By Gillian Knoll, Director of Educational Mentoring

Last week the College Board unveiled their plans for a redesigned SAT, with some important changes that are scheduled to go into effect in 2016. We’ve been reading up on the new test in the Washington Post and the New York Times, and our overall impression is a positive one.

Of course, we wish none of our students had to deal with the SAT. It creates a tremendous amount of anxiety for students and it distracts them from what they should be focusing on: working hard in school and developing skills to last a lifetime. But until all colleges adopt a test-optional policy, we’re stuck with standardized tests.

We were pleased to see that some of the most tedious and pointless elements of the SAT are being omitted or replaced with fairer, more practical ones. Here are a few highlights:

• No more mandatory writing section—the essay is now optional! Instead of giving students only 25 minutes to respond to a broad and vague philosophical question, the new essay gives students 50 minutes to analyze how an author makes a specific argument.

• No more “SAT words” that have little to no real-world application! The new test focuses on words that students might actually encounter in college—or at least on planet Earth! And instead of obscure sentence completions, students will be asked to identify words in the context of how they’re used.

• No more penalties for wrong answers! Students no longer have to waste time worrying about whether it’s worth it to gamble on an answer they’re unsure of. Now they can focus on giving their best effort and responding to every question.

The College Board claims that the overall goal of the redesigned test is to align the SAT more closely with what’s being taught in schools. If the new test really lives up to this promise, it will be a definite improvement on the previous version. We work with students every day on understanding words in context, supporting opinions and ideas with evidence, and developing problem-solving strategies, all of which are skills that the new SAT is designed to target.

Of course, there are plenty of skeptics who have questioned the College Board’s motives, and we were interested in their concerns. Perhaps the most common criticism is that the College Board is trying to make their test more like the ACT, which has edged out the SAT in popularity in the last couple of years. There was an interesting piece in last week’s Washington Post blog identifying this competition as the primary reason for the revamped test. I especially liked their comparison between the ACT/SAT testing industry and the competition between the makers of Coke and Pepsi.

So: Do we really think the new SAT is a fair test that predicts students’ success in college, careers, and beyond? Certainly not. After teaching English courses at the college level for a decade and working with Thinking Organized students of all ages year after year, I can tell you that academic achievement has no correlation with being a good test taker. But if our students are forced to take a standardized test on their road to college, the new SAT is a step in the right direction.