The Death Knell for the SAT?

by Patrick O'Connor, Ph.D.

You’ve likely read a lot about changes to the SAT already, so let me just cut to the chase by raising two points, and you can decide if you want to read the rest of this column, or pursue the perfect cup of hot chocolate instead.

1. It’s likely these changes will accelerate the death of the SAT.
2. If you’re looking for game-changing college admission announcements, tune in around 10 AM Eastern today (Thursday the 27th) for a blockbuster that has nothing to do with testing. That’s all I can say.

OK—so, on with the SAT talk. A brief review of the changes, taken largely from testing guru Adam Ingersoll (and if you don’t follow him, you should—clear, thoughtful, engaging):

• These changes will affect 9th graders—everyone else is safe;
• The test will be online, but students still have to go to testing centers to take them. Students can use their own computers, or those at the center;
• The test is now two hours long, not three;
• Reading passages are just one paragraph, and will have only one question to answer;
• Students can use a calculator on every math problem;
• Students will get their scores back in a matter of days, not weeks;
• Each topic will be divided into two sections, where the questions the student gets in the second section depends on how well they do in the first section;
• Plans to create a chart converting new SAT scores to old SAT scores, and new SAT scores to ACT scores, are still up in the air.

These last two points are the real head-turners. If the content of the second part of each Math exam is based on how well the student does on the first exam, how is it possible to use scores as a point of comparison across students? Past SATs have had different versions, but they were basically at the same level of difficulty. This new approach means the difficulty of different test versions will be vastly different—so how can colleges effectively sort out one score of 540 from another?

The problem gets worse if efforts to create conversion charts bog down. The SAT has been updated in the past, but each update came with a way to compare new test scores to old test scores. If the new test isn’t of uniform difficulty, how exactly do you do that—and what does that mean to colleges, where consistency of scores is, for better or worse, an anchor of many evaluation processes?

These last two reasons could form the basis of several actions, none of them beneficial to SAT:

• A migration to the ACT. The number of students taking ACT always goes up when a new version of the SAT premieres. Given all the changes this new version is touting, that transition is likely to be greater than ever before—and may lead some colleges to go back to preferring ACT.
• Colleges using the new version as a reason to remain test optional. Since two scores on the new SAT represent different levels of knowledge, how can colleges compare test results across students with any integrity? Right now, this sounds like comparing apples to oranges.
  

Many details remain to be ironed out, but the early responses leave many wondering just what’s in it for the students, other than a shorter test, and what’s in it for the colleges, period. That last point needs to be made clear soon, or the future of the SAT may be far from what its thought leaders are hoping for.