Academic rigor has been in decline across most of American education, so why should the SAT be any different?

In today’s Martin Center article, Michael Torres looks at the various ways the College Board is making its Big Test less demanding and more politically correct.

Torres writes:

The College Board notes on page 13 of its Digital SAT Suite of Assessments technical framework that two of the primary goals in changing the exam were to make it shorter and to give students more time per question. To make this happen in the new “Reading and Writing” section of the test, they shortened reading passages from 500-750 words all the way down to 25-150 words, or the length of a social-media post, with one question per passage. Their explanation is that this model “operates more efficiently when choices about what test content to deliver are made in small rather than larger units.”

That seems designed to cater to the increasingly poor attention spans of many students, and making it harder for the really good ones to stand out.

The math section has also been changed for the worse. Torres writes:

This extends to the changes made in the new SAT math section, as well. College Board now serves test-takers fewer questions but did not reduce the amount of time for the section correspondingly. Students taking the post-2024 SAT now have 1.6 minutes per question, compared to 1.3 minutes on the 2015-2024 SAT. (The ACT and CLT provide 1.1 minutes per question.) Additionally, a calculator can now be used for the entirety of the SAT math section.

If only there were an alternative to the SAT. Actually there is — the Classic Learning Test, where Mr. Torres works.