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U.S. students will take the SAT online

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Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#61

Post by testfoobar »

gnicholas wrote: post #28

When I first heard they were shortening the exam by 30%, I thought that was unfortunate, since it would either make the test less reliable or impose a lower ceiling on the range it can assess. 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 abl…

Many kids have an IEP - an individualized education plan. https://www2.ed.gov/parents/needs/speced/iepguide/index.html

They get extra time allocation to take tests - 50% more in most cases. The numbers I hear tossed around is that a substantial fraction (20% to 40%) of school kids in some of the elite public and private schools have IEPs. Clearly there are kids who need the extra time. But that many?

ADHD is the reason that I hear the most. The extra test taking time is not reported to colleges.

Combine 50% extra time with adderall. 1500+ SAT scores are not uncommon.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#62

Post by kalkr »

When I took my SAT someone crashed into a utility pole and the power went out. We ended up having to retake, which was super annoying since that test was so damn long. I wonder what they'll do this year if the same thing were to happen?

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#63

Post by dylan604 »

icyfox wrote: post #11

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…

> I'm shocked at how laissez-faire we've gotten for college entrance exams,

to the point that they stopped requiring SAT altogether, but are starting to bring it back. there's a lot of things they've done is head scratching. i loved when they changed the scores so that your result from 10 years prior suddenly become a lower result so people had to know when you took the test to properly weight the result.

The laissez-faire attitude to drivers licensing when they stopped requiring road tests for new drivers was bonkers as well to me.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#64

Post by goryramsy »

AustinDev wrote: post #9
axus wrote: post #6

"This week, students in the U.S. will begin taking the new SAT on their own devices — including a tablet or a laptop — or on school devices." I'd thought "never trust the client device" was the golden rule to prevent cheating. A background process that reads the display and fills in the field when you start typing would be difficult to detect.

I don't know if they'll have a software based 'anti-cheat' but you could be completely undetectable using this method: HDMI out into splitter from graphics card or tablet, whatever. Use secondary box to ingest video and spit out answers on an alternate display.

They have a ‘secure environment’ but the testing app ‘Bluebook’ is also available for download for practice tests and even to the general public. They have a chromeOS PWA, a Mac Universal app, and a Windows version.

I can also personally attest that the app will run perfectly happy inside a Windows virtual machine, even inside the ‘secure testing mode’, as this is how I personally took the 11th grade PSAT a few months ago.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#65

Post by nothercastle »

dandesim wrote: post #31
AustinDev wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if they'll have a software based 'anti-cheat' but you could be completely undetectable using this method: HDMI out into splitter from graphics card or tablet, whatever. Use secondary box to ingest video and spit out answers on an alternate display.

1. if you can figure out how to do this, you're intelligent enough to score in the top 90th percentile on the exam. 2. good luck getting away with this in person at the proctored exam.

With the kind of money involved sophisticated cheating by professionals is a thing. This isn’t kids in the bathroom level cheating it’s mob and organized crime level.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#66

Post by dylan604 »

Buttons840 wrote: post #49
Eldandan wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> try and prevent Yeah, good luck with that. If there's one thing remote teaching during covid taught me it's that you can't stop someone from cheating during an online assessment.

I graduated from WGU and I wouldn't have known how to cheat on the many proctored tests. The only special software I installed was Zoom. I had to have a detached USB camera and show myself and my testing area, and then during the test the camera was to my side showing both myself and the laptop screen. I'm sure it's possible, but that seems just as secure as a random highschool teacher, which was the only anti-cheat…

my favorite cheating on a test scene ever is from Spies Like Us:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaSUOFleNRU

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#67

Post by dotnet00 »

itishappy wrote: post #33

My friend took an important law school exam (GRE or BAR, not sure which) in the past 2 years that was self administered, and she described her experience as "harrowing." The kernel level malware they installed to monitor the exam crashed her device 4 times during the exam. This was after she got it running on a secondary device because it wouldn't even start on her M1 MacBook Air. The software recorded her screen and…

Ouch that seems even worse than the lockdown browser some of my classes used during covid. I ended up digging out an older laptop for it since there was no way I was going to deal with cleaning up that invasive mess off my regular computers.

Luckily by the end most professors just switched to Zoom with cameras on, and instead modified the tests (eg making them harder, but open book, or multiple versions of the exam distributed randomly - similar to how some in-person exams will alternate between two question sets so no one can cheat off their neighbor)

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#68

Post by dylan604 »

glial wrote: post #43
gnicholas wrote: post #28

When I first heard they were shortening the exam by 30%, I thought that was unfortunate, since it would either make the test less reliable or impose a lower ceiling on the range it can assess. 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 abl…

Shorter is good, but dynamic tests (called "computer adaptive tests" or CAT in the industry) make it difficult to follow longstanding best-practices for test taking. When I took the SAT, I could quickly scan through the questions in the current section and mark those that looked difficult, and save them for the end. With a CAT test, it's typically one-question-at-a-time, and if you're a strong test taker, they get su…

Some of the math competitions I participated would penalize for skipping around. You were awarded +5 for correct answers and -4 for incorrect or skipped questions. It was not uncommon for negative scores. In one test, any stray marks were also marked as incorrect. No erasing, no changing a 7 to a 9, or anything was allowed. The questions leaned toward an increasing difficulty, but there could something very difficult followed by a string of much easier questions. So additional math had to be done to see if it would be better to stop or skip.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#69

Post by saagarjha »

RheingoldRiver wrote: post #19

tbh I'm most interested by this: > "Today's students, they do a lot of their living digitally, they do a lot of their learning digitally and they do a lot of their test taking digitally," says Priscilla Rodriguez, who oversees the SAT for the College Board, the organization behind the test. How do kids work out math problems these days? Do they draw equations with their finger on a tablet/phone? Tablet pen on tablet?…

Kids write on paper just like everyone used to, or they use a tablet or something. There’s literally no difference except that sometimes they click radio buttons instead of filling out a scantron.

Re: U.S. students will take the SAT online

#70

Post by UncleSlacky »

pc86 wrote: post #16
tehjoker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

all true, but at least there will be one fewer setting students are forcibly exposed to COVID-19 in

It's 2024, the pandemic has been over for a number of years now.

The "emergency phase" was declared over, however we're still in a pandemic. Most people want to pretend it's over, but nobody has told the virus.
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