24 ms·

U.S. students will take the SAT online

179 points by lxm 3y ago

goryramsy 3y ago
Hi HN, I’m currently sitting in a testing center right now, and the technicial issues are real. Among other things, the testing app needed a last minute update, the preloaded test on the app failed to load for everyone, and the Wi-Fi is down/at a crawl from people using it to download said update. This is fun.
- judith48 3y ago
  [dead]
- goryramsy 3y ago
  Also, for anyone wondering, the password for every student (the one that prevents people from taking the test at home) is 8 characters and *extremely* easy to guess. I won’t say it here, but given that this code grants access to take the test in the first place, you’d think it would be more complicated.
null0ranje 3y ago
This sounds more about cuttings costs than anything else.
- cpncrunch 3y ago
  It sounds like efficiency.
  - nsriv 3y ago
    Anybody that's taken a proctored online exam in high schools knows that this is absolutely not about efficiency. With universities rolling back test-optional pandemic policies, the College Board is likely to raise the price of exams and drive down the cost of administering them by gutting support. I'd predict more frequent exam dates once people have absorbed the price increase. Driving that velocity requires online administration.
- screamingninja 3y ago
  Agreed; this will further devalue these standardized tests when the results cannot be fully trusted and stop correlating with academic success.
  - throw1234651234 3y ago
    I don't know why the above got downvoted - it's absolutely true. There is a reason I have to go into a testing center or sit there with my camera on with a proctor watching when taking cloud exams. I don't see how hard it can be to keep organizing SATs once a year - plus it really does generate a shared identity, which is something we are all sorely lacking. It was a big event to go to a different school to take the SAT.
    - r00fus 3y ago
      You will still go in, but it will be on a computer there.
  - tehjoker 3y ago
    all true, but at least there will be one fewer setting students are forcibly exposed to COVID-19 in
    - pc86 3y ago
      It's 2024, the pandemic has been over for a number of years now.
      - ribosometronome 3y ago
        Because the disease became endemic, yes.
      - UncleSlacky 3y ago
        The "emergency phase" was declared over, however we're still in a pandemic. Most people want to pretend it's over, but nobody has told the virus.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  How does this cut costs? I would think they'll be spending a ton on online security and such. Imagine the fallout if this is hacked or goes down on test day. They will save some money on proctoring, since the exam is much shorter in duration.
  - goryramsy 3y ago
    It would not surprise me if the test was delayed last minute due to a security issue. I've seen firsthand the level of security in the testing application, and it is worryingly lacking. Did you know that they literally link 'desmos.com/calculator' as the calculator in the math section? That's opening the door to all sorts of security issues. And they're certainly saving money, the digital is the same cost as the paper[1]. [1] https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/help-center/students/pricing-fees https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/help-center/students/p...
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      They've already rolled out in international testing, but yeah the comments here make me think there are going to be some massive cheating if they don't tighten things up. "you are not allowed to bring any electronics into the testing center (except a computer that you own, possibly running a VM)!" isn't likely to deter cheaters.
axus 3y ago
"This week, students in the U.S. will begin taking the new SAT on their own devices — including a tablet or a laptop — or on school devices." I'd thought "never trust the client device" was the golden rule to prevent cheating. A background process that reads the display and fills in the field when you start typing would be difficult to detect.
- AustinDev 3y ago
  I don't know if they'll have a software based 'anti-cheat' but you could be completely undetectable using this method: HDMI out into splitter from graphics card or tablet, whatever. Use secondary box to ingest video and spit out answers on an alternate display.
  - gedy 3y ago
    Some of the online proctored tests complain about external monitors. It's goofy, but I guess most students use laptops
  - dgfitz 3y ago
    Or, just use a second device, no? Or read the questions out loud and someone else assists in the background?
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    Hypothetically they could require that you use a device with an included monitor (laptop, tablet) and require that no HDMI cable is plugged it. This won’t protect against somebody who is willing to open the device up and probe the embedded DisplayPort (or whatever standard) pins, but that’s probably beyond the ability or interest of most people. I don’t like any of this; if I were asked to install some school spyware I would refuse. But it looks like the plan is for the schools to also allow the students to take the tests there. People should do that instead. Hopefully some parents will be super pedantic and require schools to provide accessible testing space and not use the “you can test at home” option as an out.
    - 3y ago
deleted 3y ago
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icyfox 3y ago
When I took the GRE in 2017, everything was digital as well. But I couldn't believe how locked down the experience was. The testing center in downtown SF had no windows, a metal detector, and you had to check all food outside of the testing room. Just in case you were going to try to cheat off of your banana. I think each computer was also recording a video of you taking the test although I might be mistaken here. Certainly there were cameras set up all around the perimeter. I'm shocked at how laissez-faire we've gotten for college entrance exams, which I'd arguably say are much more important at getting you _into_ the graduate programs than the actual graduate program exams are themselves.
- deleted 3y ago
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- grubbs 3y ago
  When I took the Network+ exam in 2008 there was a camera at every desk looking down on you. I didn't think much of it - still a little weird though.
- philsnow 3y ago
  My experience was nearly identical taking the GRE in 2003.
  - cornel_io 3y ago
    Yes, the GRE has been way ahead of the curve for a long time because it's an adaptive test: it actually adjusts the difficulty of the questions it presents you based on your performance up until that point in the test, as it tries to hone in in exactly what your correct score should be. I don't know if the algorithm has changed since the early aughts, and I don't know if that approach is better or worse than the one-size-fits-all non-adaptive SAT, but the difference was always striking to me. You'd think that if the GRE adaptive approach was better statistically (by whatever measure) they'd move towards it soon for the SAT as well since they're going full digital finally.
- dylan604 3y ago
  > I'm shocked at how laissez-faire we've gotten for college entrance exams, to the point that they stopped requiring SAT altogether, but are starting to bring it back. there's a lot of things they've done is head scratching. i loved when they changed the scores so that your result from 10 years prior suddenly become a lower result so people had to know when you took the test to properly weight the result. The laissez-faire attitude to drivers licensing when they stopped requiring road tests for new drivers was bonkers as well to me.
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
In the noughties, at my Bay Area high school, students had a microphone wired up to their cell phone to someone they paid outside to Google answers, who was watching a feed of stills relayed via MMS every few seconds from a camera hidden in their hoodie. (Or, alternatively, the room was pre-bugged.) I wonder if colleges will begin differentiating between at-home and trusted-facility scores.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  The article doesn’t indicate that students will be allowed to take the SAT at home, does it? Test centers and high schools is all I saw mentioned.
  - goryramsy 3y ago
    Can confirm that yes, it is testing center/school campus testing day only.
  - orochimaaru 3y ago
    So my kid (7th grade) was taking a standardized test yesterday at her school. School rules have them keep their phones in the locker - not allowed in class. Locker is far away from testing room so that blue tooth is ineffective and they cut the wifi during test time so watches cannot be used to cheat.
    - gnicholas 3y ago
      > they cut the wifi during test time so watches cannot be used to cheat. What about cellular-enabled watches? At my kid's school, they don't allow kids to wear smartwatches on standardized test days.
autoexec 3y ago
I'd rather go into a testing center and use someone else's device than infect my own system with whatever spyware they'll insist students install to try and prevent cheaters.
- danielfoster 3y ago
  Not only this, but there's no need to worry about last-minute technical issues. You can just relax and focus on the exam.
- Eldandan 3y ago
  > try and prevent Yeah, good luck with that. If there's one thing remote teaching during covid taught me it's that you can't stop someone from cheating during an online assessment.
  - Buttons840 3y ago
