(Originally published in Inside Higher Ed's “Admissions Insider” on January 31, 2022)
Last week the College Board announced that the SAT–er, SAT (trademark) Suite of Assessments–will move to a digital format beginning next spring for international test-takers and the following spring for students in the United States. The class of 2025 will be the first impacted by the change in the United States, with the Fall, 2023 PSAT and the Spring, 2024 SAT being the first administrations of the new test format.
The announcement was not unexpected. Both the College Board and ACT have been hit with supply-chain issues due to COVID just as so many other industries have, with many students over the past two years unable to take the tests because both organizations are so reliant on high schools serving as test centers. With so many students unable to test, the vast majority of colleges are test optional, and it is not clear that we will ever go back to the golden age of testing. That becomes increasingly unlikely with the University of California system and other colleges becoming not just test-optional, but test-blind.
Both testing companies have been investigating moving to online testing for some time, with the College Board administering Advanced Placement exams online for all students in the spring of 2020 and some last spring. One of the hangups has been test security. At one point the College Board was talking about installing a 360-degree camera on test-takers’ devices to prevent cheating, something that raised significant concerns about privacy. It appears that the CB has figured out the security issue without resorting to such draconian measures.
The move to a digital format is actually not the most revolutionary aspect of the new test. That would be the move to adaptive test questions, where for each section of the test students will answer a set of initial test questions, with their answers determining the difficulty of the questions they are then given. That means that every student will not take the identical test. It also helps to allay concerns about test security.
The use of adaptive testing is new as far as I know, but it is not a new concept. More than 30 years ago a college admissions dean tied into the College Board told me that research had been done on an adaptive testing model that could deliver an accurate SAT score with as few as three questions. It wasn’t implemented because there was fear the public wouldn’t accept it.
The new test will be longer than three questions, but also shorter than the current three-hour-plus test that can seem like an ordeal measuring stamina as much as whatever it is that the test currently attempts to measure. The digital SAT will last two hours. The biggest differences in content appear to be that there will be shorter reading passages and that students will be able to use a calculator for all math problems.
It should not be a surprise that the College Board announcement hasn’t converted those who are already skeptical about the value of testing. Several critics have described the announcement as new and improved packaging for the same old product, a kindler, gentler equivalent of what a number of politicians have referred to as “lipstick on a pig.”
There is one important question about the new test that I haven’t seen raised or answered. Will the test be less expensive?
The current version of the SAT costs $55. The new test, however, takes only two-thirds as much time. It is also the case that the College Board’s overhead for administering the new test should be lower. There won’t be printing costs, mailing costs, or the need to hire people to open and sort returned boxes of tests and answer sheets. Shouldn’t the new testing format be accompanied by a lowering of the price for students to take the test?
I’m not holding my breath. When the College Board moved to electronic score reporting to colleges, requiring only pressing a button rather than mailing paper reports, I don’t recall the cost for sending score reports dropping (if my memory is incorrect, it’s not the first time, and I apologize).
I commend the College Board for re-thinking delivery of the SAT. One of the rationales for the new testing format is to reduce student stress and make testing more equitable. If we’re really serious about that, let the College Board (and ACT) be like Jake from State Farm and give every student the Rodgers Rate or the Patrick Price to take their tests. That will produce more equity and less stress.