SAT Will Soon Be All-Digital, Shortened To 2 Hours (cnn.com) 103
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: The SAT taken by prospective college students across the country will go all-digital starting in 2024 and will be an hour shorter, the College Board announced in a statement Tuesday. The transition comes months after the College Board pilot-tested a digital SAT in November 2021 in the US and internationally. 80% of students said they found it less stressful, and 100% of educators reported a positive experience, according to the College Board. The decision comes as the College Board has felt increasing pressure to change its stress-inducing test in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and questions around the test's fairness and relevance.
The test has long been criticized for bias against those from poor households as well as Black and Hispanic students. The high-stakes nature of the test means that those with more resources can afford to take expensive test prep courses -- or even, as the 2019 college admissions scam revealed, to cheat on the test. Schools have increasingly made such tests optional over the past few years. More than 1800 colleges and universities have dropped requirements that applicants take the SAT or ACT, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing.
As part of the changes, sharpened No. 2 pencils will no longer be needed, and calculators will be allowed in the entire Math section. In addition, the new digital SAT will be shortened from 3 hours to 2 hours, with more time per question. It will feature shorter reading passages with one question each and will "reflect a wider range of topics that represent the works students read in college," the College Board said. Students will also get back scores within days rather than weeks. The move to a digital test will apply to all of the SAT Suite. The PSATs and international SAT will go digital in 2023 followed by the US SAT a year later. Last year, the company dropped the SAT's subject tests and the essay section. Despite these changes, the SAT will still be scored out of 1600 and be administered in a school or test center.
The test has long been criticized for bias against those from poor households as well as Black and Hispanic students. The high-stakes nature of the test means that those with more resources can afford to take expensive test prep courses -- or even, as the 2019 college admissions scam revealed, to cheat on the test. Schools have increasingly made such tests optional over the past few years. More than 1800 colleges and universities have dropped requirements that applicants take the SAT or ACT, according to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing.
As part of the changes, sharpened No. 2 pencils will no longer be needed, and calculators will be allowed in the entire Math section. In addition, the new digital SAT will be shortened from 3 hours to 2 hours, with more time per question. It will feature shorter reading passages with one question each and will "reflect a wider range of topics that represent the works students read in college," the College Board said. Students will also get back scores within days rather than weeks. The move to a digital test will apply to all of the SAT Suite. The PSATs and international SAT will go digital in 2023 followed by the US SAT a year later. Last year, the company dropped the SAT's subject tests and the essay section. Despite these changes, the SAT will still be scored out of 1600 and be administered in a school or test center.
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How do they decide who to admit and who to reject, then?
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How do they decide who to admit and who to reject, then?
Credit check. If you (Or your parents) have good credit, you get in.
They can also substitute a bank balance check in some cases.
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They can also substitute a cashiers check in some cases.
FTFY
Credit check. to get an student loan is an low bar (Score:2)
Credit check. to get an student loan is an low bar.
You have to have VERY BAD credit to not get one
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I thought that is what the SAT was.
Idiot kids with rich parents spending thousands on SAT Prep and tutoring, so they know how to take the test to get a high score. vs the Smart Kids with poor parents, who take the test once with minimal training and perform poorly in comparison, because they are not use to taking the test and manipulating the system.
For these tests to be useful, students should all take the test blind, without any prep, or studying for them. While this will lead to lower test scores, it w
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Everyone gets a trophy
I am fine with that; if everyone were able to go to the college they applied for, that would be great!
Obviously that's not possible due to space constraints.
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I think everyone should have a guarantee of getting a college education or trade school if they want one. (society would be better off if we slowly offloaded manual and unskilled labor to robots).
I draw the line at everyone getting to pick a specific college. Because it's as you imply, it doesn't really work due to practical constraints like space. This sort of privilege in choice will probably always be controlled by access to wealth and power.
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I think everyone should have a guarantee of getting a college education or trade school if they want one. (society would be better off if we slowly offloaded manual and unskilled labor to robots).
This always draw us into the question of what are those unskilled people going to do? Will they become leaders of industry?
It's a fact that not everyone is capable of being anything they want. Despite what your teachers in grade school taught you. A lot of people are lucky to get their shoes tied in the morning. Still humans, still have rights. But they aren't going to be more than they can be.
I'll never be a prima ballerina no matter how hard I try. Or a nurse or hospice worker.
I personally think it's kinda cruel to be filling young people's heads with that kind of nonsense. You steer people towadr being the best that they can be, not tell them that there are no limits for them.
