By Faith Gonia
Today’s high school students are experiencing the start of standardized testing’s digitalization. In regards to Advanced Placement Exams, the College Board offers schools a choice: paper and pencil, or chromebook and Bluebook. Consequently, current Westmont seniors may have taken an online AP exam last year, and some students will take an online exam this May. However, the College Board no longer provides a choice for one specific test; starting this year, all versions of the SAT will be administered completely online.
The all-digital SAT launched in March, where students noticed two obvious changes—different test-taking materials, and a shorter amount of time spent in the test room. Students brought either a laptop or tablet to their testing centers as opposed to a standard No. 2 pencil, and the test itself lasted 2 hours and 14 minutes—46 minutes shorter than the former non-essay version.
What made the test significantly shorter lies in two major changes: shorter reading passages and adaptive questions. While the SAT used to involve reading passages of 500-750 words, the modern version requires only a paragraph per passage. Some view the modernized version as a blessing to an anxiety-ridden generation, while others see the change as enabling teens’ already-short attention spans.
One New York English teacher finds the new passages incredibly concerning. Ariel Sacks explains that, “It seems to me like they are maybe trying to cater to this generation that is doing a lot of reading on the internet, bouncing 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.”
Furthermore, the new SAT features adaptive testing—each section contains two modules; a student’s performance in the first module determines the difficulty of the questions in the second module. Many question the reliability of test scores, given that students receive vastly different questions depending on their performance. Is such a test truly “standardized?” Nonetheless, the College Board asserts (due to grading on a curve), “You won’t be disadvantaged. You’ll be presented with questions tailored for your abilities.”
After taking the exam, many students reported shockingly difficult questions in the second module of the math section, leading some to question the accuracy of the adaptive technology.
The digital change arrives as the percentage of SAT-takers rapidly decreases. Provided that only 4 percent of Common App colleges require SAT scores (in 2019, 55 percent required them), less and less students are opting to take the $60 exam. Regardless, test-optional admissions remain controversial. Will the College Board’s revision boost SAT submissions? Or will it illustrate the potential irrelevance of standardized testing? Only time will tell.