Well if that is an authentic email from the CB, then I am not sure how the CB will be able to explain the whole thing. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out. As I have stated, I hope that this will force the testing companies to be more transparent and honest about fixing the many problems, including cheaters of all ages.
Edweek has a good article with more details: http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/high_school_and_beyond/2016/03/college_board_aims_at_test_prep_tutors_in_barring_March_5_SAT_Takers.html
“Fewer than 1 percent” of 277,000 registered test takers had their test day moved.
College Board may want to limit tutor access to questions in development:
There’s too large a conflict of interest for tutors to publicly criticize the SAT. So the argument that the College Board wants to shield the SAT from “informed criticism” isn’t convincing.
The College Board making a determined effort to hobble the testing industry does make sense. The common perception that tutoring makes a huge difference in exacerbating inequality is a direct threat to public acceptance of standardized testing.
There has been a very large amount of criticism of the new SAT by tutors and other people in education.
In schools or states in which Common Core is not taught well, the need for tutoring is going to increase, not decrease. That is what is happening in my neck of the woods.
College Board is unlikely to be able to hobble the test prep industry because the quality of school teaching is often not very good. Why should a talented teacher work for nothing?
Write a really hard test. Pay teachers what they deserve. THAT would hobble the test prep industry.
This is the choice that the government has made: invest in Big Data and Big Testing Companies, let teachers feed off the crumbs. Hey, if you won’t pay talented teachers a decent wage, someone else will.
@Plotinus, I agree that teachers should be paid more, but I’m not sure what that has to do with tutors’ need for access to the March SAT test. If students aren’t being taught well shouldn’t the emphasis be put on filling gaps in a student’s education, not teaching to one specific test?
What exactly are we arguing about though?
Is this action discriminatory against tutors and pros? Of course.
Did CB do it explicitly for that purpose? Almost certainly.
Can they do it legally? Probably, though none of us are lawyers (except for that one guy), so we really have no clue.
Should we be upset about it? That’s where I think point of view is very relevant.
I have read the whole thread, and I thought the final thing was the main point of contention. Please get me back on track though if I’m confused.
The Redesigned SAT is not supposed to be “one specific test” but a general test of all the basic skills needed for college, as established by Common Core. This is the whole point of aligning the the SAT with Common Core. Getting a good general education as defined by Common Core is excellent preparation for the new SAT, and students in schools in which Common Core is taught well will need less test prep.
The connection with the March SAT story is that some people defended CB’s banning adult test-takers on the grounds that CB should hobble the test prep industry because the test prep industry increases income and opportunity inequality.
My point is that as long as school teaching is poor, there will be demand for test prep, and school teaching will be poor as long as school teachers are paid peanuts.
Have you ever noticed that every strategy CB has for decreasing inequality is a plan that means more money goes to CB and Big Data? Isn’t THAT a conflict of interest?
Here’s a thought experiment: suppose I have a kid: in an academically underprivileged situation and very poor math skills. Which of the following is a better investment in improving that situation:
(A) invest in developing a computerized program of instruction, a computerized program of testing, and a Microsoft Surface to deliver these.
(B) Invest in hiring a fantastic math teacher for the class and three hours per week of private instruction with a qualified tutor for each lagging student.
Which do you think is going to improve the student’s math skills and personal situation more?
But College Board and Big Data are going for option 1. Wonder why?
I am not going to argue one way or the other. However, I will give out an observation.
Perhaps, it would be good for no tutoring to take place - at least for the first couple of administrations of the test. Then, if the students bomb the test miserably, it SHOULD be a wake up call that common core is not working. That being said, really bright kids (who are not taught common core) should be able to do well on this test anyway - maybe with a little preparation and maybe without.
It is the same principle of having a really poor teacher for AP Calculus. Miraculously, all the students make 5s (because they have outside tutors). Yet, as for as the school district is concerned, the teacher must be doing a stellar job.
And exactly how would this be accomplished? Some people started prepping for the new test back in September.
I am sure that CB was counting on the fact that this would be a popular move and would give the appearance that CB is defending the not so wealthy against the wealthy, That way the not so wealthy would not notice all the ways that the new test is more helpful to the wealthy than ever.
I’m really sorry you guys are all going through this. It’s awful. I hope many of you will consider taking the ACT instead. If you are prepared to take the SAT, you will probably do equally well on the ACT.
They don’t want to take the SAT for college admissions reasons – they want to take it so they can tutor other SAT takers. So the ACT will not do.
The ACT TOS specifically bans people taking the test who work for test prep services, too.
@intparent, I was not referring to the tutors taking the exam. I was thinking of the real students on here who are at a disadvantage because the SAT cancelled the exam.
They didn’t cancel the exam and no “real students” were disadvantaged. They transferred the registration of adults (non-high school students not taking the ACT for college or assessment purposes) to the May exam and allowed appeals for any of those people who had a real need to take the exam in March. They’re concerned about the adults being paid test takers who are there either to help others cheat (e.g., providing information to people in later time zones) or to memorize questions and compile the information to recreate the test (which is an issue since the test will, at some point, be reused in whole or part).
