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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed; this will further devalue these standardized tests when the results cannot be fully trusted and stop correlating with academic success.
all true, but at least there will be one fewer setting students are forcibly exposed to COVID-19 in
In the noughties, at my Bay Area high school, students had a microphone wired up to their cell phone to someone they paid outside to Google answers, who was watching a feed of stills relayed via MMS every few seconds from a camera hidden in their hoodie. (Or, alternatively, the room was pre-bugged.) I wonder if colleges will begin differentiating between at-home and trusted-facility scores.
When I took the GRE in 2017, everything was digital as well. But I couldn't believe how locked down the experience was. The testing center in downtown SF had no windows, a metal detector, and you had to check all food outside of the testing room. Just in case you were going to try to cheat off of your banana. I think each computer was also recording a video of you taking the test although I might be mistaken here. Ce…
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/education/sat-at-3-hours-...
This changes who ends up at elite institutions, and effectively who makes decisions in society.
However, I later learned that it will be dynamic — depending on how a student does in the first section on a given topic, he will be given either easier or harder versions of a subsequent section. That means that they'll be able to better assess students of all abilities with fewer total questions. Sounds like a win to me.
Of course, dynamic testing like this is not possible with hard copies. Seems like a decent rationale for moving to computerized testing, though I would still be fine if they did it hard copy, for 3 hours.
This sounds more about cuttings costs than anything else.
Agreed; this will further devalue these standardized tests when the results cannot be fully trusted and stop correlating with academic success.
People who want to cheat will always find a way to cheat. All you need to do now is go to the bathroom and lookup answers on your phone.
I'd rather go into a testing center and use someone else's device than infect my own system with whatever spyware they'll insist students install to try and prevent cheaters.