New SAT vs 1980s: Vocabulary questions collapsed from 70.6% to 15%, study finds
CatAstro_Piyush · x · 2026-10-30
A Thomas Aquinas College study comparing the 1980/87 SAT with the 2026 version finds reading rigor has collapsed: vocabulary-tested questions dropped from 70.6% to 15%, and average reading passages shrank from 300–340 words to 97. The old test demanded analogies, antonyms, and sentence completions; the new one mostly asks students to fill in a blank from context. Quoting Orwell's insight from Nineteen Eighty-Four — shrinking vocabulary shrinks the capacity to think — the author argues reading difficult books expands the boundaries of thought, and this trend must be reversed.
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