One of the big critiques of the SAT in the past has been its 'studyability', because it tends to mean rich people can hire SAT tutors for their kids and memorize exactly which equations/wording templates will be on the test and score higher, so this may be an effort to combat that.

The related NYT article today suggests that all the extra english may actually make it worse for ESL students, so it's interesting to see if those goals will work at cross purposes.