    I graduated from WGU and I wouldn't have known how to cheat on the many proctored tests. The only special software I installed was Zoom. I had to have a detached USB camera and show myself and my testing area, and then during the test the camera was to my side showing both myself and the laptop screen. I'm sure it's possible, but that seems just as secure as a random highschool teacher, which was the only anti-cheat of decades past.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      my favorite cheating on a test scene ever is from Spies Like Us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaSUOFleNRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaSUOFleNRU
    - MichaelNolan 3y ago
      > The only special software I installed was Zoom I wonder when they changed that. I was there around 2014, and back then you either had to install their anti cheat software, or go to a local testing/proctor center.
  - 3y ago
AbrahamParangi 3y ago
From what I've heard the new test is more volatile/less informative. I wonder if this is a result of College Board reacting to the trend that started a few years ago where universities started saying that the SAT was a bad indicator for equity reasons.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  > I wonder if this is a result of College Board reacting to the trend that started a few years ago where universities started saying that the SAT was a bad indicator for equity reasons. Most of those universities have flipped flopped into requiring the SAT/ACT again because the other indicators (GPA, class ranking, extra curriculars) were actually even worse for equity reasons.
RheingoldRiver 3y ago
tbh I'm most interested by this: > "Today's students, they do a lot of their living digitally, they do a lot of their learning digitally and they do a lot of their test taking digitally," says Priscilla Rodriguez, who oversees the SAT for the College Board, the organization behind the test. How do kids work out math problems these days? Do they draw equations with their finger on a tablet/phone? Tablet pen on tablet? Are they learning math typesetting at a young age? I used to use huge amounts of scratch paper, in college I had a convertible laptop/tablet that I used for taking notes in class, sometimes handwriting everything, sometimes LaTeX & import the generated pdf into onenote where my handdrawn figures were. But I never used that setup for scratch paper, scratch paper was something sacred and always paper + pencil. But, now paper is nonexistent and I use a wacom tablet with OneNote when I need scratch paper. So there's been a huge revolution in my life and I'm curious what today's kids do.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  My kid is doing prealgebra now online (AoPS). When she's on an iPad Pro, she uses the Apple Pencil in the Notes app, side-by-side with the AoPS window. When she's on a non-Pro iPad she uses pencil and paper. I assume kids will use scratch paper with the SAT, along with calculators. > Are they learning math typesetting at a young age? My kid loves doing LateX on AoPS, for some reason. I guess it will be useful if she's still doing online math when she gets to higher levels (it's not really necessary for prealgebra).
  - burnished 3y ago
    Due to wrist injuries I used to type and turn in printed copies of my homework for a variety of math heavy engineering classes. It was quite nice once I got used to it especially because it reduced the friction of fixing a mistake and reduced the cost of including connecting or explanatory prose statements. It really improved the quality of my written work (especially the diagrams and the greek letters). Anyway, I just got excited because I hadn't heard of anyone else doing that, I hope it remains a useful technique for your daughter for her classes.
    - 3y ago
setgree 3y ago
I like that the SAT is down to two hours. In 2005 it took nearly four [0], which was grueling. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/education/sat-at-3-hours-45-minutes-draws-criticism-over-its-length.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/education/sat-at-3-hours-...
ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
People dont talk about this, but the SAT used to be more of a signal of intelligence and academic ability. In the 70-90s, you could really trust a good SAT score. Its been nerfed, they purposefully removed the performance aspect, its now very common for not that intelligent people (relative to the true intellectual elite) to get perfect scores. This changes who ends up at elite institutions, and effectively who makes decisions in society.
- davisr 3y ago
  > This changes ... who makes decisions in society. Does it? Seems to me that wealthy bankers still control society.
- saagarjha 3y ago
  Do you not think people who score highly today could not take the test from the past and do well?
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
    Theres clearly a class of people that would do worse on the old tests. You couldnt as easily study for the old tests.
    - ghaff 3y ago
      There was still a ton of high school test prep in the 70s. Admittedly, Kaplan etc. mostly came in a bit later.
    - pvg 3y ago
      Who is this class of people and what makes it so clear they exist?
      - ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
        Certain hedge funds and elite companies stopped looking at SATs as a hire indicator. Its well known that its no longer a reasonable measure of top talent
gnicholas 3y ago
When I first heard they were shortening the exam by 30%, I thought that was unfortunate, since it would either make the test less reliable or impose a lower ceiling on the range it can assess. However, I later learned that it will be dynamic — depending on how a student does in the first section on a given topic, he will be given either easier or harder versions of a subsequent section. That means that they'll be able to better assess students of all abilities with fewer total questions. Sounds like a win to me. Of course, dynamic testing like this is not possible with hard copies. Seems like a decent rationale for moving to computerized testing, though I would still be fine if they did it hard copy, for 3 hours.
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago
  If you can't opt out of the dumb-dumb version regardless of your answers to previous questions then the test is rigged. Not only would it not be directly comparable to previous test years, it would not be comparable to other versions of the test. Defeating the entire point (ranking students)
  - glial 3y ago
    Comparability across test years is taken seriously by the folks that make these tests (see e.g. [1,2]). There are valid criticisms to be made, but flippantly calling the test 'rigged' is not constructive. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1435437 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1435437 [2] https://www.ets.org/research/policy_research_reports/publications/report/1995/hxrv.html https://www.ets.org/research/policy_research_reports/publica...
    - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
      I don't care if they claim to take it seriously if they deliberately and thoughtfully make the tests not comparable
- glial 3y ago
  Shorter is good, but dynamic tests (called "computer adaptive tests" or CAT in the industry) make it difficult to follow longstanding best-practices for test taking. When I took the SAT, I could quickly scan through the questions in the current section and mark those that looked difficult, and save them for the end. With a CAT test, it's typically one-question-at-a-time, and if you're a strong test taker, they get successively more difficult. They are more efficient tests, but (IMHO) less pleasant to take.
itishappy 3y ago
My friend took an important law school exam (GRE or BAR, not sure which) in the past 2 years that was self administered, and she described her experience as "harrowing." The kernel level malware they installed to monitor the exam crashed her device 4 times during the exam. This was after she got it running on a secondary device because it wouldn't even start on her M1 MacBook Air. The software recorded her screen and camera the entire time, and would invalidate her results if her husband entered the frame. I can't imagine the stress this causes even on top of, y'know, having your entire career dependent on the results. I hope they're using their savings to purchase managed devices and hire good IT support, but I'm not holding out much hope.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  The amount of surveillance/security needed when students take tests at home (like your friend, and many others during COVID) is awful. But it sounds like the SAT won't be administered at home, only in high schools and test centers. Students will use either school-owned or student-owned devices, which is not great. I would certainly opt for the former, since I wouldn't want to install this crap on my own computer. We'll find out in the next couple years how smoothly this goes. They've been doing the SAT online for a while outside the US, so hopefully the ironed out some of the bugs already. But they won't have to worry about someone entering the frame, since testing will happen exclusively at proctored centers.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  Ouch that seems even worse than the lockdown browser some of my classes used during covid. I ended up digging out an older laptop for it since there was no way I was going to deal with cleaning up that invasive mess off my regular computers. Luckily by the end most professors just switched to Zoom with cameras on, and instead modified the tests (eg making them harder, but open book, or multiple versions of the exam distributed randomly - similar to how some in-person exams will alternate between two question sets so no one can cheat off their neighbor)
