Woochifer
Joined: 12/15/11 Posts: 9,123
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Posted Thu, Mar 28 3:38 pm
(Edited Thu, Mar 28 3:42 pm)
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In response to Just wait until they go after the College Board (BRUINS 1)
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No one has implicated the College Board itself, even though the organization has had lax oversight for decades. The issues with the SAT and ACT are the tests themselves.
The UC has threatened to eliminate the SAT for at least two decades. This initially resulted in some improvements to the exam (such as the elimination of the word analogies questions from the verbal section, which were laughably biased against anyone who didn't grow up in an upper middle class suburb in the Northeast). But, study after study has found that standardized tests, even with the revised versions, remain poor indicators of how a student will perform in college.
More and more colleges have been going test-optional in their admissions. The College Board has been more responsive to issues raised by UC and CSU, because those university systems make up a huge chunk of the total test takers. If UC and CSU eliminate the exams or go to test-optional admissions, a lot of other schools are going to follow suit, which would be bad news for the College Board.
If you read the court filings, the consultant in the admissions scandal gamed the SAT multiple ways. When hiring someone to take the exam, the hired gun was instructed to answer a certain number of questions incorrectly. The consultant knew how much they could raise a student's score on a retest before the College Board would flag it.
The other way they gamed the system was to fake disabilities. Students with physical and mental impairments can get extra time or take the exam at a different site.
Another bill was introduced that would fund California school districts to administer the SAT or ACT on campus on a weekday. Right now, the tests are administered on weekends in off-campus testing centers. I remember taking the SAT at a community college. I know there are a lot of other private locations, and that's how the consultant in the scandal was able to bribe the proctors and doctor the exams.
As far as that test that circulated in China. Problem there is that the College Board reused some questions from past exams, which they've done for decades. In years past, I know that the SAT also included non-graded sections that they used to test questions for future exams. The College Board has made old exams available for purchase. Even if the questions in the sample tests aren't exactly the same, they're often similar enough. |
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