Now is the time when many parents of tenth and eleventh graders- and sometimes, even the tenth and eleventh graders, themselves- are beginning to wonder if their student is "test-strong". With the PSAT scores coming back to most students either right before the new year or after returning from winter break, the shock of being in the middle 50% or, as some have found themselves, the bottom 25%, in an area as crucial to learning as "Critical Reading", the panic sets in. This is a time of the year when I, inevitably, get phone calls. The question always seems to be the same: "How can my son/daughter raise his/her score on the test?" My answer sometimes frustrates parents, especially if we are discussing an eleventh grader on the dawn of college applications: "There is no quick fix. It sounds to me like your student needs to be reading on a very regular basis".
You see, it's not that the SAT can't be taught or that there aren't strategies which can enhance the score a few percentage points, the simple fact is that the test is there to gauge where a student's long-term learning has placed him/her. For someone who has never even completed a book for school or otherwise, there are no shortcuts. Too many people are looking to be let off the hook. And this, in all honesty, is the one redeeming characteristic of the standardized exams: The fact that they do not let laziness off the hook. If you don't read well and don't read consistently, your score will reflect that. If you have never been asked to paraphrase an article or summarize an author's perspective, let alone formulate your own ideas and articulate them in a coherent way, you will probably not be too satisfied with the Critical Reading score you earn.
It takes hard work to compensate for those lost years when you should have been reading a few pages each night. I recently recommended to a student's mom that she subscribe to three monthly magazines for her son: National Geographic (he likes photography and intense images-- think Stanley Kubrick films); Men's Health (he's a teenage boy who goes to the gym and worries about his image); and one more. If I had my druthers (and I told her as much) it would be the magazine that attracts the attention of most teenage boys (and has for several decades), with some of the greatest articles and writers contributing to the outstanding -and often overlooked- literary aspect of this empire (I hope that you get my subtlety). Why? Because he'll pick it up! He had never read as much as a newspaper article until I began working with him last Fall. He needs reading to be something that he wants to do. Eventually, he will learn to find joy in the learning and discovery processes of literature. Until then, if he's drawn to pictures and reading ends up being a byproduct . . . so be it!
