Bad press for the SAT as "technical errors" are reported:
About 4,000 students who took the SAT last October received test scores that were lower than they should have been — some by as much as 100 points — because of technical problems in the scoring process, the College Board said yesterday.The College Board, which administers the SAT, said it had begun to notify college admissions offices, high school counselors and affected students this week in letters and in e-mail messages, and expected to complete the process by Thursday. It also said that it planned to return registration fees and charges for sending test scores to colleges to the students whose scores were in error.
It should be noted that this is less than 1% of the examinees who took the SAT reasoning test in October of 2005, but 4000 unhappy examinees is still a lot of examinees. Snotty comments from FairTest spokesmen aside, it's just plain silly to propose that testing companies admit any error before they've had a chance to (a) fix it and (b) figure out what caused it. Rushing to notify the public before doing a complete investigation could lead to further embarassments (like having to amend the first notification as complexities are uncovered). When half a million test forms are involved, a four-month period of error investigation doesn't seem overly long to me.
Of course, someone could make the argument that SAT scores should be held for four months following exam administration, so that any errors could be corrected in time, but my guess is colleges and examinees - and FairTest - won't go for that.
Posted by kswygert at March 8, 2006 12:34 PM