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we need more tech schools as well not 4 years (Score:2)
we need more tech schools as well not 4 years for all.
And the tech / trade school should not be for profit backed by loans.
college is not for all and we are forcing to many people into them with big loans
Re: we need more tech schools as well not 4 years (Score:2)
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Everyone gets a trophy
I am fine with that; if everyone were able to go to the college they applied for, that would be great! Obviously that's not possible due to space constraints.
Turning college into grade 13 through 17. I suppose that's okay if we want to turn it into just a longer high school, with all the great benefits that a present day HS diploma gets you.
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The issue is there are too many kids going into college who really don't want to.
They want to do a particular job, and that job requires a college education, so they go to a college to get the piece of paper to get the job.
This is a bastardization of the college system, and should be relegated to vocational training. College should be about learning for the sake of learning, really digging into a field of interest and get an in depth understanding in it.
I remember in the Intro Computer Science Classes, tha
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they don't need to be explained Big O notation to optimize their DB Calls.
They better know how to do Big O notation and optimize their DB calls, otherwise I don't want to work in the code they've been writing. Most 8 month code camps teach these kinds of things.
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Race.
Part of the problem is postmodernism's resistance to the idea of universals. Using the disparaging term "totalizing metanarrative" to describe universals, postmodernists argue that any attempt at describing anything in a general way, i.e., teasing out general principles, is inherently oppressive because it disrespects specific historical context, and in PoMo, absolutely everything is radically contextualized and subjectivized. The very claim that human beings might have "a nature" is disputed (this is
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ok, even if the selection is based on race, then you still need to determine which kids in each racial group get admitted.
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Small quibble, sorry. But Whites can understand the Black experience at an intellectual and even emotional level. But Whites will never have is the first-hand experience of being Black.
In any situation where you cannot experience something first hand, I strongly urge cautious though and a heavy dose of listening. We do live in a world where shutting the fuck up and listening is not encouraged. Even the mechanisms for interaction on this very website are flawed and make it nigh impossible for me to participa
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You're right; none of us can ever understand. Remember, Critical Theory teaches that all human interactions are governed entirely by membership of dominant or marginalized groups and that these have deterministic qualities related to success. This person who took on all the difficult barriers that Harvard places, and won, flunked a test, and...well let's do what you suggest, and listen. Let her tell us herstory: what this elite Harvard student told us in an article that the student newspaper decided to publ [thecrimson.com]
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Please?
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It does not appear to be satire. It was part of her final op-ed before leaving the school.
Here:
https://www.thecrimson.com/art... [thecrimson.com]
There are other works listed on her author page, but I don't know if it is an exhaustive or filtered list.
https://www.thecrimson.com/wri... [thecrimson.com]
The Crimson is the official student newspaper of Harvard.
Perusing the editorials section, the aforementioned work is not a significant outlier.
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I won't argue that mathematics and logic are universal. The communication of same, however, is highly contextual. Hence Roman vs. Arabic numerals, for example.
Understanding math and logic, but being lousy at marking bubbles under an oppressive regime, cause inaccurate assessment of true talents.
If you don't believe everyone deserves an equal opportunity, own that position and lets talk. If you don't believe that current generations thrive or dive based on prior generations inequitable treatment of each othe
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" Hence Roman vs. Arabic numerals, for example."
Are you suggesting that the Roman's were incapable of understanding Arabic numerals or that Arabs are incapable of understanding Roman numerals? Because that's what the "math is racist!" crowd seem to be suggesting and I can't think of anything more insultingly racist.
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Thank you for highlighting the crux of the issue.
I assume that the people of Rome and of the Arab world, or at least some individuals therein, both held all the necessary brain power to decode any set of symbols. But, neither could decipher each other's papyrus *until they received the proper education.*
So my point is that deciphering the SAT, not just the language and math principles it purports to assess, requires specific education. And the reason some "woke" folks clamor for changes to the SAT is an ack
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Race.
The PoMo rebellion against totalization is what leads to the social balkanization we see: intersectionality is an ideology predicated on identity politics, which itself is derived from PoMo thinking: I have my reality, and you have yours. The ironic result is cultural segregation: whites can never understand the black experience, and vice versa, and if blacks want to flourish in a university, then there must be black-only spaces for black students and black teachers - the very segregation that people like Martin Luther King had fought against. Far from seeking a healthy "e pluribus unum" unity, people in this camp seek an absurdist plunge into a perverted notion of diversity.
Fear not, for when the shit hits the fan, they'll be screaming for normals to help. It would be fun to see a rocket designed by these folks.