This is the reason adduced by College Board, but earlier posts raised questions about whether this is the real reason.
(1) Adult testers who were already registered for May had their registrations moved to the June, another undisclosed test date. If the reason adult testers were banned is that they are suspected of reconstructing tests, why allow them to take the test in June?
(2) There are other obvious holes in test security. If test security is the real reason, why is College Board not taking any measures to close these holes?
(3) Some people speculate that the real reasons for the cancellations were to prevent scrutiny of the test by experts, and to create the impression that College Board is defending the middle and lower classes against the wealthy, thereby bolstering popular support of the SAT as a college admissions tool.
Really? I don’t suppose you could link to any College Board statements mentioning adult paid test takers helping others cheat, time zones, etc?
@Plotinus – I have followed this entire thread and I understand your concerns – I was really just trying to clarify for the person who seemed to think that actual high school students were being told they could not take the March SAT without reiterating everything that’s been said in the last 13 pages. I’m really not in the business of defending CB – goodness knows they have issues and I’m strongly opposed to the recycling that creates most of the problems. ’
However, the speculation in #3 is primarily from the fairtest.org folks who have their own agenda (and some good points for sure, but their business is to criticize standardized testing in every way possible). Anyone can speculate about someone’s bad intentions, but that doesn’t make it any more likely. Again, I’m not really interested in defending CB, but I’m sure they are trying to fix the other holes – if for no other reason, then because the publicity from all the overseas cheating has been very damaging. I don’t know enough about the holes (other than repeating exams is incredibly stupid and invites cheating) to be able to say that they aren’t trying. ACT is no better about security, so ditching SAT for ACT doesn’t really change anything. Full disclosure – my kid’s taking both, going with his best performance – I don’t even have a reason to favor one over the other at this point.
The June thing – who knows? Maybe they just need some more time to improve security in other ways. Maybe they need time to figure out which of these adults has a legitimate reason (tutor, fairtest.org critic, journalist, whatever) and who really appears to be involved in something improper – the latter folks might find their June registrations cancelled too unless they can show they’re not facilitating cheating. I actually don’t have a problem with them asking non-students to show some sort of legitimate reason for taking the exam.
One thing they were clearly looking at seems to be the number of times these non-high school students have taken the exam. It appears from an earlier posting that an SAT tutor was able to successfully appeal and will take the exam tomorrow, I’m guessing that Kaplan and Princeton review were probably successful in getting some of their folks in too. I think they were more concerned about adults who didn’t have any apparent reason to be taking the test and had taken it many times, which raises the legitimate concerns that they stated.
Might CB have other interests in addition to those stated? Of course, I’m not trying to say that they don’t, but that doesn’t make their stated reasons invalid. In sum, I don’t think the stated reasons are fake, but I’m not arguing that the additional points might also be valid. “Mixed motive” we called it back in the day.
@jgoggs – try the Chronicle of Higher Education and Inside Higher Education. Chronicle limits some material to subscribers, but those sort of cheating rings have been reported on for years in all of the major media outlets. Read my other post, I’m not saying CB might not have had other motives, but they’re not making up the cheating rings.
Perhaps I misinterpreted your post, @higheredrocks, but my point was that you seemed to be attributing to the College Board ideas that actually originate with Bob Schaeffer of FairTest. Literally none of the College Board’s statements on this matter make reference to adult paid test takers helping students cheat, time zone differences, etc. College Board also hasn’t mentioned any “cheating rings.”
In Asia, where I live, the college entrance math tests are much harder than the SAT, and the test prep industry is much, much more extensive than it is in the US.
@jgoggs the CB may not have explicitly said that they have concerns of “adult” cheating but they did state that they had cheating/security concerns and they did cancel only the adult registrations, so we can all deduce from that that they had concerns with adult cheating/security concerns. No matter how many examples you are given, you still don’t see it?
Also, according to jgoggs own very strict proof requirement, there is no definitive proof from the CB or any actual published source that adult test takers have been moved to the June test other than the claim by one poster on this board that it happened to someone s/he knows. The official release from the CB as pasted in the first post of this thread states that the registrants will be moved to May or will be credited back their registration fees. There is no mention that any test registrants have been or will be moved to June.
Yet again, you are responding to me without actually responding to me. A poster asserted that College Board had concerns about X, Y, and Z. I asked for a link. He or she referred me to articles in which other people (i.e., not College Board) had mentioned X, Y, and Z in the context of the SAT in general (i.e., not in the context of the March test).
Are we really doing this again? Because anyone who wants to can look through this 14-page thread and see that neither you nor anyone else has been able to cite a single instance of cheating involving adult test takers. Not that I haven’t asked over and over again…
I see, so after accusations of lying went so well with spongybob or whatever his name was, you want to try them on me too, huh?