So what kinds of “flaws in the new exam” do test prep experts think they are being prevented from discovering? I am curious as to what they think they might discover in a 4 hour long exam that they are not going to get the test booklet for and are promising not to discuss with anyone else. It would seem to me that other than glaring issues like last June’s time mess up this could only be determined by statistical analysis and evaluation of questions, so how could they do that anyway?
@jgoggs - I assumed you’re a tutor because - well, aren’t you? I can’t imagine anyone being upset that’s not a tutor.
The purpose of the test is for students to get into college. I have no problem with anything that the CB does to people that register for the test who aren’t in that group. Why should I have any sympathy for people trying to take the SAT for their own personal gain? From what I’ve seen of the PSAT, it’s very difficult for them to figure out how to score / norm this new test. If kicking out tutors from the March sitting is at all helpful for them (whether they admit it or not), I’m all for it.
I am happy that the CB is legally able to cancel the registrations of professional test takers. If they don’t have the legal right, you should sue them. End of story.
@Plotinus Thoughts?
A disclosure: I work in the test prep industry. I don’t think it disqualifies me from taking a part in this discussion. Nevertheless, I will limit my participation to just one post: this thread seems to have become quite a merry-go-around.
Please forgive me if I don’t reply to the comments addressed to me; IMHO, there is nothing new I can contribute to this debate - all I am trying to do here is throw in a bit of support to raising an awareness of yet another abominable example of the CB’s unaccountable bullying.
No matter how many times @jgoggs reiterates his questions, he invariably gets accused of pursuing his personal sinister agenda and hammered with a joyful “down with the tutors!” battle banner. I am truly in awe of his/her patience in trying to bring the focus of discussion back to the issues he/she has brought up.
I believe that aliens built the pyramids - well, didn’t they? I can’t imagine that poor chaps of ancient Egypt could accomplish such a feat with their primitive technology. My lack of imagination does not prove the “History” channel and its experts’ special forces’ assertion of aliens’ advancing the evolution of humankind. I don’t dismiss this idea, but I want a real argument - not just “I don’t know, therefore aliens”.
To begin with, a person who is trying to take the CB to task should not be presumed arbitrarily an immoral fleecer of the privileged, willing and able to pay. What is it that Valerie Strauss of the WP and Catherine Gewertz of the Education Week are so upset about? What are they after? They gotta be either tutors or lobbyists for the aforementioned!
And if a person brings attention to the CB monopolistic shenanigans, why does it even matter who that person is and what feelings he/she might experience? If the opinions and questions have solid ground, let’s concentrate on them rather than strive to uncover hidden dark motives.
The CB’s reasoning for their sudden - beyond sudden - security crusade is so ridiculously illogical, it is bordering on the insult to people’s intelligence.
.
I know I can’t find the explanations to these conundrums.
Don’t even get me started on the mysterious - and sudden - extra 20 minute section on the new SAT:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-preparation/1865594-there-will-be-experimental-questions-on-the-new-sat.html
@suzyQ7 Thanks for the heads-up. I hadn’t heard about this development. Interesting stuff. The plot thickens.
I greatly doubt this was a last-minute decision by College Board. This was a deliberate plan to stick it to the test prep industry.
If CB had announced any earlier that adults would not be allowed to take the SAT without proof that they are applying to college, then at least some of the tutors would have either fabricated proof or sent their kids or other younger hired guns.
I don’t think it’s wrong, but I also don’t think it’s a position from some ethical high ground… It’s war. College Board is not a moral force in education. College Board’s main motivations are money, politics, and PR. It wants to narrow the gap between Asians, whites, and other minorities. It doesn’t want to write a test that makes the strongest students of whatever gender, race, color, or nationality they happen to be stand out clearly from the others. Politically, it is going to look really bad if the gap after the first test is even bigger, or if tutors speak out about what a dumbed-down test CB wrote. Letting mostly white and Asian tutors, including people flying into the room from abroad, take the real test (that will almost certainly be recycled internationally at some point down the line) is not going to narrow the gap in either the short or long term.