- Fomite 3y ago
  I suspect the Bar exam. My wife went through that twice in two different states, and it's an insane amount of stress, because the consequences of failure rest entirely on the test taker.
NelsonMinar 3y ago
Here's the company's description of how they will secure it: https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/test-security-fairness https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/test-security-fairness Still relying on the test being taken in a monitored environment, like at school or a test center. They emphasize that this new digital delivery means questions are less likely to be taken out of the test environment and published.
- deleted 3y ago
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- nradov 3y ago
  The standardized test cheating industry will still pay people to take the test and memorize certain questions, just like they've been doing forever. But that form of cheating might become a bit less useful when adaptive testing means that individual test takers are less likely to see the same questions.
SeanLuke 3y ago
> The revamped test, which ditches the paper and pencil, aims to make cheating harder and grading easier. This won't end well.
testfoobar 3y ago
An extended family member is going to take the digital SAT next week. - The digital test is now adaptive: https://blog.collegeboard.org/what-digital-sat-adaptive-testing https://blog.collegeboard.org/what-digital-sat-adaptive-test... - I'm curious how this year's test will perform to the released analysis of the 2022 test: https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2022-total-group-sat-suite-of-assessments-annual-report.pdf https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2022-total-group-... From the 2022 report: 1,737,678 total took the test. Female: 6% of 890,254 = 53,415 females got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) Male: 9% of 841,224 = 75,710 males got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) American Indian: 2% of 14,800 = 296 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) Asian: 27% of 175,468 = 47,376 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) African American: 1% of 201,645 = 2,016 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) Hispanic: 2% of 396,422 = 7,928 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) Native Hawaiian: 2% of 3,376 = 67 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) White: 7% of 732,946 = 51,306 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) Two or More Race: 10% of 66,702 = 667 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers)
- zipping1549 3y ago
  > Asian: 27% of 175,468 = 47,376 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) Damn. I'm asian myself but 27% when TA is less than 10% is just plain weird.
  - Tempest1981 3y ago
    TA? teaching assistant?
    - zipping1549 3y ago
      Total Avg
kalkr 3y ago
When I took my SAT someone crashed into a utility pole and the power went out. We ended up having to retake, which was super annoying since that test was so damn long. I wonder what they'll do this year if the same thing were to happen?
- setgree 3y ago
  In fairness, if the power had gone out when I was taking it with pencil and paper, I think we would have also had to retake it.
tiffanyh 3y ago
VM? Folks are talking about how you have to install privacy invading software that monitors down to the OS kernel. What prevents someone from just using a VM for the exam and a VM for cheating?
- deleted 3y ago
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- Atotalnoob 3y ago
  You can detect if you are running in a VM
  - jrockway 3y ago
    You can run your VM such that VM detection can't detect it. It's an arms race. The mouse is always ahead.
    - preinheimer 3y ago
      If the software doesn’t report that it suspects it’s in a vm at test taking time, but instead records data for later analysis the test taker is leaving themselves open for a lot of problems months down the road.
      - jrockway 3y ago
        Who is going to pay someone to look for problems months down the road? Ultimately if malware doesn't think it's a VM, then test taking software isn't going to either. Malware is trying to resist analysis by trained professionals. Test taking software is just trying to sell to the next test; the sale is made by the company that takes the testing committee to the best sportsball game, not by how well they detect being in a VM. (Interesting corollary; you should probably ALWAYS run inside a VM. There is so much malware that tries to detect it that it actually helps you; the malware will just shut itself off out of fear of being analyzed by a security researcher.)
  - ok123456 3y ago
germinalphrase 3y ago
As a former educator, I look forward to the day that we can simply track student ability in a trustable manner based on long term data collection in the classroom rather than requiring these additional, often expensive, exams. We would need to mediate our classroom interactions more than we do now - but the tools do so usefully are there if packaged correctly.
- jmeyer2k 3y ago
  This is what we're working on building at AutoMark (https://automark.io https://automark.io). We're currently building grading tools for teachers, but eventually want to build out a tool to accurately monitor a student's performance over time. There's a lot of potential for AI to disrupt the education system from high school to college to a career. Currently, a GPA and a few test scores (SAT, ACT, etc) are the most in depth view into a student's high school performance that colleges have, but in the future, we hope to see continuous tests throughout high school that don't just show a single letter/number, but a holistic view of a student's progress, effort, etc. (Obviously the data should be controlled by the student) These could also help a student decide where to focus their study efforts.
  - eganist 3y ago
    > eventually want to build out a tool to accurately monitor a student's performance over time. How does AutoMark account for disparities in quality of education?
    - jmeyer2k 3y ago
      This is a very hard problem to solve - nobody has successfully solved it before. It's not just a practical problem, because there are also a lot of political motivators. It's difficult to get districts to adopt new technologies, and teachers have a way they already like to teach. There are already some great quality resources online to learn subjects like math, history, and science, but we believe the missing piece is grading - you're never actually evaluated whether you learned something online. We think by giving students unlimited practice and feedback, along with quality learning materials, we can work on chipping away at this issue. AI will allow scaling access to quality tutoring, practice, and exams, all of which significantly improve eduction (currently, this costs $40-$X00/hr, but will cost much less with AI assistance). It's definitely not a quick fix to solve the issue of instructional quality.
mise_en_place 3y ago
[flagged]
spenczar5 3y ago
> [A high school student] says she's still nervous and anxious for the test, because she feels a lot of pressure to do well. "It's a very important test," she says. "It dictates what's going to happen for your college life. Man oh man, do I wish I could convince my high school self: the particular college you go to matters much less than you think. The SAT matters much less than you think. Grades matter less than you think. Pursue friendship and genuine interests, not standardized tests! But friendship and genuine interests don’t have a billion dollar organization behind them, alas. (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/210634479 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/210...)
- deleted 3y ago
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- TillE 3y ago
  Yeah like, Satya Nadella got his master's at UW Milwaukee. I went to a big state university and got a great education. If you're smart and you're not desperate to get into one of the "elite" schools, it's gonna be fine.
  - nextworddev 3y ago
    He also had the fortune of joining Microsoft early in its hyper growth stage?
- ryandrake 3y ago
  I think I would have told my high school self the exact opposite: Go for a better GPA. Go for a better SAT. Get into MIT or some other "elite" instead of the state school that I had to fall back to. Between companies that recruit at top schools, starting salary, salary progression, and compounding interest on savings, I'd probably be retired by now if I spent a just a tiny little extra effort in high school. You can get friends and hobbies anywhere and any time, but you can't re-do what undergrad you went to and what your first job was, which both have an outsized influence on your entire life's financial trajectory.
  - 3y ago
imadierich 3y ago
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ancientstraits 3y ago
The online SAT was much easier than the written version, because (1) You don't have to read big essays anymore in the reading part, and (2) both math sections have the Desmos graphing calculator, with absolutely no features taken out. Desmos is far more convenient to use than a TI-84 for many things, so it made all the problems, especially the hard ones, much easier. Also, in my opinion, their Bluebook testing software is actually pretty good, especially compared to other digital testing software I had to use over the years, like ClearSight.
- nsvd 3y ago
  Of course, in the real world, people are more likely to use desmos than a TI-84; the test conditions matching reality is a good improvement.
tombert 3y ago
