The SATs were re-normed (re-scaled because students were achieving lower scores, on average) in 1995, 2005, and 2016. Back in the late '70s, individual scores in the low 700s were 99th percentile. A student who had scored in the mid 1400s on the SAT had likely scored high enough on the PSAT to make National Merit in a highly competitive state; those mid 700s scores on individual subjects before re-norming were considered equivalent to 800s today.
Now, with the SATs having been re-normed three times because the overall scores were dropping, and yet with some highly motivated, bright, prepped students, it is not that unusual to score in the 1500s, even to achieve a perfect 800 on math or English, or both. So the only thing left to differentiate among the high scoring test-takers, to string them out along a continuum, is time pressure, which measures how fast a student can do the test correctly, not necessarily a useful measure of ability or of mastery of the material.
When tests administered under altered circumstances were flagged, colleges could take that into account, but once this was banned, there was absolutely no reason for students and their families to not seek out the significant advantage conferred by having âextraâ (meaning enough) time to do the test at a more human, relaxed pace, and demonstrate what they knew, as opposed to whether or not they could do it at breakneck speed. And so began the arms race of extra time, leaving even farther behind those without advocates. Ever since the banning of flagging scores from altered testing conditions, it has been obvious that the only way to make the tests valid again was to redesign them to remove time pressure as a consideration, but of course, since it would cost money to redesign the tests, the College Board and the ACT didnât do it, until now, at least for the SAT. The big change is that if everyone is given a reasonable amount of time to do the test, thus removing time pressure from the equation, then extra time wouldnât make much difference (except to that individual kid who really does have a disability that causes them to have to work more slowly, but who can still demonstrate their mastery of the material).
It is very interesting to hear that students will be given different tests based upon their performance on the first module in the subject. I can see how this would be worthwhile for students on the extreme ends of the testing spectrum, but what about those in the middle? It doesnât seem fair to me that a kid who barely misses the cutoff for the more difficult 2nd module should miss the chance at a higher score, because theyâre not offered the more difficult 2nd module. I would not be surprised if there are challenges to this. But maybe not, since all of this seems to be too little, too late for the SAT (and the ACT, even if they were to make the same changes, would still be in the same boat). The reality is that these tests have become almost irrelevant, what with nearly every school in the nation having gone test-optional, and all of the public CA schools having gone test-blind. I hear of many, many more students who just donât bother to take either test, because they donât see it as being worth it (and although they wonât openly say it, because they donât expect to do well on it). On the other hand, nearly half the states now require students to take the SAT or the ACT as a condition of receiving a high school diploma, so thatâs a pretty sure revenue stream for the College Board and the ACT.
