by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 8, 2016 | Blog
Vicki Wood over at Powerscore has posted an article on that company’s blog calling for David Coleman to be removed from his position as head of the College Board.
Citing the numerous problems that have plagued the redesigned SAT, including the cheating scandals resulting from the decision to reuse tests internationally and the hundreds of questions reportedly leaked to Reuters, Wood writes:
David Coleman is the leader of the College Board, and the responsibility for these numerous failures rightly lies with him. We believe that the only acceptable solution to these breaches—and really, the only way to save the integrity of the SAT and begin the long process of repair—is for Coleman to resign immediately. Given the arrogance he has displayed in the past we aren’t counting on him stepping down voluntarily, so it’s up to the College Board: admit responsibility, remove David Coleman, and immediately repair your broken test security system. The future of millions of college applicants is at stake. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Aug 6, 2016 | Blog, The New SAT
Thanks to a blog reader for submitting this comment.
How many abysmal fails has College Board committed/experienced in the past 18 months?
The test (June 2015) with a misprint on the last sections about how much time students had that led to uneven test administrations across the country.
Disruptions in sending October (or was it November) scores to colleges because they started using their new system for score distribution – for the old test scores – before most admissions office had shifted over to that system (because this was still the old test format). (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 20, 2016 | Blog, The New SAT
The following passage is excerpted from a recent College Board press release: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/one-year-since-launch-official-sat-practice-on-khan-academy-is-leveling-the-playing-field-for-students-300278934.html.
A year ago today, Official SAT® Practice for the new SAT went live on KhanAcademy.org, making free, world-class, personalized online practice available for all students. There are now more than 1.4 million unique users on Official SAT Practice on Khan Academy — this represents four times the total population of students who use all commercial test prep classes in a year combined. Data show that the practice platform is reaching students across race, ethnicities, and income levels — mirroring the percentage of SAT takers. Almost half of all SAT takers on March 5 used Official SAT Practice to prepare, causing a 19 percent drop in the number of students who paid for SAT prep resources.
Which of the following would most directly undermine the College Board’s assertion that the number of students using Official SAT Practice was responsible for the 19 percent decline in the number of students paying for SAT prep resources? (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 7, 2016 | Blog, Issues in Education, The New SAT
Manuel Alfaro, a former executive director at the College Board, has written a series of posts on LinkedIn detailing the myriad problems plaguing the development of the new exam.
According to Alfaro, not only were many of the items developed for the first administration of the test extraordinarily problematic (see below), but many of the items that appeared on the test were not actually reviewed by the Content Advisory Committee until after the test forms had been constructed.
Committee members repeatedly attempted to call David Coleman’s attention to the problem, but were ignored. (more…)
by Erica L. Meltzer | Jun 5, 2016 | Blog, The New SAT
According to the chatter on College Confidential, some students are reporting that they received June SATs identical to their March tests.
At this point, it’s also common knowledge that Asian test-prep companies have been distributing the March test. Inevitably, then, some lucky students will have prepped for the June exam using…the June exam. (As if barring adults from non-released exams was ever going to prevent this sort of occurrence.)
This comes just as the College Board and Khan Academy announce that they have successfully leveled the playing field among test-takers.
The College Board has been in the habit of recycling tests for quite a while, but it would stand to reason that three months isn’t quite long enough to wait.
Somehow I don’t think this is what the College Board meant by “transparency.”