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The sensible way would be to look at coursework done over the last year of school. Any kind of exam is going to be flawed because it's trying to measure aptitude with too little data.
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How do they decide who to admit and who to reject, then?
Stranger than fiction department notes that for all the Sturm and drang, and parents and young people freaking out, those SAT's can be completely bypassed.
I never took them, and it didn't stop me at all. Note that you'll have to go in as an adjunct student, but after a time, it just converts to a regular student. They might call that something different at other universities.
The SAT's are for people who think you have to get your children into the right nursery, then the right pre-school, then the righ
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How do they decide who to admit and who to reject, then?
School grades, which are a much better predictor of future success and are a lot harder jack up with a specialized tutor.
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are a lot harder jack up with a specialized tutor.
To be more precise, it's a lot more expensive to jack up with a specialized tutor.
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are a lot harder jack up with a specialized tutor.
To be more precise, it's a lot more expensive to jack up with a specialized tutor.
Again, you miss the important part.
Tutored or not, High School grades are a better predictor than SAT scores [edpolicyinca.org].
Honestly, I suspect the popularity of SAT grades comes from two sources. First, it makes things easier for admissions officers. Second, it gives affluent parents a mechanism to help their kids get into a decent college.
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Got me thinking, I was accepted to (Score:2)
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Late-70's through the 80's is when the push began to get everyone on the gov't-backed student loan train. Not a coincidence.
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The post I replied to stated that it wasn't until the 80's that the general public was aware of the SAT's, not that they weren't important. They just weren't important to EVERYBODY before then because the giant lies weren't being told about how you would be a failure without a college degree (and the resulting crippling debt).
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I took the SAT and ACT in the early 1970s, and one of those tests was required by each of the colleges I looked at at the time (most of them requiring SAT scores, a few ACT). So I would say that the general population of high school students and their parents were well aware of the SATs before t
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The point is they weren't important to those who would've otherwise gotten into the trades until they were lied to enough to take out five-figure loans just to fail out of college in two semesters (then go into the trades).
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I dont think it was until the 1980s that the general population became aware of SAT scores... they just werent that important before that...
The SAT became well known and widely used just after WW2, as elite colleges started looking for students outside of elite private schools and wanted a method to measure student aptitude. You already had over a million students taking the SAT each year by 1970, up from 80k in 1950.
The SAT probably became better known as even more students started going to college after the 80's. In 1980 about 49% of recent high school graduates enrolled in college, and by 1990 it had risen to 60%. This kind of rise almost ce
Can we deliver their education the same way? (Score:3)
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I've always believed we should raise our kids in vats until they're eighteen, flash-feed 'em their memories and cut 'em loose. This could be one tiny step along the way.
There's some guy over here with a red pill saying this is just how things have been done since the war.
Some good, some bad (Score:1)
I feel like allow calculators is good, you can still test really well (perhaps with even better questions) while allowing calculator use.
I disagree with making reading simpler though, you need to have a realistic curve of how well people can read and I feel like they are flattening the top of the results on this too much.
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Are these things that you feel or things that you think?
Administrative Overhead? (Score:2)
It's been a very long time since I took the SAT, but I seem to recall that a lot of the administration time was just overhead. The preliminaries took a good half hour, then there were a bunch of ~20ish minute sections, and then they'd call time, then there would be a break, then move onto something else. If you just took a practice test straight through, it was closer to 2 hours total. Perhaps the digital test cuts down on a lot of that.
Who provides the PC ? (Score:2)
And what operating systems will be supported ? I would not be surprised to find that a Linux desktop cannot be used.
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An article I saw earlier today said that you can.
And it's almost certainly done inside a web browser, no reason Linux wouldn't be supported.
or will in want to install all kinds of software a (Score:2)
or will in want to install all kinds of software and why your own if you need to use an test center?
SAT measures the likelihood of college success (Score:1)
Always Going to Have Some Form of Testing (Score:3)
Most college admissions isn't particularly competitive (admitting more than half of applicants) and can probably just rely on high school grades, but for schools involved in the competitive admissions race (the Ivies of the world and rough equivalents, plus the tier below), I think some form of standardized test will be here to stay. They could fill their classes with nothing but valedictorians, and still have to reject people.
There has to be some method to compare students who attended wildly different institutions for high schools, with totally different curricula and totally different grading systems. Drop the SAT, and you'll just see increased emphasis on AP scores or other broadly administered subject matter tests. But AP scores and the like tend to punish high-potential kids who went to less rigorous high schools (and might not have teachers qualified to teach many AP subjects). The SAT and ACT aren't perfect, but I've not heard a better proposal for trying to parse the most qualified students.