If College Board wanted to make the test less coachable, it would make the test harder. But that would not narrow the gap. Instead, to narrow the gap, CB has made the test easier (for strong, native speakers of American English). The test is now MORE coachable than ever. So CB is desperately grasping at straws in a futile attempt to stop the test prep industry from re-establishing the gap. But the gap will return. There will be more work for the test prep industry than ever. The Truth in Testing Law requires CB to release tests to students 4 times a year, so there will be plenty of information down the line one way or another. The PSAT’s are also released. There is going to be a new job description very shortly: “Wanted. High school student with excellent memory and 99th percentile scores to take SAT and report back to Princeton Review.” Parents on the NMSF thread, take note. It will pay more than babysitting.
Hey, CB. Why don’t you write a test whose entire content is: “x=2+2. Which of the following is not a possible value of x? A. 4 B. 4 C. 4 D. None of the above.” That might work. Maybe.
First of all, I love CC. I get news here often before anywhere else. From Michael Jackson’s death (yes!) to college admissions decisions releases (my third kid in the pipeline now) to another CB testing fiasco.
I don’t have anything particularly enlightening to add. I think the argument of whether or not it is appropriate for a tutor to take the test or whether adults taking it is fair is all ridiculous. “Fair” isn’t fair. Everything does not have to be the same for everyone. We have the right to reach for the top and if part of getting there is through studying extra hard with the help of a tutor, then so be it. You can define fair in that kind of a context. People have the right to prep as much or as little as they want/are able. If one person has access to more resources than another to prepare, that is life. Opportunity is always there and you just need to seek out opportunities of your own. And there are plenty of opportunities for those who don’t have what the next person does for resources. Plenty. Just Google. CB should be able to find a way to make this work. We know there will be cheaters. We know there will be tutors. So develop a system to work with those givens.
“Narrowing the gap” is a completely wrong-headed way to conceive the aims of education. “Helping every student reach his or her full potential” is a proper goal of education. You don’t dumb down the top just to narrow the gap with the bottom.
To help students at all levels, especially the bottom, fulfill their full potential, you have to convince qualified people to teach them Free rides at university for anyone willing to commit at least 5 years to teaching in public school + same salary and benefits offered to starting employees at Microsoft. But Bill Gates doesn’t want to pay teachers more because that will mean less for HIM.
If you read my post citing the wasgingtonpost article @jgoggs you will see clear examples of adult test taker cheating. It seems like you must be reading right past it Bc it is plain for any knowledgeable person (to use your words) who knows what he is talking about (your words). It speaks about asian prep companies sending people to the us to take the test and memorize answers, monitoring sites where answers are discussed, taking the test in an earlier asian time zone and taking bathroom breaks to give out answers to clients in later time zones.
Are we missing something? What is your stake in this?
The only effective way to reduce cheating is to stop recycling tests and to use different tests in different time zones. I have no problem with filtering adult test-takers except that it won’t be very effective. CB cares more about its profits than combatting cheating.
With respect, @thshadow, what you’ve written here is simply a mixture of quasi-personal attack (who I am and what I do has no bearing on whether College Board was correct to take the actions that it took), nonsense that has already been discussed (“The purpose of the test is for students to get into college”–the SAT is used for a variety of purposes other than College Admissions; “Why should I have sympathy for people who take the test for their own personal gain”–everyone takes the test “for their own personal gain”) and pointlessly provocative bravado (“… you should sue them. End of story.”)
While I’m obviously happy to discuss actual topic at hand, there is a limit to how many times I am willing to address the tired talking points of people who seem determined simply to take the discussion elsewhere (“tutors are bad because reasons”) and to drag me along with them.
@2018eastorwest, if you are referring to the paragraph in which Bob Schaeffer outlines his theories and speculations about how some cheating takes place, then no, I didn’t see either evidence (of anything) or mention of adults. I saw conjecture and allusion to unspecified people of unspecified age.
Now, that doesn’t mean that adults are not involved in SAT cheating. Just last year, as you likely recall, federal law enforcement took down an international Chinese-American cheating operation that forged passports and sent imposter test-takers to sit the SAT in place of others. Were adults involved? Yes. Were adults test-takers involved? No.
Recent cheating scandals in Asia have involved widespread leakage of test materials. The May 2013 test cancellation in Korea did not occur because adults were taking the SAT; it occurred because adults (almost certainly including adults within College Board and ETS’s own distribution apparatus) got their hands on the test before test date and sold it all over Korea for their own profit.