I did a WGU CS degree, which had a lot of online testing. It was honestly fine. They made me use an HD webcam, show my drivers license, and pan around the room to ensure I was by myself and didn’t have an easy way to cheat. They also made me share my screen on Zoom and open up the Application Monitor to ensure I was only running Firefox. They didn’t let you take notes on paper, just using a portable whiteboard that they watched me erase before leaving. I’m not saying it’s impossible to cheat, but I would say it’s probably roughly as difficult as cheating in person. Presumably the SAT stuff would be comparable.
- BlueFalconHD 3y ago
  I feel like people who cheat on digital tests could learn a thing or two from cheaters in video games. They have cheats that are invisible on screen-shares and that are super hidden (this mostly applies to AC bypasses, but some cheats run at a kernel or hardware level)
  - tombert 3y ago
    Yeah, as I said it's obviously no impossible to cheat in WGU, I don't even think that they're claiming that. I think they're just doing a reasonable level of due diligence to make digital cheating comparatively difficult to in-person cheating. Could someone do some kind of hacked video driver (or something similar) to fool screen sharing, or have a fake ID made so that someone else could take the test in their place? Of course, but that's difficult enough to where fundamentally a vast majority of people simply won't do it. I don't think most cheating deterrents have the goal of eliminating 100% of cheating, but rather the 95+% of potential cheaters who would do the easy stuff. I mean, if you're willing to put in a lot of effort to cheat on a test, at some point it's easier to just study and pass it legitimately.
- glazzies 3y ago
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mynameisnoone 3y ago
Wow. Education in the US is turning into an even bigger joke, making cheating effortless, and minimizing cognitive exercise of fluid and crystalized intellect. Nothing can or should replace tests or writing on paper and a (cleared) HP 4x because Erable is the superior CAS.
huytersd 3y ago
How do you even monitor who is doing the test? Do they have a ChatGPT window open? What additional tools they are using etc. seems like a terrible idea.
- BlueFalconHD 3y ago
  Essentially spyware that potentally records your screen, camera, keystrokes, mouse movements, running processes, and connected peripherals. It might also run constant integrity checks on itself to ensure no modifications are made.
  - huytersd 3y ago
    Just use a laptop on the side
foreverobama 3y ago
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TrueSlacker0 3y ago
Ah, I remember this test fondly. Mostly because I "cheated" my way to a much better score than I "earned" on my presat. I remember walking into the classroom to take the test and I recognized a student who ranked in the top of the class. So I sat down next to them. We didnt know each other. We were both taking the test and through "random" peripheral vision I noticed that none of our answers were lining up. So I continues on with the test. I was on the math section with which I am quite confident so I didn't even consider questioning myself and just assumed we had different tests. Then I started my English section for the second half of the exam. Now this is the only language I can speak but I am still terrible at all those words whose definitions mean to lookup another word (is there a word for that?). But again none of my answers lined up with theirs. I started to doubt myself but it's at this point I noticed all my first math questions are lining up perfectly with their second section... No way I think. They don't make multiple versions of the test? No way I think, it can't be this obvious. Then I start checking every English answer I am undoubtedly sure about with their first half and they all line up perfectly. Needless to say I took a "gamble" and if I didn't know all the stupid words in the analogy I just put what they put. This long, verbose story later, I cheated my sat got 300 points higher than my pre-sat and it's all because they made 1 version of this terrible test. If I would have had to take it digitally I would of probably cheated it in some other way. It's absolutely no way to determine intelligence. Simply test "taking" skills.
- hirvi74 3y ago
  If you are smart enough to cheat and not get caught, then I think the test results accurately determined your intelligence. At least the type of intelligence one needs to make it in a world ran by liars, crooks, and thieves. You earned your score in my book.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  > at all those words whose definitions mean to lookup another word (is there a word for that?) A completely different word, or one with the last few letters changed? For the first one, that's just a bad dictionary. Or someone trying to give you a very fast and rough definition.
drak0n1c 3y ago
Perhaps they are following market pressure to streamline operations. The Classical Learning Test (CLT) is a growing SAT/ACT/PSAT competitor that can be taken online or on paper, with either remote or in-person proctoring. It is accepted by 250+ colleges and universities. https://www.cltexam.com/ https://www.cltexam.com/
ro_bit 3y ago
This is a great step for accessibility, but will not go well with Collegeboard's level of incompetence. I took the GRE (administered by the same company that owns collegeboard) remotely online and as soon as I started the test their absolute spyware of a lockdown browser immediately closed. Despite me passing the system check immediately before the test, the lockdown browser thought I was cheating and immediately shut off the test without recourse. After waiting 2 weeks, they came back saying they would not refund me and despite some back and forth, the rep I was interacting with seemed convinced I was cheating and would not give me any further details on how to prevent the issue in the future or any way to further appeal my case or get a refund. I retook the test a couple months later inperson at a testing center (where they used computers with the same lockdown browser) and got 99th percentile scores on everything, and I would recommend anyone planning to take the SAT to still take it at a testing center.
- ssdspoimdsjvv 3y ago
  I enjoyed reading your comment up until the last sentence where you mentioned your scores, which is completely irrelevant.
  - jimbokun 3y ago
    Think it was just making the point he or she didn’t have any reason to cheat.
    - MengerSponge 3y ago
      I'd be less surprised by a 99th percentiler cheating than a 90th percentiler. I know plenty of smart kids who enjoy gaming systems after all.
      - kyleamazza 3y ago
        Your comment comes off as "people who score well on tests are more often cheaters", supported by anecdotal evidence. Above all, it's hardly relevant to the overall discussion and feels more like a grievance.
PeterStuer 3y ago
If I read correct this is about taking the test physically in a testing centre on a computer from the testing centre. It is not about taking the test remotely online from your house or on your own device.
ThinkBeat 3y ago
They are making it quite a bit easier for the students to score high. Which seems unfair to anyone who has already taken the test in the old way > The test is also one hour shorter (down from three hours), has shorter reading >passages and uses digital tools, like a highlighter, a graphing calculator and a >bookmark to go back to skipped questions.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  That's what I thought at first also. But the test is adaptive, so if you score well on the first part of the math, for example, they give you harder questions in the second part. In theory, it should actually be possible to make the test harder than it was before, using this framework.
ThinkBeat 3y ago
I think these types of tests should only be administered on computers provided to the students. Not bring your own device. The enormously draconian spywear that is installed makes me jumpy. Not just due to the nature of the software, but for unknown errors and crashes happening due to some incompatibility. There has to be a million different ways a computer could be set up, Oh which only a small subset has been properly tested. It also gives rich students a potential benefit, since they may have computers with bigger screens, faster cpu, which might be advantageous. (Of course they already have thousands of other benefits) I think similarly specced computers provided to the students would make this fairer and more reliable.
torginus 3y ago
How in the hell will they prevent cheating?
- glazzies 3y ago
  [dead]
Kaibeezy 3y ago
I have consulted in this sector. An exec I met who has three decades of experience explained to me that software fit for purpose has to operate within these parameters: 1. The highest value exams (like lawyer licensing) can only be in-person proctored, not remote which can’t reasonably stop even moderately clever cheaters, and where any suspicion of cheating undermines the legitimacy of the entire exam. 2. No exam-giver wants to be responsible for the complaints they will receive if they provide the computers, since some number of people who do poorly will seek to blame the hardware, so exam-takers must be responsible for making sure the software works on their own machine. 3. Essay exams (like the bar exam) have to be the same day for all takers, because it is trivial to share meaningful information about the questions sufficient to give late takers a huge advantage. It is possible to use different questions on different days, but this creates major challenges for calibrating the answers fairly. 4. Large exam halls where thousands of people can take the exam simultaneously don’t have good enough wifi to hold all those connections, and even if they did, any blip would be a nightmare, so the software has to be able to work offline.