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There has to be some method to compare students who attended wildly different institutions for high schools, with totally different curricula and totally different grading systems.
The University of Texas at Austin considers class rank (automatically admitting eligible Texas students in the top 6% of their high school graduating class). This is, in part, to diversify the student body (which as a state institution they are under significant political pressure to do) without explicitly considering race (which they tried and lost the lawsuits). And, in part, this recognizes that what a student learns in K-12 depends on both the student and their schools. They also consider SAT/ACT, et
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I'm not sure the UT situation fully applies to what I'm talking about.
1) The University of Texas only applies this rule to in-state public high schools, so there is at least some level of continuity of curricula and school type. Harvard and its peers, by contrast, are going to have to compare someone who went to high School in china to someone who attended a disadvantaged high school in Philadelphia, to someone who went to Andover.
2) As a public flagship, UT plays a different ballgame than elite private sch
And if you answer "B" (Score:2)
Pros and cons (Score:2)
On the pro side, you won't have to waste time trying to fill in the little ovals.
On the con side, where do I begin? *gazes into the abyss* That's one deep rabbit hole.
Still having a test? (Score:4, Informative)
I thought we weren't going to test the kids anymore because some of them might not do as well as others. Objective entrance standards, you say? You racist! I thought the new plan was to have a central committee that will decide if you're worthy based on what you look like and where your parents were from. Such progress.
In case you haven't been paying attention, the thing that's trying to be stamped out is literally "Whiteness [si.edu]". Yes, that's a link to the Smithsonian there. They've cleaned that page up a little bit, but you can still find the original information that was on that page, including this infographic [theamerica...vative.com]. What are the hallmarks of whiteness that we need to get rid of? "Emphasis on Scientific Method" such as "Objective, rational linear thinking." "Cause and effect relationships." The idea that "Hard work is the key to success". Yeah, you can't make this stuff up.
Instead of acknowledging the tests are telling us that some groups of students don't have the resources they need to be successful and need help, we're just making the tests easier.
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I thought we weren't going to test the kids anymore because some of them might not do as well as others. Objective entrance standards, you say? You racist!
Except it's not objective, it's a well structure test that's very susceptible to tutoring. You're not testing capability as much as the ability to specifically prepare for that one test.
In case you haven't been paying attention, the thing that's trying to be stamped out is literally "Whiteness [si.edu]". Yes, that's a link to the Smithsonian there.
Look fine, certainly nothing about trying to stamp out "whiteness".
They've cleaned that page up a little bit, but you can still find the original information that was on that page, including this infographic [theamerica...vative.com].
Yeah, the infographic is bananas, but it was rightly removed.
Instead of acknowledging the tests are telling us that some groups of students don't have the resources they need to be successful and need help, we're just making the tests easier.
Except that's the wrong solution. The problem isn't that racialized kids don't get the same SAT tutoring as white kids, the problem is that SAT tutoring is a useless waste of time. It doesn't make s
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High school grades vary from high school district to district and even from school to school.
Sometimes the courses are much less rigorous at one school than another school so an "A" or "B" in a course at one is nowhere near the same as an "A" or "B" at the other.
In a school where the chemistry teacher is mostly babysitting a classroom full of students and discipline problems and low expectations mean that most students
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If high school grades become the main admission factor, then they will become biased. Wealth parents back by the threat of lawsuits will make sure little Johnny gets good grades. Botique schools will give all students an A+ average. Want grades relative to median? - those same boutique schools will make sure to give some of the students worse grades - wonder which ones. Teachers will apply the
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If high school grades become the main admission factor, then they will become biased. Wealth parents back by the threat of lawsuits will make sure little Johnny gets good grades.
Easier said then done. They going to threaten every teacher at the school?
Botique schools will give all students an A+ average. Want grades relative to median? - those same boutique schools will make sure to give some of the students worse grades - wonder which ones. Teachers will apply their individual biases to grades - "clearly Johnny understands the material, he just made a mistake.."
So you either have admissions officers so oblivious they don't catch on that the average is A+, or you need a bunch of parents happy to sacrifice their child's future in a scam school.
Either way seems very unlikely.
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For the second, remember admissions officers have a lot of students - and my not have time to check the average scores at different schools. When I was in high school the top 10 students all had average grades above 100%.
