<p>Deat ETS:
I am writing about the placement of the experimental sections on the SAT and its effect on students. We drop our children at 7:45 on a Saturday morning at the end of a busy week, at a school that may not be their own, checking frantically that they have their pencils, ID, entrance ticket, calculator and snack. We can't pick them up until after 1 PM. During that long expanse of time (here it was over 80 degrees) I can think of nothing but how incredibly long and stressful this morning is for these kids.
The drive to the SAT center is one of the most stressful times I can remember in my child's life. I did not create this stress and you did not create this stress, but a weird confluence of events and beliefs has made this beautiful Saturday morning in October (or May or June) one of the most miserable days in the life of my child and many others.<br>
I object very much to the length of the new test. Certainly, over 5 hours is too long for most 16 and 17 year old children to be tested. This is only 3 hours longer than professional board exams for accountants, lawyers and doctors who take these exams as adults. I feel certain that the length of the exams is costing some students to have lower scores My older two children, who took the shorter test, did at least 100 points better on the SAT than the PSAT, My youngest dropped 120 points from the PSAT to the SAT.
As if that were not enough, I just went to the College Board website and found that for the test he just took (October 2007) ETS has placed the experimental section as either the 2nd or 3rd section of the test. So we pay our money, we leave you our children for a ridiculous length of time, and while they are still fresh, before their brains are fried and their arms limp, ETS makes them do a section of math that doesn't even count, so they can approach Section 10, the last section which does count, at 12:30 PM with barely an ounce of their original stamina. In other fields (e.g. medicine) people are payed to participate in an experiment. The doctor does not say, "Gee Bob, since we have you here for your yearly physical we'd like to draw some blood for an experiment we're doing that might help some other folks". I question the right of ETS to experiment with my child on a day that takes quite enough out of him.</p>
<p>Wow…that is so true. I never thought of it. My kids came out of the SATs exhausted. Cutting it down a bit would be a great idea.</p>
<p>Your letter is great, but it doesn’t express the last point (the medical analogy) strongly enough.</p>
<p>If the doctor needed blood samples for an experiment, he might very well ask Bob if he was willing to participate – possibly for free – but Bob would have to consent to this (probably in writing), and it would be made very clear that he had the right to refuse without any adverse consequences.</p>
<p>The ETS does not give our kids a chance to consent or refuse to consent to be experimented on. In medicine – and I think, even in psychology – this is unethical.</p>
<p>The experimental questions are put there to maintain the “quality” of future tests so ETS should do this. The question is should test takers be required to provide this service to ETS free? I do not think so. Why doesnt ETS belly ip to the bar and offer to waive the application fee to students willing to take the existing test and allow fee payers to get an alternate test w/o experimental questions with the appropriate time adjustment? ETS could of course limit the number of free tests offered.</p>
<p>As to the 5 hour time I am somewhat ambivalent about it. Its something hs students will be exposed to a few times and I have better things to stress about. Heck my son has put in innumerable marathon work sessions in college that would dwarf the SAT test in comparison.</p>
<p>^oh, that would never work! There would be an outcry of poor kids being exploited and getting lower scores bc of the disadvantage of sitting for an extra section. Also, that would mess up the cross section of all socioeconomic goups sitting for the experimental section.</p>
<p>Frankly, I agree with the sentiments of your letter, grizzlymom.</p>
<p>So, if the experimental section is clearly marked as such and doesn’t count, can kids put their pencils down and have a snack? – leave it blank as a protest?</p>
<p>Take the ACT</p>
<p>That everyone who takes the test is in the same boat means that everyone has the same disadvantage of having to take the real SAT after taking the experimental part.</p>
<p>While taking such a long test is difficult, that’s what people have to do in college (depending on how their finals fall) and when taking medical and bar exams. Everyone who takes the SAT is taking them under similar circumstances (with the exception of students who have documented medical problems), so while it is a grueling experience for many, it’s something that virtually all students who take the SAT will go through.</p>
