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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

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, in my experience, not one kid had an IEP that allotted them extra time to take tests. There's a difference between the IEP that the school uses and the accommodation request for standardized testing. It would be pretty obvious to you if a student in your class were given extra time for in-class tests, but much harder for you to know if that student qualified for extra time on the SAT. If you knew when they…

You're aware that we generally took the SAT in the same kind of classrooms that we took our class tests, or the state standardized tests, or the APs? (Okay, the APs were largely in the gym instead of classrooms because there's several hundred people taking the AP exam at the same time, but same thing really). If kids were getting extra time on standardized tests, we'd know.

> You're aware that we generally took the SAT in the same kind of classrooms that we took our class tests, or the state standardized tests, or the APs?

Sounds like a very different experience than what I had. SATs were on Saturday, at a different HS. There were various HS's to choose from, depending on where you lived. I went to a magnet HS (sounds like you did too), so kids were from all over, and they took tests at whatever school was near their house. Within each test center, we were then broken into rooms based on last name, IIRC. I typically knew only 1 or 2 kids in the room I was in (the rest were from other HS's), and would have had no idea whether any of my classmates had extra time.

Even in your situation, you wouldn't have known that a kid who took the SAT with you didn't also take it again, at a different test center, with extra time. Lots of kids take it more than once, and you can choose where to take it. Kids tried to keep this stuff on the down-low, either due to shame (because they actually had a disability) or to hide their undeserved accommodation (because they didn't have a disability).

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

#202

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.

How do you do that data collection, though? And more importantly, how do you effectively compare across different schools and districts? Some high school give out As in math to students that can't do basic algebra.

Analyzing curriculum contents and local instruction transcription.

Ranking and benchmarking between educational environments would require an additional psychometric evaluation layer. This would not a Day One function, so the tool would focus on maximizing utility as an assessment assistant tool for instructors. There is a bridge to be built between formative and summative assessment. If this thing doesn't make them better instructors, it would be dead in the water anyway.

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

#203
post #173
post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that most states require road tests to get your first license or to get a license if you have been unlicensed for a while but stopped requiring them for a renewal, at least if you've got a clean driving record. In at least some states this was based on data that showed that for people that had clean records the rate of road test failures was very low, and those were almost always due to test anxiety and the…

Many states no longer require a road test. Instead you take a state approved driving course and the instructor certifies you as meeting the state driving skill requirements. Most states with this system do have an option to still take a state administered driving test instead but most new drivers just take the course. My daughter got her license last August and we paid for the course. They didn’t teach her anything.…

For real? Which states are these?

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

#204
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…

In some cases, it was a good idea for top students applying to college or grad school to take a gap year if possible around 2020. When things get lax, mediocre students fare better.

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

#205
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theres clearly a class of people that would do worse on the old tests. You couldnt as easily study for the old tests.

Who is this class of people and what makes it so clear they exist?

Certain hedge funds and elite companies stopped looking at SATs as a hire indicator. Its well known that its no longer a reasonable measure of top talent

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

#206
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is looking at your SAT score from 10 years ago?

I applied to Canonical a few months back and they made me write an essay describing my high school grades, extracurriculars, and test results. I've never had that experience in any other job app so it's pretty Canonical specific but it does happen.

I literally couldn't tell you what my SAT scores were. Those and my high school grades were good enough to get into $SCHOOL. I'm sure not going to bother to try to dig them out. Here are some extracurriculars I did--not that it's relevant at this point.

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

#207
Wow. Education in the US is turning into an even bigger joke, making cheating effortless, and minimizing cognitive exercise of fluid and crystalized intellect.

Nothing can or should replace tests or writing on paper and a (cleared) HP 4x because Erable is the superior CAS.

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

#208

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.

With what, a standardized curriculum? That is a hell of a can of worms as you probably know.

Apply an AI agent to the sum total of student output? Can't wait for the entrenched racial bias to leak into the AI and a host of other issues.

If you could get an AI implemented that didn't involve reporting to the greater regulatory bodies, I can see that working, but that's the issue with things like that: management wants to see them and then the stats rapidly get watered down to meaninglessness.

It would be crazy to see if an AI can start diagnosing home issues, abuse, etc from student output and performance. I can see a lot of benefits, as long as the AI output is private.

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

#209
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…

> 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.

I took the GRE just before they switched from scoring out of 800 on each section to scoring out of 180. After the switch they kindly mailed me “converted” scores on the new 180 scale, which turned my perfect math score—I hadn’t missed a single question—into a 178. I was not amused.

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

#210

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…

Doesn't stop an industry of cheating by having crib sheets or entire whiteboards with accessory equations, information, or potentially gasp answers on the other side of the screen. Without a 360 camera recording the entire room for the entire duration of the exam, proctor-based exams at a public venue or off-site corporate testing center should be the gold standard. (A few institutions like Stanford continue an absurd tradition of proctor-less exams.)
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