"Three years after the College Board increased students' anxieties with its decision to add a handwritten essay to the SAT, and three months after the test made its debut, many universities are still grappling with how, when and even if they will use the new scores.

So far, less than half of the nation's colleges and universities have said they will require next year's applicants to submit writing scores.

...Steven Syverson, the dean of admissions at Lawrence [stated:] 'When we heard the test-prep industry say it would add $200 million a year to coaching revenues, we just said, "That's it. It's out of line, it's out of whack, and we don't want to be part of it."'"

(Source:  Tamar Lewin, "SAT Essay Scores Are In, but Will They Be Used?" The New York Times, May 15, 2005; http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/education/15SAT.html?th&emc=th.)

"A group representing English teachers nationwide says the new SAT timed writing test "sends troubling messages about writing" and might actually undermine high schools' efforts to improve skills.

In a report this week, the National Council of Teachers of English says the new test, produced by the College Board and first administered in March, focuses on formulaic essays and is unlikely to improve writing instruction.

The new test will be given to more than 1 million students a year. Though it could persuade schools to spend more time teaching writing, the report says, prepping students to write one-draft, short essays will rob them of valuable time learning to produce quality writing.

...The report says neither the SAT's nor the ACT's timed writing components may be good indicators of writing abilities."

(Source:  Greg Toppo, "English teachers group says new SAT test could backfire," USA Today, May 4, 2005; http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2005-05-04-sat-writing_x.htm.)

Young adults who have been violently victimized as adolescents rarely succeed in school and employment.  The poor grades and spotty work records of violently victimized teens receive much-needed attention in a study recently published in the Journal of Research on Adolescence by sociologists from the University of Minnesota and Northwestern University. 

Examining data collected from a national probability sample of households in the continental United States, the Minnesota and Northwestern scholars identify "violence experienced in adolescence" as the first link in "a chain of adversity" in which "victimization undermines academic performance, educational attainment, labor force participation, occupational status, and earnings in early adulthood."  The researchers therefore assert that the persistent and harmful effects of violent victimization experienced during adolescence will likely translate into "significant income losses over the life span."

But not all American teens are equally exposed to the risk of violent victimization and its harmful sequelae. The authors of the new study see "significantly lower rates of victimization" among "adolescents living in intact families" than among peers from broken homes (p < 0.001).  It should come as no surprise, then, that the researchers' statistical analysis identifies an adolescent's having come from an intact family as a strong statistical predictor of "educational self-sufficiency" at age 18 (p < 0.01), of "total educational attainment" (p < 0.01), and of "occupational status" (p < 0.001).