In 1926, the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was introduced by the Educational Testing Service (ETS) to assess the academic abilities of high school students. The test’s multiple-choice-question formats have remained consistent for eighty years, until 2005, when the SAT was revised to include essay-writing exercises. This represented a profound change in the test. It meant that SAT scores would now be in large part generated by human judges, who would be required to read and grade the overall quality of each student’s essay.
Why would ETS institute such a radical change in a test that had become universally accepted? And, wouldn’t the introduction of human judges reduce the overall accuracy of the ...
