http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/01/113_59983.html

A well-known instructor who teaches the U.S. standardized Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) was kidnapped and was forced to sign a renewal contract, amid the widening police investigation into the recent leakage of questions of the test, the Hankook Ilbo said Saturday.

The authorities said the owner of a private learning institute in Seoul specializing in preparing students for SAT, who was arrested Monday for leaking questions to Koreans in the United States, was also discovered to have kidnapped and then assaulted a colleague, forcing him to sign a renewal contract.

According to the police, the owner kidnapped the well-known SAT writing instructor, identified only as B, 38, took him to a resort villa on the outskirts of Seoul. He beat B several times, threatened with a knife and forced him to sign a renewal contract.

After gaining freedom, B reported the case to the police.

B taught the writing section of SAT and was known to be a sought-after figure among students. A fee to sit in on his course for a month as much as costs several million won, according to the report.

As SAT has gained popularity in Korea with the increasing number of Koreans students who choose to study in the United States, competition among private institutions in Seoul to recruit instructors with good reputation has become fierce, sometimes creating legal disputes when an instructor wants to transfer to another competitor institution.

“Students choose an institution based on a particular figure, who is known to teach well, creating a ferocious competition among private institutions to recruit them. These figures are often paid hundreds of millions of won annually,” said an identified person who knows the situation well, in the article.

The news comes at a time when Korean police are expanding their investigation of private academic institutes in Gangnam, southern Seoul.

An instructor identified by his surname, Jang, and three college students, who were temporarily hired by the instructor, are now being questioned for smuggling SAT exam sheets out from a test center in Gapyeong, Gyeonggi Province, where they took the test last Saturday.

Going to U.S. universities has become popular among those who are not satisfied with the level of education offered by Korean universities, as well as those who cannot get into the most competitive Korean universities.

In 2008, South Korean households spent 20.9 trillion won ($18 billion) on private education to supplement the perceived shortcomings of the public school system, and the number of private educational institutes has increased nearly 50-fold since 1970, according to the education ministry.

By JOHN HECHINGER

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High-school students’ performance last year on the SAT college-entrance exam fell slightly, and the score gap generally widened between lower-performing minority groups and white and Asian-American students, raising questions about the effectiveness of national education reform efforts.

Average scores for the class of 2009 in critical reading dropped to 501 from 502, in writing to 493 from 494 and held steady in math, at 515. The combined scores are the lowest this decade and reflect stalled performance over the past three years. The reading scores are the worst since 1994.

Many observers Tuesday viewed the flat results of recent years as discouraging in light of a more than 25-year effort to improve U.S. education. “This is a nearly unrelenting tale of woe and disappointment,” said Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank. “If there’s any good news here, I can’t find it.”

Mr. Finn, a former education official in the Reagan administration, said he expected the results of the SAT and ACT — another college entrance exam — to add fuel to a movement among the nation’s governors and school superintendents to come up with consistent national standards for high-school curricula.

The SAT scores — which range from 200 to 800 — are closely watched because the standardized test measures the achievement of America’s top high-school students. It is the most widely administered college-entrance exam.

The fresh data are sure to figure into the debate over President Barack Obama’s education agenda and potential changes to the federal No Child Left Behind law, which is up for renewal in Congress.

In the class of 2009, African-American students received an average critical reading score of 429, or 72 points below the general population. Math scores had a similar gap. Hispanic students’ scores also lagged but not by as much.

Asian-American students showed the most dramatic gains. In math they scored an average of 587 — 72 points better than the general population. Since 2008, their average math score has climbed six points.

The results come a week after the disclosure that only a quarter of 2009 high-school graduates who took the ACT, the other main college entrance exam, had the skills to succeed in college.

Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board, the New York-based nonprofit that oversees the SAT, stressed what he considered the good news in Tuesday’s data: the growing and diverse number of students taking the exam.

A record 1.53 million students took the exam in 2009. About 40% were minority students, up from 29% in 1999. Education analysts said scores would be expected to drop as more students take the test, so College Board officials interpreted the stability in scores as encouraging.

Noting the gap in achievement between lower-performing minority students and the general population, College Board officials said those who lagged tended to go to school in poorer districts with fewer resources. “As a country, we must do better providing students of every background access to the best education,” Mr. Caperton said.

College Board officials said that Asian-American students appeared to do better at all income levels. Officials said that was because they tend to take more Advanced Placement and other rigorous courses, and their families place a strong value on success in education.