179 points by lxm 3y ago

Hi HN, I’m currently sitting in a testing center right now, and the technicial issues are real. Among other things, the testing app needed a last minute update, the preloaded test on the app failed to load for everyone, and the Wi-Fi is down/at a crawl from people using it to download said update. This is fun.

judith48 3y ago
[dead]
goryramsy 3y ago
Also, for anyone wondering, the password for every student (the one that prevents people from taking the test at home) is 8 characters and *extremely* easy to guess. I won’t say it here, but given that this code grants access to take the test in the first place, you’d think it would be more complicated.

null0ranje 3y ago

This sounds more about cuttings costs than anything else.

cpncrunch 3y ago
It sounds like efficiency.
- nsriv 3y ago
  Anybody that's taken a proctored online exam in high schools knows that this is absolutely not about efficiency. With universities rolling back test-optional pandemic policies, the College Board is likely to raise the price of exams and drive down the cost of administering them by gutting support. I'd predict more frequent exam dates once people have absorbed the price increase. Driving that velocity requires online administration.
screamingninja 3y ago
Agreed; this will further devalue these standardized tests when the results cannot be fully trusted and stop correlating with academic success.
- throw1234651234 3y ago
  I don't know why the above got downvoted - it's absolutely true. There is a reason I have to go into a testing center or sit there with my camera on with a proctor watching when taking cloud exams. I don't see how hard it can be to keep organizing SATs once a year - plus it really does generate a shared identity, which is something we are all sorely lacking. It was a big event to go to a different school to take the SAT.
  - r00fus 3y ago
    You will still go in, but it will be on a computer there.
- tehjoker 3y ago
  all true, but at least there will be one fewer setting students are forcibly exposed to COVID-19 in
  - pc86 3y ago
    It's 2024, the pandemic has been over for a number of years now.
    - ribosometronome 3y ago
      Because the disease became endemic, yes.
    - UncleSlacky 3y ago
      The "emergency phase" was declared over, however we're still in a pandemic. Most people want to pretend it's over, but nobody has told the virus.
gnicholas 3y ago
How does this cut costs? I would think they'll be spending a ton on online security and such. Imagine the fallout if this is hacked or goes down on test day. They will save some money on proctoring, since the exam is much shorter in duration.
- goryramsy 3y ago
  It would not surprise me if the test was delayed last minute due to a security issue. I've seen firsthand the level of security in the testing application, and it is worryingly lacking. Did you know that they literally link 'desmos.com/calculator' as the calculator in the math section? That's opening the door to all sorts of security issues. And they're certainly saving money, the digital is the same cost as the paper[1]. [1] https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/help-center/students/pricing-fees https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/help-center/students/p...
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    They've already rolled out in international testing, but yeah the comments here make me think there are going to be some massive cheating if they don't tighten things up. "you are not allowed to bring any electronics into the testing center (except a computer that you own, possibly running a VM)!" isn't likely to deter cheaters.

axus 3y ago

"This week, students in the U.S. will begin taking the new SAT on their own devices — including a tablet or a laptop — or on school devices." I'd thought "never trust the client device" was the golden rule to prevent cheating. A background process that reads the display and fills in the field when you start typing would be difficult to detect.

