As to why the College Board might want to crack down on people not applying to college taking the SAT (and other tests), how do ringers know how to deliver the desired score? I think it would help to take a test under one’s own name, in order to calibrate the scoring. The Long Island ring was discovered because the scores for some students were suspiciously high, in comparison to their classwork.
I’ll add that many students have found the ACT to be an easier test. If the ACT has tighter security, perhaps the College Board has been taking a lead from them. Limiting access to the test, and scrutinizing older test takers, might be one step in the process. The SAT is under severe threat in its home market.
If there were a standing rule that adults are not allowed to take the SAT unless they can demonstrate that they are applying to college, I would not object. However, I would be strongly in favor of guaranteeing that neutral educational experts – not necessarily tutors – have access to every test form for watchdog purposes.
At the same time, if I had registered for the March SAT in complete accordance with the rules, possibly making expensive travel plans as well, and then College Board cancelled my registration at the last minute on the grounds that my taking the test was a security risk, I would have been outraged because:
(1) I have not taken the test since 1975, I am a U.S. citizen with a permanent U.S. residence, I would not be flying in from Asia, and I am much too old to be impersonating a student.
(2) There are certainly many other people who are much greater security risks than I am, including 21-year-old or younger non-U.S. citizens flying in from Asia who have taken the test multiple times, but College Board allowed such people to take the March test. (Who knows what they are doing right now…)
(3) The stories about Chinese imposters and test-reconstructers are old. Why didn’t College Board ban adults long ago, or at least at the time registration for the Redesigned SAT began? Why did it wait until the very last minute, if not to punish and defame all tutors, to have a photo-op “big defenders of the middle and lower class” moment in the press, and to prevent informed adults from noticing flaws in the test?
(4) Shifting the registrations to May and June is really the icing on the cake. What could this possibly mean? Is College Board afraid that tutors will advise their students to take the ACT? So in the end it is not going to make a policy change based on principles, but just put on a show (“the SAT is intended for high school students”) and then look the other way (“we don’t want to make you tutors mad and lose your students’ business, so we’ll let you take the test too”)?
Is the College Board concerned about losing tutors’ students’ business? I don’t think so, because…
They’re not the College Board’s ultimate customers. The College Board’s most important customers are the colleges. More and more colleges are going test-optional, and the latest committee report, signed on to by many selective colleges, called for less emphasis on test scores.
They’re also currently under investigation by the Justice Department for concerns about how they grant test accommodations. I haven’t been able to find a good description of the issues, but this Justice Department is not afraid to act.
As to (3), the pace of test suspensions reported in the press seems to have picked up in the last couple of years; that’s most likely due to a more active approach to security on the part of the College Board, after the Long Island case. They didn’t try as hard to defend the old SAT, once it was obvious it was a lame duck. Articles have mentioned that the CB is looking to use more data in searching for cheating; “big data” is a growing field.
Many of the non-citizens from Asia were living in the US at the time they committed fraud. So the “flying in from Asia” part isn’t applicable to that case.
Do you have a reference for that report? Do you believe the redesign of the SAT was intended to make a test that would maintain its role in admissions to selective universities, or change the role to one of assessing (on behalf mostly of states and cities) whether students are sufficiently prepared for community colleges?
I didn’t know that, but I am not surprised. Do you have a reference for that too?
What about the cities and the states? Do you think the states and cities will cancel their new contracts with College Board if selective colleges put less emphasis on test scores? CB must care at least a little about student business, no? Why else is it trying so hard to make a “student-friendly” test, similar to the increasingly popular ACT?
That was just one possible security risk factor among many that I mentioned. As I said, I don’t have any problem about setting a policy based on principles and then sticking to it. This is not what College Board did in this case.
Thanks for the link. I had read about that report in the press but I had not seen the report itself. Here is the part about test scores:
A different option would be to write a test that meaningfully allows students of outstanding academic ability to show their ability. This is what happens in countries in Europe, for example. But as I have said before, no one wants this in the US, including the undergraduate admissions offices of colleges, because that would threaten their SJW agenda.
I would like to see what the faculty have to say about this, especially the faculty at universities with grad schools.
Helping the underprivileged is great, but society also needs people who can solve the problem of climate change and find cures for diseases. There are not that many people like that. What is Harvard doing to find and educate them?
They want to stop the enterprises that send in a bunch of people to essentially memorize sections of the new test to reproduce them in books and materials for profit. My guess is that each person goes in knowing which section they are responsible to memorize.
They are risking claims of age discrimination. Legally I doubt they can withhold the test if they don’t approve of the stated purpose for taking the test. Can you imagine a supermarket saying you can’t buy that butter if you don’t plan on making a cake with it.
@lostaccount Except that there are countless other uses for butter than making a cake. There are very few if any reasons for an adult non student to take the SAT repeatedly over many years. This is definitely not age discrimination.
One reason, @2018eastorwest , is that tutors may benefit by keeping up to date on the exam and more significantly this time around, may benefit greatly by seeing how the actual test compares to the (meager) four released practice tests. I’m a teacher and I haven’t signed up for the test since I was in high school, but I definitely understand why people would do so, and the notion that cheating is the only valid reason is definitely off base.
It may also be worth remembering that this is the year in which the CB finally explicitly acknowledged that test prep works. After decades of denying the value of test prep, the CB partnered with Khan Academy to provide its own (free, slapdash) prep programs.
One problem is that some students with disabilities don’t get accommodations. This is the problem discussed in the link Another problem not discussed in the link is that students who do not seem to have disabilities do get accommodations. I also know of students who had accommodations requests refused by College Board but granted by ACT. There seems to be a lot of weird stuff happening in the accommodations decision process.
And what about this?
So if English language learners deserve accommodations to show how they could perform, what does that say about all the expatriate, dual-national, and international English language learners? And what does that say about the fairness of the new test, with its increase in English verbiage and strange idioms?
If you can’t speak English well enough that you cannot perform well on a college entrance exam for an English speaking school without accommodation, then you should receive accommodation? Will the colleges need to provide translators for these student, then, too?
I thought this was an interesting statement from the OP:
I think this points up pretty clearly why one’s credibility is enhanced when you identify what your personal interests in an issue are. If the OP had admitted to being a tutor, I would follow up this statement with some pointed questions about how much he, personally, ignores the terms restricting his ability to discuss specific test questions. If he admitted that he did, in fact, ignore them, then his whole argument would appear to be self-serving gobbledegook. Of course, it could also be that OP isn’t a tutor, but rather is an adult who takes the SAT in order to memorize questions and sell them to tutoring companies. Or he could just be a civic-minded watchdog who doesn’t like CB’s actions. But you know, it does matter.
Personally, I’m a parent whose kids are beyond standardized testing. I really dislike cheating, though, which is my interest in this topic.
Of course that is the policy. I thought it was interesting that an “expert” was quoted in the article who said that accommodations should be offered to English language learners.
I am not advocating accommodations for English language learners. However, I think it is questionable to redesign a test in a way seems to increase the bias against bilingual students.