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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

#361

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…

Ive taken a few online tests and they have never failed to have some issues that add a ton of stress and waste time.

Even online ides have had significant issues for me in the past which have eaten up 5-15 minutes of interview time. It sucks because I don't know how much cheating any of these measures actually prevent and anyone determined to cheat will be able to bypass them.

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

#362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment comes off as "people who score well on tests are more often cheaters", supported by anecdotal evidence. Above all, it's hardly relevant to the overall discussion and feels more like a grievance.

I read it that smart people are more likely to try and figure out to outsmart a security system not to cheat but just to see if they can. In my experience at libraries and on college networks, that tracks.

Reading comprehension is still undefeated.

A student who has excess bandwidth after acing a test is more likely to want to poke and explore the limitations of that system than a student who, at capacity, is almost perfect.

Unscientific, but I'd bet there are two major cheating populations: 95%+, and something like 50-75%. By definition there are a lot more of the mid-tier-barely-getting-by cheaters, but they also aren't as smart and are only dangerous to societal trust in aggregate.

Come to think of it, I missed the third major population: pre-meds

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

#363
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…

Been taking certifications exams (Microsoft, then AWS) since early 2000s. Certification centers (eg Prometric) have cameras everywhere, and personnel watches you while you're taking the test, they make you put all your belongings into a locker, including watches. Workstations are locked down to the point that they can only run proprietary testing software.

I honestly prefer it to doing it remotely at home, where you have to show them your entire room (in the beginning and whenever they ask), install their software that wants full control to everything, and it still doesn't work half the time. One time I tried it told me bandwidth is insufficient - well, normally it's sufficient to have 2 or 3 Rokus stream in HD.

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

#364
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.…

The actual drivers license (the one you can get at 18yo) does require road test in most states. The learner's permit that one can get at 14yo does not require road test, but when you apply for full driver's license at 18yo you will have to take it.

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

#365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CA here. The eye charts are a joke. They’re visible at all times so you could easily memorize them during your long wait (even with appointment); and the specific line they have you read is huge. I’ve never looked into it but I suspect it’s just to show you can read a sign on the highway.

Your comment seems odd. If the vision test is enough to show you can read a sign on the highway, why does that make it a joke? Are you suggesting that someone shouldn't have a license if their vision is not correctable to 20/20, even if it's good enough for all essential driving tasks?

It’s a joke because the testing method is inadequate to prevent even the simplest of cheating and does not adequately test that the driver’s vision legally qualifies for an unrestricted license.

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

#366
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

In my state the real benefit of taking the course it that scheduling a road test with the DMV often has a multi-month waitlist. Then, if you fail, you have to wait another 2-3 months to retest. A better lesson than the state approved course was paying for a morning on the skid pad at the local raceway with a real driving instrcutor. Once your young driver understands how to regain control of the car, they are much be…

Most of what they need to know includes knowing road signs and road markings, right of way, going through intersections, following traffic lights, speed limits, keeping safe distance, and even recognizing aggressive and impaired drivers to stay away from. None of that they will learn on the race track.

You can definitely push the car to the limit and see what happens when you go over in a _somewhat_ controlled environment (laws of physics still apply at the race track and you can still crash). Or you can teach them that a good driver is not the one who drives fast but the one who arrives alive.

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

#367
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Young people get into more crashes (and more deadly crashes) than old people, we should probably just flat out not allow people under 25 to drive long before we get around to worrying about things like vision checks.

Young people have more accidents because they have less experience driving. Raising the driving age doesn't help with that. If anything it should be lowered so that more of the learning period occurs when people are still under parental supervision.

It's also because younger people are more impulsive. If the driving age were raised to 25 there would be fewer accidents among beginner drivers. Of course it would be terrible in so many other ways, but the point is the accidents are not just about lack of experience.

I agree that having more of a supervised learning period would be a good idea.

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

#368
post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

The actual drivers license (the one you can get at 18yo) does require road test in most states. The learner's permit that one can get at 14yo does not require road test, but when you apply for full driver's license at 18yo you will have to take it.

Do you mean 16? I don't think there are any states where you have to wait until 18 to get a license.

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

#369

They are making it quite a bit easier for the students to score high. Which seems unfair to anyone who has already taken the test in the old way > The test is also one hour shorter (down from three hours), has shorter reading >passages and uses digital tools, like a highlighter, a graphing calculator and a >bookmark to go back to skipped questions.

That's what I thought at first also. But the test is adaptive, so if you score well on the first part of the math, for example, they give you harder questions in the second part.

In theory, it should actually be possible to make the test harder than it was before, using this framework.

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

#370
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

What do they use instead?
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