<p>Interestingly, S, 19, was in the class that had the choice of taking the new or old SAT. He took both. He took the old SAT twice while a h.s. junior. His second time, his verbal score went down about 50 points, his math score went up about 20 points. When he took the new SAT spring of his junior year, his combined verbal and math went up 130 points over his highest scores on both. That also was at least 100 points over his PSAT v, m (when you convert the PSAT scores to SAT scores). To all of our surprise, he didn’t find the long format grueling.</p>
<p>I’m no CB fan, but in fairness, they did study this question because they were very concerned about the fatigue factor, and seem to have found that the increased length did not result in meaningful differences in scores:</p>
<p><a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
<p>I agree with you about the length of the test. My daughter took it last year for CTY, and I went to the test site 1.5 hours early to pick her up. I hadn’t really internalized exactly how long the new format of the test was. I had read that it was longer, but I was seriously mistaken when I thought it would just be an extra 1/2 hour or so. She did OK, but she was so hungry and tired at the end. I had packed snacks for her, but she said they were not given long enough breaks for her to eat them (?!). The only way it would change, however, would be if people really stopped taking the test, which I don’t think will happen anytime soon. In fact, by taking it early, my daughter and others like her just make things worse. Why should the College Board do anything differently if more and more people take their tests every year?</p>
<p>The CB might have studied the fatigue factor, but just because people CAN do something, does that mean they SHOULD? Does anyone think the SAT now is any more valid than the one we all took (eons ago)? Does anyone REALLY think the new writing section adds something of value? I have taught my kids that there is a style of writing for standardized tests ONLY, and that while I will teach it to them, I do NOT want them using it anywhere else.</p>
<p>I would much rather not have to teach them it at all. I have heard from other parents who already have college-age kids that their instructors in college are telling them to forget everything they learned about writing essays in high school. Was this new section really worth the extra time and aggravation?</p>
<p>In most countries of the world, students have to take much longer and more grueling tests to get into college. The typical college entrance exam battery in other countries is like taking six to eight AP tests over two or three days. Students in the United States have an easy path into college, not to mention that hundreds of colleges have explicit open admission policies and let you in with no credentials at all.</p>
<p>Here are two links to the 2004 CB report “A Study of Fatigue Effects from the New SAT”. I would comment on the report if I didn’t feel so wiped out after reading it. Actually, the invigorating mental effect of switching between different types of activities is quite well-known. Nonetheless, my S was indeed wiped out after he spent, from start to finish, a total of what turned out to be 6 1/2 hours at the testing center.</p>
<p><a href=“http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:PrJSa1ELasoJ:www.collegeboard.com/research/pdf/05390RDCBReport0405dc.pdf+placement+of+experimental+section+on+SAt+effect+on+score&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&client=firefox-a[/url]”>http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:PrJSa1ELasoJ:www.collegeboard.com/research/pdf/05390RDCBReport0405dc.pdf+placement+of+experimental+section+on+SAt+effect+on+score&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=5&client=firefox-a</a>
<a href=“College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools”>College Board - SAT, AP, College Search and Admission Tools;
<p>I remember, from an older thread on this topic, that a group of guidance counselors wrote a letter to the CB to complain about the inordinate length of the test and petitioned for students to be able to take the writing portion as a separate test. This protest movement helped give many colleges an impetus to go the SAT optional route.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/education/16sat.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/education/16sat.html</a></p>
<p>and here is a link to the Boston Globe article:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=384188[/url]”>http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=384188</a></p>
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<p>What are you asking, exactly? If you’re asking if it is good or preferable to have such a long test, then I doubt many people are going to say yes. No one wants to take a 5 hour test.</p>
<p>If you are asking if it is valid, of course it is. Every student is given the same conditions, and they are compared to each other. The scores will be just as valid as any other year.</p>