AustinDev 3y ago
I don't know if they'll have a software based 'anti-cheat' but you could be completely undetectable using this method: HDMI out into splitter from graphics card or tablet, whatever. Use secondary box to ingest video and spit out answers on an alternate display.
- gedy 3y ago
  Some of the online proctored tests complain about external monitors. It's goofy, but I guess most students use laptops
- dgfitz 3y ago
  Or, just use a second device, no? Or read the questions out loud and someone else assists in the background?
- bee_rider 3y ago
  Hypothetically they could require that you use a device with an included monitor (laptop, tablet) and require that no HDMI cable is plugged it. This won’t protect against somebody who is willing to open the device up and probe the embedded DisplayPort (or whatever standard) pins, but that’s probably beyond the ability or interest of most people. I don’t like any of this; if I were asked to install some school spyware I would refuse. But it looks like the plan is for the schools to also allow the students to take the tests there. People should do that instead. Hopefully some parents will be super pedantic and require schools to provide accessible testing space and not use the “you can test at home” option as an out.
  - 3y ago

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icyfox 3y ago

When I took the GRE in 2017, everything was digital as well. But I couldn't believe how locked down the experience was. The testing center in downtown SF had no windows, a metal detector, and you had to check all food outside of the testing room. Just in case you were going to try to cheat off of your banana. I think each computer was also recording a video of you taking the test although I might be mistaken here. Certainly there were cameras set up all around the perimeter. I'm shocked at how laissez-faire we've gotten for college entrance exams, which I'd arguably say are much more important at getting you _into_ the graduate programs than the actual graduate program exams are themselves.

deleted 3y ago
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grubbs 3y ago
When I took the Network+ exam in 2008 there was a camera at every desk looking down on you. I didn't think much of it - still a little weird though.
philsnow 3y ago
My experience was nearly identical taking the GRE in 2003.
- cornel_io 3y ago
  Yes, the GRE has been way ahead of the curve for a long time because it's an adaptive test: it actually adjusts the difficulty of the questions it presents you based on your performance up until that point in the test, as it tries to hone in in exactly what your correct score should be. I don't know if the algorithm has changed since the early aughts, and I don't know if that approach is better or worse than the one-size-fits-all non-adaptive SAT, but the difference was always striking to me. You'd think that if the GRE adaptive approach was better statistically (by whatever measure) they'd move towards it soon for the SAT as well since they're going full digital finally.
dylan604 3y ago
> I'm shocked at how laissez-faire we've gotten for college entrance exams, to the point that they stopped requiring SAT altogether, but are starting to bring it back. there's a lot of things they've done is head scratching. i loved when they changed the scores so that your result from 10 years prior suddenly become a lower result so people had to know when you took the test to properly weight the result. The laissez-faire attitude to drivers licensing when they stopped requiring road tests for new drivers was bonkers as well to me.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

In the noughties, at my Bay Area high school, students had a microphone wired up to their cell phone to someone they paid outside to Google answers, who was watching a feed of stills relayed via MMS every few seconds from a camera hidden in their hoodie. (Or, alternatively, the room was pre-bugged.) I wonder if colleges will begin differentiating between at-home and trusted-facility scores.

gnicholas 3y ago
The article doesn’t indicate that students will be allowed to take the SAT at home, does it? Test centers and high schools is all I saw mentioned.
- goryramsy 3y ago
  Can confirm that yes, it is testing center/school campus testing day only.
- orochimaaru 3y ago
  So my kid (7th grade) was taking a standardized test yesterday at her school. School rules have them keep their phones in the locker - not allowed in class. Locker is far away from testing room so that blue tooth is ineffective and they cut the wifi during test time so watches cannot be used to cheat.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    > they cut the wifi during test time so watches cannot be used to cheat. What about cellular-enabled watches? At my kid's school, they don't allow kids to wear smartwatches on standardized test days.

autoexec 3y ago

I'd rather go into a testing center and use someone else's device than infect my own system with whatever spyware they'll insist students install to try and prevent cheaters.

danielfoster 3y ago
Not only this, but there's no need to worry about last-minute technical issues. You can just relax and focus on the exam.
Eldandan 3y ago
> try and prevent Yeah, good luck with that. If there's one thing remote teaching during covid taught me it's that you can't stop someone from cheating during an online assessment.
- Buttons840 3y ago
  I graduated from WGU and I wouldn't have known how to cheat on the many proctored tests. The only special software I installed was Zoom. I had to have a detached USB camera and show myself and my testing area, and then during the test the camera was to my side showing both myself and the laptop screen. I'm sure it's possible, but that seems just as secure as a random highschool teacher, which was the only anti-cheat of decades past.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    my favorite cheating on a test scene ever is from Spies Like Us: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaSUOFleNRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaSUOFleNRU
  - MichaelNolan 3y ago
    > The only special software I installed was Zoom I wonder when they changed that. I was there around 2014, and back then you either had to install their anti cheat software, or go to a local testing/proctor center.
- 3y ago

AbrahamParangi 3y ago

From what I've heard the new test is more volatile/less informative. I wonder if this is a result of College Board reacting to the trend that started a few years ago where universities started saying that the SAT was a bad indicator for equity reasons.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
> I wonder if this is a result of College Board reacting to the trend that started a few years ago where universities started saying that the SAT was a bad indicator for equity reasons. Most of those universities have flipped flopped into requiring the SAT/ACT again because the other indicators (GPA, class ranking, extra curriculars) were actually even worse for equity reasons.

RheingoldRiver 3y ago

tbh I'm most interested by this: > "Today's students, they do a lot of their living digitally, they do a lot of their learning digitally and they do a lot of their test taking digitally," says Priscilla Rodriguez, who oversees the SAT for the College Board, the organization behind the test. How do kids work out math problems these days? Do they draw equations with their finger on a tablet/phone? Tablet pen on tablet? Are they learning math typesetting at a young age? I used to use huge amounts of scratch paper, in college I had a convertible laptop/tablet that I used for taking notes in class, sometimes handwriting everything, sometimes LaTeX & import the generated pdf into onenote where my handdrawn figures were. But I never used that setup for scratch paper, scratch paper was something sacred and always paper + pencil. But, now paper is nonexistent and I use a wacom tablet with OneNote when I need scratch paper. So there's been a huge revolution in my life and I'm curious what today's kids do.

gnicholas 3y ago
My kid is doing prealgebra now online (AoPS). When she's on an iPad Pro, she uses the Apple Pencil in the Notes app, side-by-side with the AoPS window. When she's on a non-Pro iPad she uses pencil and paper. I assume kids will use scratch paper with the SAT, along with calculators. > Are they learning math typesetting at a young age? My kid loves doing LateX on AoPS, for some reason. I guess it will be useful if she's still doing online math when she gets to higher levels (it's not really necessary for prealgebra).
- burnished 3y ago
  Due to wrist injuries I used to type and turn in printed copies of my homework for a variety of math heavy engineering classes. It was quite nice once I got used to it especially because it reduced the friction of fixing a mistake and reduced the cost of including connecting or explanatory prose statements. It really improved the quality of my written work (especially the diagrams and the greek letters). Anyway, I just got excited because I hadn't heard of anyone else doing that, I hope it remains a useful technique for your daughter for her classes.
  - 3y ago

setgree 3y ago

I like that the SAT is down to two hours. In 2005 it took nearly four [0], which was grueling. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/education/sat-at-3-hours-45-minutes-draws-criticism-over-its-length.html https://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/16/education/sat-at-3-hours-...

ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago

People dont talk about this, but the SAT used to be more of a signal of intelligence and academic ability. In the 70-90s, you could really trust a good SAT score. Its been nerfed, they purposefully removed the performance aspect, its now very common for not that intelligent people (relative to the true intellectual elite) to get perfect scores. This changes who ends up at elite institutions, and effectively who makes decisions in society.

davisr 3y ago
> This changes ... who makes decisions in society. Does it? Seems to me that wealthy bankers still control society.
saagarjha 3y ago
Do you not think people who score highly today could not take the test from the past and do well?
- ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
  Theres clearly a class of people that would do worse on the old tests. You couldnt as easily study for the old tests.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    There was still a ton of high school test prep in the 70s. Admittedly, Kaplan etc. mostly came in a bit later.
  - pvg 3y ago
    Who is this class of people and what makes it so clear they exist?
    - ldjkfkdsjnv 3y ago
      Certain hedge funds and elite companies stopped looking at SATs as a hire indicator. Its well known that its no longer a reasonable measure of top talent

gnicholas 3y ago

When I first heard they were shortening the exam by 30%, I thought that was unfortunate, since it would either make the test less reliable or impose a lower ceiling on the range it can assess. However, I later learned that it will be dynamic — depending on how a student does in the first section on a given topic, he will be given either easier or harder versions of a subsequent section. That means that they'll be able to better assess students of all abilities with fewer total questions. Sounds like a win to me. Of course, dynamic testing like this is not possible with hard copies. Seems like a decent rationale for moving to computerized testing, though I would still be fine if they did it hard copy, for 3 hours.

iraqmtpizza 3y ago
If you can't opt out of the dumb-dumb version regardless of your answers to previous questions then the test is rigged. Not only would it not be directly comparable to previous test years, it would not be comparable to other versions of the test. Defeating the entire point (ranking students)
- glial 3y ago
  Comparability across test years is taken seriously by the folks that make these tests (see e.g. [1,2]). There are valid criticisms to be made, but flippantly calling the test 'rigged' is not constructive. [1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/1435437 https://www.jstor.org/stable/1435437 [2] https://www.ets.org/research/policy_research_reports/publications/report/1995/hxrv.html https://www.ets.org/research/policy_research_reports/publica...
  - iraqmtpizza 3y ago
    I don't care if they claim to take it seriously if they deliberately and thoughtfully make the tests not comparable
glial 3y ago
Shorter is good, but dynamic tests (called "computer adaptive tests" or CAT in the industry) make it difficult to follow longstanding best-practices for test taking. When I took the SAT, I could quickly scan through the questions in the current section and mark those that looked difficult, and save them for the end. With a CAT test, it's typically one-question-at-a-time, and if you're a strong test taker, they get successively more difficult. They are more efficient tests, but (IMHO) less pleasant to take.

itishappy 3y ago

My friend took an important law school exam (GRE or BAR, not sure which) in the past 2 years that was self administered, and she described her experience as "harrowing." The kernel level malware they installed to monitor the exam crashed her device 4 times during the exam. This was after she got it running on a secondary device because it wouldn't even start on her M1 MacBook Air. The software recorded her screen and camera the entire time, and would invalidate her results if her husband entered the frame. I can't imagine the stress this causes even on top of, y'know, having your entire career dependent on the results. I hope they're using their savings to purchase managed devices and hire good IT support, but I'm not holding out much hope.

gnicholas 3y ago
The amount of surveillance/security needed when students take tests at home (like your friend, and many others during COVID) is awful. But it sounds like the SAT won't be administered at home, only in high schools and test centers. Students will use either school-owned or student-owned devices, which is not great. I would certainly opt for the former, since I wouldn't want to install this crap on my own computer. We'll find out in the next couple years how smoothly this goes. They've been doing the SAT online for a while outside the US, so hopefully the ironed out some of the bugs already. But they won't have to worry about someone entering the frame, since testing will happen exclusively at proctored centers.
dotnet00 3y ago
Ouch that seems even worse than the lockdown browser some of my classes used during covid. I ended up digging out an older laptop for it since there was no way I was going to deal with cleaning up that invasive mess off my regular computers. Luckily by the end most professors just switched to Zoom with cameras on, and instead modified the tests (eg making them harder, but open book, or multiple versions of the exam distributed randomly - similar to how some in-person exams will alternate between two question sets so no one can cheat off their neighbor)
Fomite 3y ago
I suspect the Bar exam. My wife went through that twice in two different states, and it's an insane amount of stress, because the consequences of failure rest entirely on the test taker.

NelsonMinar 3y ago

Here's the company's description of how they will secure it: https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/test-security-fairness https://satsuite.collegeboard.org/sat/test-security-fairness Still relying on the test being taken in a monitored environment, like at school or a test center. They emphasize that this new digital delivery means questions are less likely to be taken out of the test environment and published.

deleted 3y ago
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nradov 3y ago
The standardized test cheating industry will still pay people to take the test and memorize certain questions, just like they've been doing forever. But that form of cheating might become a bit less useful when adaptive testing means that individual test takers are less likely to see the same questions.

SeanLuke 3y ago

> The revamped test, which ditches the paper and pencil, aims to make cheating harder and grading easier. This won't end well.

testfoobar 3y ago

An extended family member is going to take the digital SAT next week. - The digital test is now adaptive: https://blog.collegeboard.org/what-digital-sat-adaptive-testing https://blog.collegeboard.org/what-digital-sat-adaptive-test... - I'm curious how this year's test will perform to the released analysis of the 2022 test: https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2022-total-group-sat-suite-of-assessments-annual-report.pdf https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2022-total-group-... From the 2022 report: 1,737,678 total took the test. Female: 6% of 890,254 = 53,415 females got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) Male: 9% of 841,224 = 75,710 males got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) American Indian: 2% of 14,800 = 296 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) Asian: 27% of 175,468 = 47,376 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) African American: 1% of 201,645 = 2,016 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) Hispanic: 2% of 396,422 = 7,928 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) Native Hawaiian: 2% of 3,376 = 67 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) White: 7% of 732,946 = 51,306 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) Two or More Race: 10% of 66,702 = 667 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers)

zipping1549 3y ago
> Asian: 27% of 175,468 = 47,376 got 1400-1600 (highest scorers) Damn. I'm asian myself but 27% when TA is less than 10% is just plain weird.
- Tempest1981 3y ago
  TA? teaching assistant?
  - zipping1549 3y ago
    Total Avg

kalkr 3y ago

When I took my SAT someone crashed into a utility pole and the power went out. We ended up having to retake, which was super annoying since that test was so damn long. I wonder what they'll do this year if the same thing were to happen?

setgree 3y ago
In fairness, if the power had gone out when I was taking it with pencil and paper, I think we would have also had to retake it.

tiffanyh 3y ago

VM? Folks are talking about how you have to install privacy invading software that monitors down to the OS kernel. What prevents someone from just using a VM for the exam and a VM for cheating?

