College Board Error on June 6, 2015 SAT?

I saw the misprint, but I thought it was one of those section college board throw in as a test section. I dont know. I really hope they don’t cancel this entire test. I dont want to retake it.

Our test center called CollegeBoard about the timing for section 8 and they said that it was a misprint

My daughter is a Junior in high school and took the SAT yesterday too. She said that her proctor noticed the misprint and told them they only have 20 minutes. She is planning on applying to her top choice school EA and this was the last time she could take the SAT. Her school never told her about SAT subject test, so she will be taking those in October, so November will be too late for her to retake the SAT. She felt that she did pretty good on this SAT, and doesn’t want to take this test again. Her senior year schedule is very heavy too. It would be ridiculous for the CB to cancel all the tests just because some kids got a few minutes longer for 2 sections.

Official CB response: https://lp.collegeboard.org/information-regarding-the-saturday-june-6-sat-administration

Information Regarding the Saturday, June 6, SAT Administration

Shortly before noon Eastern Time on Saturday, June 6, Educational Testing Service (ETS) informed the College Board that there was a printing error in the standard test books they provided to students taking the SAT on June 6 in the United States. The time allotted for a specific section, either section 8 or 9 depending on the edition, was incorrect in the student test books and correct in the script and manual provided to Test Center Supervisors. The student test books contained “25 minutes” while the manual and script contained the correct time limit of “20 minutes.” As soon as ETS became aware of the error during the administration of the test, they worked to provide accurate guidance to supervisors and administrators.

The College Board understands the critical nature of this issue, and we are actively working to determine next steps to ensure the fairness of the test and the validity of the scores we deliver. We regret the confusion and concern this issue is causing for students and their families, and we will provide them and others with updated information as soon as possible. Please check back here for updates.

@happymochi Thank you for the information from CB. I think forcing ALL kids to retake the test again would cause a lot of scheduling problems for seniors. These kids will be doing their college applications, essays, SAT subject tests, etc in the next 4 months. My daughter will be out of the country for most of the summer too, so she will have less than 2 months to do all this. Someone earlier mentioned that proctors are told to record the start and end times of each section. Maybe asking the kids to retake the tests in centers that got the extra 5 minutes would solve the problem. Hopefully, there weren’t too many centers.

If there is no significant statistical differences between the groups, all this might not matter.

Thanks for the CB info. Wonder if they can scrap those two sections on all SATs and still get valid results (e.g.,base it off of 2 reading, 2 math, and 3 writing)?

If there is a retake, it should definitely be optional.

Updates about this issue will be posted here when available: https://lp.collegeboard.org/information-regarding-the-saturday-june-6-sat-administration

Well, isn’t this interesting. The college board denies that this is a time-critical test, the implication being that students without time and half accommodations are not being disadvantaged because they have enough time to complete the test to the best of their ability. It will be interesting to see whether they release the score averages between the groups who got extra time and those who don’t.

We made it!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/06/07/students-find-key-error-on-sats-given-across-u-s/

The article notes (as do some notes on this thread) that there were kids who thought that they had 25 minutes, but discovered that they had only 20 minutes when they said “Pencils down”. That is a real mess up. And it’s of course messed up if kids indeed got 25 minutes. I cannot see how the CB can use the results of these sections at all.

Is this the last administration of the “old” SAT?

No, the last “old” SAT is January 2016.

@lonetreegrad I really hope that isn’t the case, since I got the extra time and really don’t want to retake it… but I think the problem is even more complicated than that. It’s more than just test centers varying, the classrooms within the test centers did different things. In my group, the proctor didn’t call collegeboard or anything, she just gave us extra time to be safe (it was her first time and she was subbing for someone else). I have no idea what all the other proctors in my test center did. This is a HUGE mess.

@lonetreegrad - I agree. My S studied very intensely for this Saturday’s SAT, which he considered his final try, so that he could then turn his focus toward college apps. The proctor in his room gave them 20 minutes, so it wouldn’t be fair if his score was canceled. Nor would it be fair to ask him to retake it.

It’s like training for and running a marathon, having the organizers throw out the results because they made an error in timing the runners, and then asking the runners to run the marathon again.

What an unforgivable error. I was given the “correct” amount of time, which was 20 minutes for both sections 8 and 0. On that 20 minute math section I missed a problem (due to a careless algebra error) and had to leave one blank. If I were to have had 25% more time, my score would have increased by 30 points. By no means am I using the test error as an excuse for my error, but the scores are now not standardized. And for those saying that time doesn’t matter, or that five minutes isn’t that much, there’s a reason College Board only gives you 20 minutes, not 25. If time didn’t matter, why time the test?

ETS = Erroneously Timed Services

exactly @goldcashoahu. anyone aiming for perfect scores realizes the importance of those 5-10 minutes to double check your work.

My room did 20 minuets for both sections.

Indeed it is a big issue and can not be pushed under the rugs. Cancelling the whole exam and retaking across the country- more so when schools are now closing for the summer vacation is not going to be optimal.

IMHO- CB will normalize the scores for the students taking 20 min and 25 min sections and declare the result. This is how they normalize the scores across different test dates. It should be fairly easy to do, provided they have the data who took the test in 20 mins and who got 25 mins. This will be fair to everyone and no forced retaking involved.

I don’t really see them being able to normalize the scores. When they do that across different test dates, it has to do with the difficulty of the questions on one test as compared to another test of greater or lesser difficulty under the SAME testing conditions. It is impossible to determine what the outcome should have been with or without the extra time.

I’m not really sure that there is a reasonable way to resolve this unless the scores are cancelled.