Though no timetable has been set, Congress is expected to revisit President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind law, which took effect in 2002 and mandates that all students be proficient on state tests in reading and math by 2014. It requires that all schools show steady progress toward meeting that goal or face sanctions. The law is aimed especially at boosting the achievement of minorities.

Mr. Obama has made college-readiness a major focus of his own education agenda, and the recent college-entrance results show the challenge of that task.

Critics of No Child Left Behind, including parents and teachers’ unions, have noted that much-touted gains on state tests often aren’t mirrored on national exams, such as the SAT. U.S. schoolchildren also lag top-performing Asian countries on an international assessment of math achievement.

“You can’t look at these results and say that NCLB has been an enormous success,” says Jack Jennings, president of the Center on Education Policy, a nonpartisan research organization in Washington. “The bottom line is the country is changing dramatically. Unless minority kids are educated better, we are going to be in trouble because pretty soon they are going to be the majority.”

Russ Whitehurst, a former top education official in Mr. Bush’s administration, noted that NCLB focuses more on early grades and wasn’t designed to have a huge impact on high school. The SAT scores echo other national tests that have found improvement in early grades that don’t translate into high school, he said.

Mr. Whitehurst, a senior fellow and director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, says the U.S. has done “a decent job” educating the fast-growing population of Hispanic families. But he says the SAT results show a need to improve writing and reading instruction.

Write to John Hechinger at john.hechinger@wsj.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125121641858657345.html

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For a bit of fun, check out the trailer to the movie “The Perfect Score“. It’s about a group of high school kids, looking to do anything (well almost) to get that perfect SAT score!

May 20, 2009

Check out the comments on this article including:

“Agreed – a lot of the courses are not great – but the right one-on-one SAT tutor (who makes the kids work) is worth his/her weight in gold. I believe college administrators are saying the politically correct thing. It was obvious to me (twice) that their is an advantage to students who can afford good SAT prep. Best money I spent – would do it again.”

By JOHN HECHINGER

(Please see corrections and amplifications item below.)

Families can spend thousands of dollars on coaching to help college-bound students boost their SAT scores. But a new report finds that these test-preparation courses aren’t as beneficial as consumers are led to believe.

The report, to be released Wednesday by the National Association for College Admission Counseling, criticizes common test-prep-industry marketing practices, including promises of big score gains with no hard data to back up such claims. The report also finds fault with the frequent use of mock SAT tests because they can be devised to inflate score gains when students take the actual SAT. The association represents 11,000 college admissions officers, high-school guidance counselors and private advisors.

“It breaks my heart to see families who can’t afford it spending money they desperately need on test prep when no evidence would indicate that this is money well-spent,” says William Fitzsimmons, Harvard University’s dean of undergraduate admissions, who led a group at the college admissions association that prompted the report.

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Associated Press

Jonah Varon, a straight-A student at Lowell High School in San Francisco, took a mock SAT from a test-prep company last year and scored 2060 out of a possible 2400. A few weeks later, with no tutoring, he took the real test. His score: a perfect 2400, or 340 points higher.

Mr. Varon, who is headed to Harvard in the fall, was suspicious. The coaching company, Revolution Prep, of Santa Monica, Calif., says its mock tests are calibrated to be at the same difficulty level as the real SAT. So why had it seemed to the student so much harder?

After gathering test scores from 15 classmates who had had similar experiences, Mr. Varon and classmate Lydia O’Connor wrote an article for their school newspaper claiming that the mock test was far more difficult — or was scored more harshly — than the actual exam to make Revolution Prep appear to be raising test scores more than it actually does.

“It seems like dishonest advertising,” Mr. Varon says.

Revolution Prep says that the experiences of Mr. Varon and several of his classmates were “outliers,” and that surveys of students at Lowell High School generally show high satisfaction with the test-coaching company’s results.

Scores of coaching companies, including Washington Post Co.’s Kaplan unit and Princeton Review Inc., the two largest players, help prepare students each year to take the SAT, used by many colleges to help make admission decisions. Companies typically charge $1,100 for a class and $100 to $200 an hour for individual tutoring, the college admissions counselors’ report says. In total, about two million students spend $2.5 billion a year on test preparation and tutoring, including the SAT, according to Eduventures Inc., a Boston research and consulting firm.

The college counselors’ report concludes that, on average, prep courses yield only a modest benefit, “contrary to the claims made by many test-preparation providers.” It found that SAT coaching resulted in about 30 points in score improvement on the SAT, out of a possible 1600, and less than one point out of a possible 36 on the ACT, the other main college-entrance exam, says Derek Briggs, chairman of the research and methodology department at the University of Colorado in Boulder and author of the admissions counselors’ report.

