A VIRTUAL ADMINISTRATION OF SAT and ACT IS COMING

 

A VIRTUAL ADMINISTRATION OF SAT/ACT IS COMING

…with much debate over timing, format, and conditions

 

The COVID-19 crisis prompted cancelation of the Spring SAT and ACT administrations, affecting close to a million would be test takers. The College Board (the SAT’s parent organization) and ACT, Inc. responded to these cancelations 

Just how soon might virtual testing be available? What format might these tests take? Here, University Select offers a best guess based on press releases from the test companies themselves, recent reporting on the canceled tests, and an assessment of industry trends. Stay tuned, as both testing organizations have promised additional details in the coming weeks. 

 

1. Digital Testing Was Already Happening

…but COVID-19 has accelerated the process and puts it on a much larger scale

To pre-empt the flood of questions and concerns associated with virtual testing, both the ACT and College Board refer to existing digital testing initiatives. Indeed, the SAT has begun allowing schools to opt into digital testing, and the ACT has run computer-based test centers on a trial basis since 2018. However, administering a virtual test – particularly (1) an in-home proctored version (2) for close to 2 million students – is in a fundamentally different project! 

 

2. ACT & SAT likely to offer virtual, in-home proctored tests within the next 12 months

…if not sooner, as COVID-19 has simply accelerated existing market trends 

Virtual tests are going to happen, at least so far as the ACT is concerned. This statement is from their COVID-19 response page: 

Starting in the late fall of 2020/early winter, ACT will introduce a new option allowing students to take the ACT test at their home on a computer through remote proctoring as part of its national testing program.

The SAT is more equivocal, promising “a digital SAT for home use… in the unlikely event that schools do not reopen this Fall.” At the same time, however, the College Board is overseeing the first widespread virtual, at-home test: the May AP exams. In what may become a buggy – but instructive – trial run, the AP test format has been radically altered and shortened to a handful of free response questions. 

Despite the College Board’s seeming reluctance to commit to a virtual option, its insistence on administering virtual AP exams suggests that unless the trajectory of the COVID-19 crisis changes dramatically, they will be very intentional about developing a digital option by Fall. The truth is, the ACT and the SAT have been engaged in a dogfight for market share for most of the last decade. This means that innovations or reforms offered by one company are often – in time – matched by similar measures by the other. This suggests that the ACT’s assertive move towards a virtual, in-home proctored test option will prompt the SAT to move in the same direction. 

Certainly, much depends on the nature of the COVID-19 recovery – in both public health and economic terms. Unless recovery from the pandemic is as rapid as its onset, however, the pressure on the ACT and SAT to offer virtual testing will only continue to build.

Finally, a digital test really just brings the SAT and ACT in line (online) with virtually every other standardized admissions test, including the GRE and the GMAT. With the AP exam added to that list – even temporarily – it may well add to the sense that the SAT and ACT need to figure out a way to join the 21st century.

3. Keep in Mind There’s Going to be Lots of Blowback

…but smart money is on the tests going virtual anyway

The COVID-19 crisis is the latest in a series of body blows to college admissions tests, including cheating scandals and a burgeoning test optional movement (University Select breaks down of current trends in test optional admissions HERE). So, you can forgive parents and students for being wary – and occasionally disparaging – of an in-home proctoring model. Still, with a pre-COVID high of 4 million test takers and College Board revenue north of $1 billion, there are strong incentives for test makers to show they can adapt to existing pressures. 

Security aside (we can all imagine cases of ingenious, surreptitious use of Snapchat), the ACT and the SAT will have to grapple with the ways in which in-home proctored tests exacerbate existing charges of socioeconomic bias in standardized testing. 

One independent college admissions counselor put it this way: 

You’re going to have an upper-middle-class kid with his own bedroom and his own computer system with a big monitor in a comfortable environment taking his SATs. And you’re going to have a kid who lives in a home maybe with spotty broadband, one family computer in the dining room.”

Practically, this may mean that any future virtual SAT and ACT administrations will rely on a hybrid set of offerings that mix in home proctoring with some of the on-site digital testing options the ACT is currently testing. There will be intense scrutiny as to whether the SAT and ACT can offer computer-based testing sites that offer reliable, rotating virtual administrations for low income students – taking the SAT and the ACT in the direction long pioneered by standardized tests like the GRE. 

 

4. The Format of Virtual SAT and ACT Tests Unlikely to Change During Transition Period

…with security the primary concern for in-home proctored testing

 Both the ACT and the SAT promise additional details on the shape of the digital tests. Here’s what we know so far: (1) no major changes to the substance of the tests, but (2) changes in testing protocol to try to shore up integrity of the in-home proctored tests.

  • Unlike the AP exam, messaging from both companies suggests that the goal would be to retain much of the structure and substance of the current tests.  This suggests we won’t see a radical rethink of the SAT or ACT as in 2016 – at least immediately.  Both companies seem to acknowledge the reality the need to keep the format of the exam “as close to the SAT students have been preparing for,” with some possible changes to ensure security of the exam.[1]

  •  Instead, we can expect to see heightened focus on trying to ensure the integrity of an in-home proctored test. 

The New York Times reports some interesting details on how in home proctoring for AP and SAT tests might work: 

The College Board’s president, Jeremy Singer, described plans for a remote proctoring system that “locks down everything else in the computer. The camera and microphone are on, you can detect any movement in the room. If the parents are in there, next to them, that would be detected.”

 

5. Projecting (Even Further) Forward – The Tests Could See Considerable Change

…it’s likely the tests go adaptive

 As the SAT and ACT go online, we predict the form of tests to change significantly – not immediately, but after the first cohort of students are ushered through the transition. 

It’s our projection that the tests will move towards the computer adaptive testing model espoused by the GRE and the GMAT.[2] In this model, a student’s answers to an initial series of questions determines the level of difficulty for the next round of questions. For example, if the first section is of average difficulty – and a student performs well on it – the second section will be at a higher level of difficulty. A student’s grade is based not only on the total number questions answered correctly, but also on the level of difficulty of the sections. In this way, no two tests are alike.

As the SAT and ACT go digital, we see three powerful incentives to adopt this adaptive testing model:  

  1.  Adaptive testing, where each student’s progression is unique, is well suited to frustrate the considerable cheating and security concerns raised by in-home proctoring.

  2. In a bid to meet the testing demands of computer-based test centers for low income students, computer test centers can offer tests on a rolling basis.  

  3. Most importantly, computer adaptive tests may actually provide a better standardized metric: not only permitting a more flexible (offered more frequently) and secure administration (because, in theory, no two tests will be alike), but also producing a more insightful data set by which to assess students. In other words, adaptive tests offer greater precision because, if two examinees answer the equal percentage of questions correctly, the one who answers more difficult questions gets a higher score.

Whether – and how quickly – the SAT and ACT adopt the computer adaptive testing model may be a question of scale (adaptive tests require a considerably greater number of questions), but it may also just be a matter of time. 

 Jonathan Andrew

Founder

[1] Nina Agrawal, LA Times (April 15, 2020), “Why Your High School Kid Might Be Taking the SAT Test at Your Kitchen Table.” 

[2] Although it is more probable that the SAT pursues computer adaptive testing; part of the branding of the ACT lies in its identity as the more ‘straightforward’, ‘what you see is what you get’ test.