Teachers judgement is subject to a huge range of biases that would not affect a standardized test. Its really no different from interviewing j
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Sure, grades aren't perfect either, though things are a lot more digitized now and I think it's much easier for admissions officers to detect schools that are up to something.
As for biases, again a real issue, though I don't think it's as severe an issue as the test bump that privileged students get from SAT prep.
I'm not saying standardized tests should be eliminated, they're a good way to make sure the schools are grading fairly and there are talented students who may have low grades for whatever reason an
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The fact of the matter is that high school grades are better predictors of college success than SAT scores. So any theories about how SAT scores are less biased or harder to game than high school grades are simply wrong. The SAT is heavily biased towards affluent students, to a much greater degree than high school grades. Yes you will find some parents who have the ability to sway their student's high school grades, but these parents have significantly more control over their children's SAT scores.
For instance, a student with a high SAT score (above 1100) but a middling high school GPA (between 2.67 and 3.0) has an expected graduation rate of 39%. But students with the opposite credentials—mediocre SAT scores [800-890] but high GPAs [3.67-4.0]—graduate from college at a 62% rate.source [forbes.com]
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It would be interesting to see a correlation plot. Are SAT scores a poor predictor, or is 1100 SAT not as restrictive as a .2.7 GPA? I don't know. Also need to compensate for the colleges that are attended - do high SAT scores result in students going to more difficult colleges? Its a tricky study to get right.
Luckily there are plenty of people doing this research for a living, and the overwhelming results point to SAT scores not being prescriptive of college success. Even organizations trying to advocate for standardized testing, like The College Board, focus their research on showing that SAT score + GPA is better than GPA alone, since it is well understood that GPA is far better than SAT scores. As far as I can tell that is an assertion where the research is unclear, with studies going both ways. Then it comes
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Instead of acknowledging the tests are telling us that some groups of students don't have the resources they need to be successful and need help, we're just making the tests easier.
The problems with the SAT have very little to do with students not having the resources they need to succeed in college, it is simply that they don't have the resources to game the test. Students with good high school grades but poor SAT scores do far better in post-secondary education than the reverse.
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Stress (Score:2)
Ok,if the purpose of the SAT is to see who the smartest students are, in order that they get chosen by the top colleges, how can the exam ever be stress free? If you really want to score in the top 1%, it is literally guaranteed to be stressful. Either they make college totally random and dumbed down to an equal level such that nobody would want to go to an elite college .. or they make the SAT irrelevant .. which would just transfer the stress to attaining types of achievements. Or, we make it so that high
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If you support colonialism, you must support being colonized too? Correct?
College educated tend to vote Democrat. Reference: https://www.pewresearch.org/po... [pewresearch.org]
Most scientists identify as Democrats (55%), while 32% identify as independents and just 6% say they are Republicans. Reference: https://www.pewresearch.org/po... [pewresearch.org]
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Given that Western Civilization is on track to completely implode within the next few decades due to its own excesses, and could very well bring down the entire human race with it, your argument is not compelling.
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Ok,if the purpose of the SAT is to see who the smartest students are, in order that they get chosen by the top colleges, how can the exam ever be stress free? If you really want to score in the top 1%, it is literally guaranteed to be stressful.
Just read the summary. 80% of the students taking the new test found it to be less stressful. They aren't looking to make the test free of stress, which is obviously not possible. But they can still strive to make it less stressful.
Although I don't think the test being too stressful is the primary complaint. Socio-economic bias is the main problem, and I don't see anything in the story backing up how the test changes will affect that. The story seems to imply making in less stressful will help, but I cannot
All-digital? The 1990s are calling (Score:2)
Does it mean online only or paper-free or ????
Screen Size handicap? (Score:2)
Can't wait for someone to complain that their test site had old computers or the screen size was too small to read. The paper tests were at least consistent, if not dated.
Bets that even though the paper cost is removed the cost will increase significantly for some random reason?
Knee-jerk solutions seldom work. (Score:2)
If the SAT is a successful model, then changing it solely to get more people of color into the system is not going to work. It is going to load the system with students who are not likely succeed, Students who are burdened with de
Passages will eventually reach 140 characters (Score:2)
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Not all that different (Score:2)
Why am I invested in pencils? (Score:2)
Had to happen (Score:3)
This was necessitated by the large fraction of students who do not own a #2 pencil, nor even know what a pencil is.
Similarly, the test had to be shortened by 1/3, because there is a shortage of questions that high schoolers are able to answer at all.
same flaws (Score:2, Insightful)
wonder how long it'll take for someone to try outlawing reading to your children, because not everyone has that "privilege".