Test anxiety

NEWTON, Mass. — Sporting a shirt embroidered with the Princeton Review logo, David Ragsdale darts around his small classroom, handing back practice essays for the new SAT and offering each student a bullet-point comment.

"You want to be careful about using things that are a little controversial," Ragsdale tells one boy. "You never know what kind of personal issues that will bring up in your reader."

Be more original, he tells a girl across the room. Another student gets credit for his arguments on the Treaty of Versailles, but is urged to work on smoother transitions — make it easy for the reader, Ragsdale says.

The SAT is changing next year, most notably by adding a written essay. And the nearly as-popular ACT, taken by most college-bound Utah students, will include an optional essay.

But while the changes are designed to make the tests less "coachable" starting in spring 2005, test prep companies insist the opposite is true and that the tips and methods they've been teaching for years are even more useful now.

Plenty of parents are betting they're right, ignoring criticism that test prep companies simply prey on college admissions fears and shelling out $1,000 or more for courses this summer to prepare their rising high school juniors. Kaplan, Princeton Review's main rival, is running radio ads in the New York City area and reports record enrollment growth this summer.

"The way that they're grading writing and the way they test grammar are very formulaic," said Andy Lutz, program director at Princeton Review, which claims success boosting scores on the SAT II writing exam — a test not so different from next year's essay. "We're not going to review the entire English language in a class, but we can review those parts that are tested on the SAT."

Such comments are distressing to anti-testing advocates, some of whom agree — regretfully — that the new test is indeed more coachable, disadvantaging students who can't afford a prep class.

The test-prep companies "are rubbing their hands in glee" said Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the group FairTest, because "the increasing anxiety of students (is) increasing their profits." He complains that the new essay section rewards students for a good first draft but bears little relevance to the kind of thoroughly researched and revised writing they'll do in college.