Teachers have faced unprecedented burdens during the coronavirus pandemic — the risks of teaching in person, the challenges of online schooling, and the furor over critical race theory. Now another threat looms on the horizon for a group of former educators in Atlanta: prison. The Atlanta school cheating scandal rose to national attention in 2015 when 11 Black educators were convicted of racketeering and conspiracy for allegedly cheating or enabling cheating on students’ standardized tests.…
The SAT is going digital. College Board has announced that beginning in 2023, the digital SAT suite of assessments will be available to all students. They will make the transition to the digital SAT at international test centers in March of 2023 and at U.S. schools and test centers in spring of 2024. Additionally, all PSAT assessments will be administered digitally beginning in the fall of 2023. Here’s what isn’t changing in regards to the…
A sweeping review of national test data suggests pandemic impact on student learning may not be as bad as we feared. According to this study, the pandemic-driven jump to online learning has had little impact on children’s reading growth and has only somewhat slowed gains in math. That positive news comes from the testing nonprofit NWEA and covers nearly 4.4 million U.S. students in grades three through eight. But the report also includes a worrying…
Here’s what you need to know about mastering the SSAT fiction story essay, which requires creative writing and using your imagination. If you are taking the middle level SSAT, you will be required to write a fiction story essay based on a prompt; if you are taking the upper level SSAT, you have the option of writing a standard essay or writing the fiction story essay. Either way, you won’t have much time, just 25…
The key to structuring your standard essay for the ISEE or SSAT is to ensure you have the proper format. Here’s the general format for a successful standard essay: Introduction Sentence 1: Thesis/Answering the question Sentence 2: Introduce your first supporting paragraph (what you’re going to say in the second paragraph) Sentence 3: Introduce your second supporting paragraph (what you’re going to say in the third paragraph) Sentence 4: Sum up your ideas and transition…
The key to mastering the ISEE essay is preparing yourself for the difficulty of developing a full essay within 30 minutes. Before we discuss the details of the essay assignment, there’s something you need to know: your ISEE essay is not being scored. It will be sent along with the rest of your test to the schools to which you are applying. It is going to be looked at alongside your admission essay (if the…
The synonym section of the ISEE/SSAT tests is very challenging due to the difficult vocabulary, as well as the traps that the test-makers include to confuse you. The first trap to look out for is the Secondary Part of Speech Trap. Sometimes the word has a secondary meaning when it is used in a different part of speech. For example, words can be both a noun and a verb, and have different meanings depending on…
The 2019-2020 SSAT test dates have been released. Your child can take the middle and upper level SSAT test up to 8 times, or the elementary level twice. It’s important to review the test dates below and make sure you register your child in time. Standard Test Date Regular Registration Starts Aug 1, 2019 & Ends: Last Day for Registration (Without Testing Accommodations) Sat, Oct 19, 2019 September 28, 2019 Wednesday, October 16, 2019 Sat, Nov…
The key to performing well on the verbal sections of the ISEE and SSAT tests is mastering vocabulary. One of the main ways to understand how words are built is to study prefixes and roots. It is important to be able to break words that you do not recognize into pieces and decipher the meanings, because it’s better to be able to understand how words are made up than to just memorize them by rote. …
