A Day in Atlantic City

Karen Pelz, director of reading and study skills at the College, spent part of her Christmas break on a busman's holiday, as one of 200 readers for the essay section of the Scholastic Aptitude Test for college aspirants.

The readers assembled from all over the country for five full days of reading, at a 25-essay-an-hour clip, amid the faded grandeur of Atlantic City, New Jersey. As it turned out, Pelz got sick after one day and came home.

That one day, however, convinced her that the writing skill of American youth is not in as bad shape as some doom-sayers claim. "I was surprised at how competent it is," she said afterward. Since the essay was dropped from the SAT about ten years ago and reinstated only this year — largely, she surmises, because of widespread concern about whether or not Johnny can write — she had no direct basis for comparison with other, earlier tests. She has, however, been teaching English for 12 years and deals daily with Dartmouth students in need of help with basic skills. She found it reassuring that only 15 per cent of the papers she read called for the lowest grade on a scale of four.

The essay question, designed to minimize bias, was broad and general, on the issue of learning from the past to live better in the present and the future. The procedure was more than fair, she felt, since three readers assess each test independently, and no one knows what grade the others have given it.

Pelz found the question a good vehicle for judging the level of literacy, competence with grammar, word usage, and, to a certain extent, organizing ability. "You could really tell the very good and the very bad," she said, but it was more difficult to differentiate between levels in the broad middle categories. "With only two grades above and two below, there was no easy out with marking any one 'average.' "