All-digital SAT to be administered for the first time this weekend

[Shawn Knight]

Why it matters: It's taken more than two years but the College Board, the not-for-profit organization behind the SAT standardized test, is finally rolling out its all-digital exam. The new test will take just two hours and 14 minutes compared to three hours for the original. It'll also have reading passages that are much shorter, and students will be able to use calculators for the entire duration of the math portion.

According to the College Board, the new test is just as rigorous as the paper version but is less intimidating. Jaslee Carayol, director of communications for the College Board, said students with ADHD, dyslexia, and those still learning English, were able to better maintain their focus on the digital exam during piloting.

The not-for-profit believes the digital exam will also reduce the opportunity to cheat as not all exams will be the same. That's in part because the revised SAT will use a multistage adaptive design where sections are split into two, and the questions you are presented in the second section will depend on how you answered the first set.

On average, the mix of questions in the second half will either be of higher or lower difficulty than those in the first part. Critically, the College Board says students can be sure they end up with an accurate score and won't be penalized or rewarded for easier or harder questions.

Not everyone believes the changes are for the best. Ariel Sacks, a New York City public school English teacher, told The New York Times that the new format seems to be catering to a generation that is doing a lot of reading on the Internet where they bounce around from one place to the next. "But I don't think that's setting a high or even effective expectation for what students should be doing as juniors in high school," Sacks added.

While a handful of prestigious schools including Brown and Yale recently reinstated standardized tests, many universities have far less stringent admission standards.

The first wave of high school students will take the revised digital SAT on Saturday.

Image credit: Nguyen Dang Hoang Nhu, Glenn Carstens-Peters

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[antiproduct]

As someone who works in IT at a school, their software is absolute crap. It needs to be installed by the end user on the day the test is taken. There's no administrative installer. So if you have a school where you lock crap down, good luck running this on a non-chromebook.

 

[Theinsanegamer]

Meh who cares? It wont affect anything. Our standards are so low that most of these kids will be passed regardless of their answers, and they know it.

Remember: in Oregon, you dont need to be able to read, write, or do math to graduate high school. Many other states will push for a minimum grade of 51% just for showing up, and 51% is the minimum grade to pass, so.....

 

[Neatfeatguy]

and students will be able to use calculators for the entire duration of the math portion.

Is this because kids these days are too dumb to do math without one?

 

[Kotters]

Is this because kids these days are too dumb to do math without one?

It's because literally every situation, educational program, and profession that uses math uses calculators.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

It's because literally every situation, educational program, and profession that uses math uses calculators.

Take away the calculator/phone and watch many of these kids fail. It's been an issue over the past few decades. I've seen high schoolers panic when the power goes out at their job and they can't do simple math (addition, multiplication, subtraction) to find a total. They literally start to tremble and have a meltdown because they can't figure these things out....heaven forbid if they need to figure out the tax and add it to the final total! The sky is FALLING!

I grill my kids when I'm cooking and I need to convert fractions or ask how many ounces I need instead of cups (or I really throw them for a loop when I ask to have it converted to mL from ounces). When we're out shopping I ask them to compare prices or tell me how much something costs per ounce and compare the prices to brands/sizes to find the best deals.

 

[Kotters]

Take away the calculator/phone and watch many of these kids fail. It's been an issue over the past few decades. I've seen high schoolers panic when the power goes out at their job and they can't do simple math (addition, multiplication, subtraction) to find a total. They literally start to tremble and have a meltdown because they can't figure these things out....heaven forbid if they need to figure out the tax and add it to the final total! The sky is FALLING!

I grill my kids when I'm cooking and I need to convert fractions or ask how many ounces I need instead of cups (or I really throw them for a loop when I ask to have it converted to mL from ounces). When we're out shopping I ask them to compare prices or tell me how much something costs per ounce and compare the prices to brands/sizes to find the best deals.

At a modern store chain hiring teens, if the power goes out they can't sell anything because their inventory system is tied to the POS, and no credit transactions can take place either.

Having a basic understanding of mathematics is important, but crunching arithmetic and even basic algebra is just busywork. Something like an SAT isn't there to test how good a human calculator you are. Concepts and understanding are better checked when you don't have to sum 5 4 digit numbers or multiply numerous terms constantly.

I would hate to have to go through my circuit analysis and small signals classes without a calculator. Even basic trig gets annoying without one.

 

[BillieSonger]

Take away the calculator/phone and watch many of these kids fail. It's been an issue over the past few decades. I've seen high schoolers panic when the power goes out at their job and they can't do simple math (addition, multiplication, subtraction) to find a total. They literally start to tremble and have a meltdown because they can't figure these things out....heaven forbid if they need to figure out the tax and add it to the final total! The sky is FALLING!

I grill my kids when I'm cooking and I need to convert fractions or ask how many ounces I need instead of cups (or I really throw them for a loop when I ask to have it converted to mL from ounces). When we're out shopping I ask them to compare prices or tell me how much something costs per ounce and compare the prices to brands/sizes to find the best deals.

I'm finding it interesting that our local bank is hiring college graduates as tellers who don't know how to set up a cash drawer or count money coming back to the customer. What I get now is a pile of bills and some coins with a "Have a nice day." The kids don't have a clue how much money they just gave me. At best, it's a guess. The next week the bank tries a new batch of hires with the same results. And slow.

The stores who hire clerks do much better because the kids aren't college educated; they've spent their time at a cash register working with money, adding, subtracting, debit, credit, sales % off, tax added, returns--real life stuff. When the power goes off, most of the store clerks are fine; don't even think about going to our one local bank.