Can I say that no adult test-taker has ever been involved in cheating? No, of course not. But in the broader context of recent SAT cheating, this is simply a red herring–it is not an issue.
Oh, what a wonderfully naive view of the world.
The purpose of the test is to make money for College Board, so this “non-profit” can pay its CEO a 7-figure salary and generate an 8-figure “surplus”. It scares their executives that the ACT has become so popular recently, and this must be stopped at all costs. If increasing revenue means making a test that is even less effective at discriminating between the moderately smart and truly intelligent, well sacrifices have to be made.
Here is yet another article on the topic:
http://chronicle.com/article/Theories-Abound-to-Explain/235557
Thanks for the link. I agree with just about everything that Bob Schaeffer says in the article, especially this:
My crystal ball says 50% probability the US March 2016 test will be recycled as the International May 2016 test, and 90% probability it will be one among the May, Oct., Nov., Dec., and Jan. international tests.
I bet international test prep companies are on their phones now lining up already registered students as spies.
I agree with Schaeffer’s point that it is unlikely CB is worried about messing up the curve of the first exam because if CB knows the ages of the people to cancel their registrations, it also could use the same ages to exclude those scores from the equating/curving process.
I agree with this:
Finally, I agree with this:
That’s why CB should just not recycle tests. It’s pretty easy to figure out.
The article also suggests that the exclusion of adults is just for the March test. Is that what other people understand? And it will be possible for adults who are not students and not applying to college to sit the May test? Hey, I haven’t taken the SAT since 1974. Sign me up. But not for the essay because I want to get the “pre-test” section. If fact, the “pre-test” section is the only one that REALLY interests me…!
@jgoggs In your posts 12, 16, 19, 20, and 36 you outright say or imply the CB is nit honoring its own terms. Our point is that they are in fact allowed to do this. While you may not want to hear it, that does not make it untrue. Sorry.
I am not a fan of CB. I am not defending them. I am telling you that they can do this if they want to.
I fully believe the March test will be used internationally in May which is stupid on CBs part.
I think you are very naive to believe that adult test takers are not involved in the cheating just because the incidents you have read about have not involved adult test takers.
I am not a lawyer, and I am not affected personally, but I could imagine someone might bring a lawsuit for age discrimination. As far as I understand, CB cancelled these registrations based on age alone. It did not cancel all registrations pending proof of intention to apply to college. Lots of young people take the SAT who are not going to use their SAT scores to apply to college. Some are forced to take the test by their schools during SAT Test Day. Some are going to apply to test optional schools. Some are going to use their ACT scores and not their SAT scores. Why did CB not ask all registrants for proof of intention to apply to college?
Also, there could be (and probably are) school-age registrants who ARE taking the test for the test prep industry, and not to use to apply to college. Why did CB not cancel the registrations of younger SAT tutors/test prep industry employees?
It looks to me that registrations were cancelled purely on the basis of age, not intended use.
Even though I swore to stay away from this discussion, I can’t help but add something to @Plotinus post (not to argue!).
Somewhat linked to age, a frequency of test sittings of the March test registrants probably was a heavier deciding factor.
I do not know why this thread was closed, as I see no particular reason to have done so. No closing note was posted. So I am reopening until and unless there is some explanation advanced. Perhaps it was done accidentally.
Looking at the guide to registering for SAT tests, there are restrictions on registration for test-takers who are over 21. https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/sat-registration-guide-students-2015-16.pdf
The College Board likely has a good idea as to how many test takers over 21 use the SAT for admissions–after all, all the score reports are sent out through the CB. If there’s a group of test takers over 21 who sit for the test frequently, but never send out scores, they can identify them.
But did College Board cancel the registrations only of people who sit the test frequently but never send out scores, or of all people over a certain age?
For example, suppose I had registered for the March SAT. I have never sat the test since 1975, but I am over 21. This is something I might have done. Would my registration have been cancelled? If so, on what basis if not my age? What other criterion could there be?
And what about people between 17 and 21 who sit the test frequently? There was a major scandal about an impersonation ring a few years ago in which the impersonators were college students. There are plenty of people between the ages of 17 and 21 who could be taking the test multiple times for purposes other than admission to college. Many people in that age range are fully qualified to be SAT tutors and are in fact working as SAT tutors. Why is it ok for them but not for the old folks? This looks like age discrimination.