The report was prepared by reviewing numerous academic studies from past years that examined the impact of test preparation on SAT scores. The studies predated the addition of the writing section of the SAT in 2005, which increased the possible score total to 2400 from 1600.

The report also noted that some college-admissions officers indirectly encourage applicants to sign up for SAT-prep courses by setting score cutoffs. A survey included in the report found that more than a third of schools with tight selection criteria said that an increase of just 20 points in the math section of the SAT, and of 10 points in the critical reading section, would “significantly improve students’ likelihood of admission.”

The nonprofit College Board, which oversees the SAT, is critical of colleges that select applicants based on small score differences that aren’t statistically significant. Laurence Bunin, a College Board senior vice president, says the board’s own research shows limited benefit from test-prep courses. He says familiarity with the SAT tends to provide the biggest short-term gains for students. He recommends free and low-cost College Board materials, including a $20 study guide.

Test-prep companies say that some students see substantial gains in their SAT scores as a result of coaching, even if studies show that average test-score improvements are limited. For example, Kaplan cites two of its former students, Lily and Emma Shepard, twin sisters who are seniors at Montclair Kimberley Academy in New Jersey. Kaplan says Emma increased her SAT score, compared with an initial diagnostic test, by 450 points to 2210, while Lily’s score rose 330 points, to 2190. The family paid $4,000 to Kaplan for a tutor to come to their home. “I learned new material as well as test-taking tricks,” says Lily, who will be attending Duke University next year. Emma is going to Georgetown University.

The sisters’ gains were smaller when compared with their scores on the Preliminary SAT, or PSAT, which the College Board says is a good predictor of SAT scores. In that comparison, Lily’s score improved 110 points, and Emma’s rose 300 points.

Kaplan officials say they take pains to make their diagnostic test similar to the real SAT. Seppy Basili, senior vice president at Kaplan, says that the PSAT doesn’t include higher-level algebra, while the SAT does, so some students score lower on the real test. In addition, he said, Lilly and Emma skipped many questions on the diagnostic test, which could explain the different scores.

Associated Press

Some test-prep companies acknowledge there is nothing to hold them accountable for score-gain promises. “The industry is not regulated,” says Paul Kanarek, a senior vice president with Princeton Review. “It is sort of the wild, wild West.”

Kaplan and Princeton Review say they make no claims about any specific average point increases, calling that practice inherently misleading because it is difficult to collect accurate data.

Revolution Prep offers a “score improvement guarantee” of 200 points for students taking its coaching courses. But co-founders Ramit Varma and Jake Neuberg say the guarantee doesn’t mean that all students will increase their scores by that much. If students don’t achieve a 200-point gain, they are entitled to a free repeat of the course, they say.

Revolution and other test-prep companies say they use their own diagnostic tests for baseline comparisons because the College Board publishes only eight practice tests — also simulations — in its official SAT guide, and many students have already taken them. In the past, the board published actual SATs from previous administrations of the exam, but discontinued that practice in 2005 when the writing section was added. The College Board says it will begin including three actual tests this summer in the new edition of its SAT guide, along with seven simulated tests.

In Newton, Mass., Summit Educational Group Inc. says its “proven score increases on the SAT are 180 to 400 points.” Chief Executive Charles O’Hearn says those figures are based on improvement only from real PSATs or SATs, not diagnostic tests. Still, he says the figures are based on surveys to which fewer than half of students respond. “I wouldn’t say there isn’t an element of marketing in this,” he says.

On its Web site, Elite Educational Institute Inc., of Irvine, Calif., advertises a 240-point average increase in SAT scores, calculating it in comparison with its own diagnostic exam. After an inquiry from a reporter, the company says it plans to take the claim, which it says was based on the SAT before the addition of the writing section, off its Web site. “Any test-prep company that gives you their own test with their own score scale could be accused of fudging the numbers to make students think they improved more than they really had,” Kevin Sung, Elite’s chief operating officer, said through a spokeswoman.

Write to John Hechinger at john.hechinger@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications:

Lydia O’Connor, a senior at Lowell High School in San Francisco, co-wrote an article in the school newspaper that questioned the practices of an SAT test-preparation firm. A previous version of this story named only Ms. O’Connor’s collaborator as author of the article.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124278685697537839.html

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