by the wayside. In some cases, this doesn't really matter. Whether an email contains a few misspelled words or not doesn't really matter - we understand the trade-off between efficiency and accuracy. However, in some cases we want someone else to look over our work before we submit it, and we'd like that someone to be more than the squiggly red and green lines we might find beneath our misspelled words and gramatically incorrect phrases. This need becomes even more urgent as our own editing skills atrophy through lack of use.

Someone has capitalized on this need. Gramlee (TM) employs a staff of independent editors who promise to turn around smaller documents (less than 4000 words) by email in under 24 hours (longer documents may take longer). How good they are I don't know, but the notion of an online service of this sort appeals to me, for although I have a fair understanding of grammar and spelling, I am not perfect, nor am I a very accurate typist. This sort of service may be of use to me for my more important writing (e.g. my thesis), though I think that I'd want a single editor, rather than a pool of editors, to work with for my novel, assuming that I ever get said novel to a point where an editor would be called for.

I can also see the use of such a service for others who lack the time or skills (or inclination) to edit their own work. This might particularly be of use to those who are struggling with the intricacies of English either because it is not their native language, or because they haven't been taught how to properly communicate with formal, or even semi-formal English. Some of my SAT students, for example, have great difficulty with the basic rules of grammar (more on that in another post) and their college essays would benefit from professional editing. Unfortunately, I suspect that many of the students who are most in need of this service are those who are least able to afford it.

There is also the question of misrepresentation. If a college entrance essay is supposed to give a sense of the person who wrote it, might the use of a professional editor be misleading, if not unethical? Or perhaps the point is more the ideas and their articulation, rather than the raw mechanics of writing that an editor would be concerned with. In either event, I don't think that I can recommend this service to my students (not that they could use it for their exam essays) as it probably conflicts with my status as a Test Prep Company employee. Further, having not used the service myself, I can't vouch for its quality. Nor can I say that it is better, or cheaper, or faster, or what-have-you-er than its competitors (if it doesn't have competitors yet, I expect it will within the year.)

And, I am forced to acknowledge that my own application essays were looked over by a professional secretary who was well-schooled in spelling and grammar (viz, my mother), and I expect that many of my fellow students at the time had similar help from their parents or teachers. So, I suppose that schools expect there to be a certain amount of editing. That being the case, perhaps mentioning the availability of such a service might be acceptable, if I don't mention any specific service.

A book report on Catch-22

One of my SAT students is supposed to write a book report on Joseph Heller's Catch-22. "Oh, that's a good book," I tell him. Have you gotten to Lieutenant Scheisskopf yet?"

His reposnse, "Can I just watch the movie and get a sense of the book?

Read the novel. You might enjoy it!

Yes, sir; no, sir

I've written about my SAT students' propensity to address me as Mr Badger, rather than just calling my by my first name as my DAT and MCAT students tend to do. I'm now teaching at West Point, as well, and my students here address me as "sir". I find this a bit humorous, a bit peculiar, a bit touching, and at times a bit unsettling.

Part of my reaction relates to my feeling very much their contemporary, in spite of the fact that I'm instructing them on the MCAT, which I have taken, and they haven't. Admittedly, though, I am as old as they are plus half again, and maybe that makes me less their contemporary than I tend to feel.

There is also the sense I have that using sir when addressing an instructor or authority figure (or maybe even a civilian, based on my encounters on campus) has been all but beaten into them. I'm not sure that they always realize that they're saying it. No doubt there are some psychological or sociological observations that could be made about that.

I'm having difficulty stating why I find it a bit touching, though. Maybe if I figure that out I'll come back and leave it as a comment.

That's Mr Badger

I'm not used to being addressed as Mr Badger. People either use my first name or use my last name without any title. But in the classes that I teach, particularly the SAT prep, it's happening fairly often.

Admittedly, I'm twice as old as these students, but Mr Badger still seems a bit peculiar. Usually it's the signal to hang up, because the caller is a telemarketer.

At least I now realize that they're talking to me the first time they speak, rather than only after they repeat themselves.

Peoples in school don't know no English

One of my responsibilities is at work is to grade student essays (for those who don't know, there is now an essay on the SAT, and the whole exam is out of 2400 points.) These are essays that students write during simulated exams.

Some of these essays really suck. Nouns and verbs don't agree; past, present and future tense are all mixed together; double negatives; conversational English. I'm surprised that I haven't yet seen any IM/text message abbreviations. "I think that 2 B happy U must B able 2 communicate successfully." Except that the last two words are probably too complicated.