The SAT Reading Section: A Comparative Analysis of the

A Study from the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy for Thomas Aquinas College

1980, 1987, and 2026 Practice Tests

Introduction

This report compares the SAT’s reading (verbal) section across nearly half a century, using three released forms: one from 1980, one from 1987, and a current paper form (Bundle 6), which we refer to throughout as the SAT 2026 test. Our central question is not simply whether the test has become easier or harder—a question that content analysis alone cannot settle—but how the College Board’s conception of college-ready reading has changed: what the test now asks students to do and what it no longer asks.

We examine the three forms along a common set of dimensions—test structure, vocabulary demand, text complexity, passage length, type of reading, topical coverage, prerequisite background knowledge, and depth of knowledge—and, where the newer form has no counterpart in the older ones, we say so rather than force a comparison.1

This analysis matters for several reasons. First, the SAT is among the most consequential assessments in American education: scores shape college admissions and scholarship decisions and are widely read as a signal of college readiness. Yet public discussion of the test’s recent overhaul has centered on format— that it is now digital, shorter, and adaptive—rather than on what its reading section actually asks students to know and do. A careful, like-for-like comparison of reading content across eras is scarce.

Admissions offices and researchers often treat scores as comparable over time; if the test now measures a different mix of skills than it did on the 1980s forms, a given score may not mean quite what it used to.

Second, this high-stakes test shapes what schools, tutors, and families emphasize, so a change in the reading section ripples back into classrooms. It is important that this consequence be accounted for.

Third, the specific things a test assumes—rare vocabulary, cultural and historical background, the ability to read a chart—bear directly on equity, because they advantage students with particular kinds of prior exposure. Documenting exactly what changed is a precondition for any informed judgment about whether the change is an improvement.

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