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High school students have long wanted the option of taking the SAT in the summer. That's when many of the tutoring programs for the high-stakes college test are given, so the information would be fresh in the students' minds. The timing also would allow them to study for the test when they have more leisure, rather than during the academic year.</p>
<p>Now, finally, this August, the College Board will offer a summer administration of the test but only at a $4,500 summer program being held on the campus of Amherst College in Massachusetts, giving some 50 students who are already heavily advantaged an additional leg up. This was a terrible decision by the College Board, owner of the SAT.
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Colleges will not have the option of discounting the summer SAT results for those few dozen students because the College Board will label them as June tests which in itself gives the students an unfair advantage, as they had more time to prepare for the test, even though it will look as though all students had an equal opportunity. Colleges shouldn't stand for it.
<p>You’re not mis-remembering, bovertine, unless I am too. Fairly certain I took achievement tests in early July back in 1971 – I know it wasn’t early June, because I hadn’t yet taken the mid-June NY State Regents’ Exams, and I moved just after that. Hotter than the dickens, and the room didn’t have air conditioning.</p>
<p>The issue, of course, is that the vast majority of testing sites – local schools – are closed during the summer. </p>
<p>I have no doubt that CB would just love to offer summer testing – every month if they could, which would encourage many more test-takers, and multiple repeats. But there are no available facilities for testing that CB could afford.</p>
<p>IMO, this is much ado about nothing: 50 wealthy students out of the 1.5 million that take the test every year?</p>
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<p>CB should go head-to-head with the ACT and offer a September testing date.</p>
<p>Created by educators to democratize access to higher education, the SAT is a highly reliable standardized measure of college readiness used in the admission process at more than 95 percent of four-year, not-for-profit undergraduate colleges and
universities in the United States. Aligned to high school curriculum, the SAT tests the reading, mathematics and writing skills and knowledge students acquire during high school. The SAT also measures how well students can apply their knowledge, a
factor that educators and researchers agree is critical to success in college.</p>
<p>This from the Amherst brochure. Oh the irony.</p>
<p>Wondering if this really makes any difference, since the tests are administered on weekends. Some schools are already closed for the summer when the June SAT is given.</p>
<p>^^Not anymore, at least here in California. (Summer school programs have been cut with the budgets.) But as important as an open facility, is the need for test proctors, i.e., one in every room.</p>
<p>Our school could easily allow an SAT test during the summer. A proctor or two would be the only expense, and re-arranging the cleaning schedule. I’ve been in our HS in the summer - the air and the lights are on and it’s comfortably cool. This would have been so much better then during the crazy school year.</p>
<p>If the college board would offer the test schools could get the proctors and the facilities people could handle it. (I am a teacher that spends all summer at my desk and in the lab and know its doable from this end.)</p>
<p>The most disturbing aspect, from my perspective, is that CB has essentially given its endorsement to this elite prep program by offering them exclusive access to a test that is supposed to be “democratized”. It doesn’t matter if it’s one student, 50 students or 10,000 students. It’s the conflict of interest that is disturbing, not the effect this small group of students will have on everyone’s admission results.</p>
<p>The difference is that this is not just a test prep course. You get exclusive access to take a test in the summer that you can concentrate and put all your effort in this one thing when no one else can. Others have to take it during the school year while they have other school work going on at the same time. For some people that think SAT is already rigged for the privileged who have the resource to be better prepared, this is another level on top of that. Like everyone says, why not offer the test but not the expensive course to the general public at the same time including those that are qualified for financial assistant.</p>
<p>Just the appearance of possible conflict of interest is just mind boggling. Wealthy people pay a lot of money to take this course offered by CB itself and not third party, and get to take this special SAT test that is exclusively made and administered to them after the course.</p>