<p>“Fatigue effects on the new SAT:A closer look at the research” by Bradford R. MacGowan, Ed.D. (Feb. 2006). His argument against the ETS runs along the following lines:</p>
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<p><a href=“http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:o5m2uA8HXqYJ:home.comcast.net/~bmacgowan/wsb/Images/SAT_fatigue_report_MacGowan.pdf+length+of+SAT+fatigue&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&client=firefox-a[/url]”>http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:o5m2uA8HXqYJ:home.comcast.net/~bmacgowan/wsb/Images/SAT_fatigue_report_MacGowan.pdf+length+of+SAT+fatigue&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=3&client=firefox-a</a></p>
<p>There are quite a few things about the college admissions process that I think are “broken,” but to be honest, this is not something that was on my list. The SATs felt long in 1965-66 when I took them. They feel long today. My son has taken the SAT I twice (three times including his testing for CTY in 7th grade) and three SAT IIs. Each time, he went to bed early the night before (like most teenagers, he is not a willing early riser). For a snack one time, we made the 800 Bars from the book “Up Your Score” because we thought the name was so funny. He went off with his no. 2 pencils and came home tired but thrilled to be finished. We were positive and encouraging the night before and in the car, and when we picked him up he reported on what went well and what may not have gone so well. He knew it would be a long day, but it was not a miserable day–just one step in the process. He complained about just one thing: the framed photo of a public figure he does not like that was staring down at him at the testing site! He is just a regular kid, going through the same thing as all his friends and classmates.</p>
<p>I am not trying to open up the whole SAT argument here. Like others on this thread, I am not a big fan of the College Board, and I do believe SATs should be optional. But I really don’t think my son felt brutalized by the process. He just did his best and got through it–just as he’ll have to do with any number of challenges in his future.</p>
<p>A little off topic, but:</p>
<p>The SAT should be used by colleges but only for a basic gatekeeper function. Screen out applicants that score below a cutoff set by the college and then throw out the exact score…actually throw it out before adcoms see the application. </p>
<p>This would greatly diminish the clout of the ETS/College Board, while still serving colleges and students well.</p>
<p>And it would make for a much less stressful exam experience.</p>
<p>In response to one writer: Primarily what I am asking is does the ETS have the right to add an experimental section to the test, lengthening an already arduous morning, and if they do so could they not put it at the end and not stick it into the beginning. I believe that if they have an experiment, they should pay kids to be their guinea pigs. The fact that some kids take a 5 1/2 hour test cheerily and some are worn out by it means that we are now testing test-taking stamina as well as language, reading, math and writing. Just because all the kids are taking the same test doesn’t mean that CB is doing right by our kids. What if they lengthened it to 8 hours? What if they all took it in a field of daisies?
And as far as taking long tests in college and later, this is high school. Can’t we make their lives a bit easier? It will get harder soon enough.</p>
<p>Sure they have the right to add an experimental section. The experimental sections are how they gather data to make the tests more fair and the questions more valid. If they didn’t, we’d be complaining about the unfair questions.</p>
<p>Additionally, the reason they don’t put the experimental sections in the middle, as opposed to the beginning or end, is that it makes the results more valid. I’m sure you can imagine that if it was at the end, there would be a fatigue effect that would skew the results of the data. That’s important if the tests are to be as valid as possible. It’s less important for other sections to be in a certain place, because again, the kids are compared to each other for those scores.</p>
<p>I agree with the point that the SAT test is too long for the average high school student, but to correct a point in the original post, the bar exam is three full, consecutive days of testing in California and most other states. My family wanted to throw me a party on the last night to celebrate and I begged them not to…I just wanted to go to bed.</p>
<p>Most law school grads are at least 25 years old (usually more) and are studying what they love and intend to spend their life doing. These kids are 16 and 17.
Adding an experimental section to the test I have paid for is not fair. If they want to experiment they should pay for it. Every other profession does.</p>