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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

#121

Post by gxs »

germinalphrase wrote: post #110

As a former educator, I look forward to the day that we can simply track student ability in a trustable manner based on long term data collection in the classroom rather than requiring these additional, often expensive, exams. We would need to mediate our classroom interactions more than we do now - but the tools do so usefully are there if packaged correctly.

This is a nice ideal to strive for, but until everyone goes through the same education system there will always be a need for some form of...standard testing across the board.

I think the closest we’d be able to get to this is maybe smaller, more granular standardized test that do a better job of testing multiple specific dimensions over an academic career vs a big bang at the end.

Somehow that actually sounds kind of creepy, but if that’s what you meant that’s the only way I see this done more effectively.

In your experience, what other ways or ideas have you heard?

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

#122

Post by throwitaway222 »

dylan604 wrote: post #63
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…

They stopped requiring road tests? Man, seems like that would cause a bunch of cybertrucks to drive into hotels or something.

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

#123

Post by dandesim »

ghaff wrote: post #40
dandesim wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This are big statements to be making with no rationale. These will still be proctored exams in person, so there is no reason to believe that cheating will increase . Additionally, there is low indicators from the start that standardized tests correlate with academic success, hence the number of higher ed institutions no longer requiring them. People who want to cheat will always find a way to cheat. All you need to d…

Standardized tests actually correlate better with academic success than a number of other measures. Some Ivies have recently been reinstituting standardized testing requirements.

That’s just straight false, or at least I have never seen any evidence showing a strong correlation. What has been shown is the negative advantage minorities, impoverished, ESL, disabled people have when taking the test and the advantages that wealthy people who can pay for tutors have.

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

#124

Post by gnicholas »

goryramsy wrote: post #88
gnicholas wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this change motivated by issues regarding self pacing? I hadn't heard that. Good luck with your upcoming test!

>Is this change motivated by issues regarding self pacing? I think that to the Collegeboard, the change to digital was to make it easier to distribute and easier to take (digital, shorter time). However, I think that this has some unintended consequences in how it will limit student freedom to self-pace, and the possibility of unjust scores if the student does not make the qualifying 'second stage' difficulty on the…

It makes sense to have tried to get in for a paper test in case the digital rollout is a mess. It will be interesting to learn how the two tests differ — I hope students like you write blog posts or articles in school newspapers about the experience.

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

#125

Post by dandesim »

nothercastle wrote: post #65
dandesim wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So how is it worse than what happens now? These tests are worth a lot to a very small subset of people. The average high schooler (even the bottom 85%+) does not have access to those resources

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

#126

Post by gotoeleven »

testfoobar wrote: post #61
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 reas…

[flagged]

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

#127

Post by arjvik »

dylan604 wrote: post #68
glial wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Number Sense! Despite how pointless those tests were, the whole experience was super fun!

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

#128

Post by the__alchemist »

germinalphrase wrote: post #110

As a former educator, I look forward to the day that we can simply track student ability in a trustable manner based on long term data collection in the classroom rather than requiring these additional, often expensive, exams. We would need to mediate our classroom interactions more than we do now - but the tools do so usefully are there if packaged correctly.

I'd go a step further and decouple education from social status stratification as much as possible. Maybe not realistic with evolution and primate dominance hierarchies, but we can hopefully (although I'm not positive...) overcome that.

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

#129

Post by eganist »

jmeyer2k wrote: post #120
germinalphrase wrote: post #110

As a former educator, I look forward to the day that we can simply track student ability in a trustable manner based on long term data collection in the classroom rather than requiring these additional, often expensive, exams. We would need to mediate our classroom interactions more than we do now - but the tools do so usefully are there if packaged correctly.

This is what we're working on building at AutoMark ( https://automark.io ). We're currently building grading tools for teachers, but eventually want to build out a tool to accurately monitor a student's performance over time. There's a lot of potential for AI to disrupt the education system from high school to college to a career. Currently, a GPA and a few test scores (SAT, ACT, etc) are the most in depth view into…

> eventually want to build out a tool to accurately monitor a student's performance over time.

How does AutoMark account for disparities in quality of education?

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

#130

Post by ghaff »

dandesim wrote: post #123
ghaff wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standardized tests actually correlate better with academic success than a number of other measures. Some Ivies have recently been reinstituting standardized testing requirements.

That’s just straight false, or at least I have never seen any evidence showing a strong correlation. What has been shown is the negative advantage minorities, impoverished, ESL, disabled people have when taking the test and the advantages that wealthy people who can pay for tutors have.

ANd yet there's widespread reinstitution of standardized test requirements, see e.g. https://admissions.dartmouth.edu/apply/update-testing-policy
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