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Atotalnoob 3y ago
You can detect if you are running in a VM
- jrockway 3y ago
  You can run your VM such that VM detection can't detect it. It's an arms race. The mouse is always ahead.
  - preinheimer 3y ago
    If the software doesn’t report that it suspects it’s in a vm at test taking time, but instead records data for later analysis the test taker is leaving themselves open for a lot of problems months down the road.
    - jrockway 3y ago
      Who is going to pay someone to look for problems months down the road? Ultimately if malware doesn't think it's a VM, then test taking software isn't going to either. Malware is trying to resist analysis by trained professionals. Test taking software is just trying to sell to the next test; the sale is made by the company that takes the testing committee to the best sportsball game, not by how well they detect being in a VM. (Interesting corollary; you should probably ALWAYS run inside a VM. There is so much malware that tries to detect it that it actually helps you; the malware will just shut itself off out of fear of being analyzed by a security researcher.)
- ok123456 3y ago

germinalphrase 3y ago

As a former educator, I look forward to the day that we can simply track student ability in a trustable manner based on long term data collection in the classroom rather than requiring these additional, often expensive, exams. We would need to mediate our classroom interactions more than we do now - but the tools do so usefully are there if packaged correctly.

jmeyer2k 3y ago
This is what we're working on building at AutoMark (https://automark.io https://automark.io). We're currently building grading tools for teachers, but eventually want to build out a tool to accurately monitor a student's performance over time. There's a lot of potential for AI to disrupt the education system from high school to college to a career. Currently, a GPA and a few test scores (SAT, ACT, etc) are the most in depth view into a student's high school performance that colleges have, but in the future, we hope to see continuous tests throughout high school that don't just show a single letter/number, but a holistic view of a student's progress, effort, etc. (Obviously the data should be controlled by the student) These could also help a student decide where to focus their study efforts.
- eganist 3y ago
  > eventually want to build out a tool to accurately monitor a student's performance over time. How does AutoMark account for disparities in quality of education?
  - jmeyer2k 3y ago
    This is a very hard problem to solve - nobody has successfully solved it before. It's not just a practical problem, because there are also a lot of political motivators. It's difficult to get districts to adopt new technologies, and teachers have a way they already like to teach. There are already some great quality resources online to learn subjects like math, history, and science, but we believe the missing piece is grading - you're never actually evaluated whether you learned something online. We think by giving students unlimited practice and feedback, along with quality learning materials, we can work on chipping away at this issue. AI will allow scaling access to quality tutoring, practice, and exams, all of which significantly improve eduction (currently, this costs $40-$X00/hr, but will cost much less with AI assistance). It's definitely not a quick fix to solve the issue of instructional quality.

mise_en_place 3y ago

[flagged]

spenczar5 3y ago

> [A high school student] says she's still nervous and anxious for the test, because she feels a lot of pressure to do well. "It's a very important test," she says. "It dictates what's going to happen for your college life. Man oh man, do I wish I could convince my high school self: the particular college you go to matters much less than you think. The SAT matters much less than you think. Grades matter less than you think. Pursue friendship and genuine interests, not standardized tests! But friendship and genuine interests don’t have a billion dollar organization behind them, alas. (https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/210634479 https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/210...)

deleted 3y ago
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TillE 3y ago
Yeah like, Satya Nadella got his master's at UW Milwaukee. I went to a big state university and got a great education. If you're smart and you're not desperate to get into one of the "elite" schools, it's gonna be fine.
- nextworddev 3y ago
  He also had the fortune of joining Microsoft early in its hyper growth stage?
ryandrake 3y ago
I think I would have told my high school self the exact opposite: Go for a better GPA. Go for a better SAT. Get into MIT or some other "elite" instead of the state school that I had to fall back to. Between companies that recruit at top schools, starting salary, salary progression, and compounding interest on savings, I'd probably be retired by now if I spent a just a tiny little extra effort in high school. You can get friends and hobbies anywhere and any time, but you can't re-do what undergrad you went to and what your first job was, which both have an outsized influence on your entire life's financial trajectory.
- 3y ago

imadierich 3y ago

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ancientstraits 3y ago

The online SAT was much easier than the written version, because (1) You don't have to read big essays anymore in the reading part, and (2) both math sections have the Desmos graphing calculator, with absolutely no features taken out. Desmos is far more convenient to use than a TI-84 for many things, so it made all the problems, especially the hard ones, much easier. Also, in my opinion, their Bluebook testing software is actually pretty good, especially compared to other digital testing software I had to use over the years, like ClearSight.

nsvd 3y ago
Of course, in the real world, people are more likely to use desmos than a TI-84; the test conditions matching reality is a good improvement.

tombert 3y ago

I did a WGU CS degree, which had a lot of online testing. It was honestly fine. They made me use an HD webcam, show my drivers license, and pan around the room to ensure I was by myself and didn’t have an easy way to cheat. They also made me share my screen on Zoom and open up the Application Monitor to ensure I was only running Firefox. They didn’t let you take notes on paper, just using a portable whiteboard that they watched me erase before leaving. I’m not saying it’s impossible to cheat, but I would say it’s probably roughly as difficult as cheating in person. Presumably the SAT stuff would be comparable.

BlueFalconHD 3y ago
I feel like people who cheat on digital tests could learn a thing or two from cheaters in video games. They have cheats that are invisible on screen-shares and that are super hidden (this mostly applies to AC bypasses, but some cheats run at a kernel or hardware level)
- tombert 3y ago
  Yeah, as I said it's obviously no impossible to cheat in WGU, I don't even think that they're claiming that. I think they're just doing a reasonable level of due diligence to make digital cheating comparatively difficult to in-person cheating. Could someone do some kind of hacked video driver (or something similar) to fool screen sharing, or have a fake ID made so that someone else could take the test in their place? Of course, but that's difficult enough to where fundamentally a vast majority of people simply won't do it. I don't think most cheating deterrents have the goal of eliminating 100% of cheating, but rather the 95+% of potential cheaters who would do the easy stuff. I mean, if you're willing to put in a lot of effort to cheat on a test, at some point it's easier to just study and pass it legitimately.
glazzies 3y ago
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mynameisnoone 3y ago

Wow. Education in the US is turning into an even bigger joke, making cheating effortless, and minimizing cognitive exercise of fluid and crystalized intellect. Nothing can or should replace tests or writing on paper and a (cleared) HP 4x because Erable is the superior CAS.

huytersd 3y ago

How do you even monitor who is doing the test? Do they have a ChatGPT window open? What additional tools they are using etc. seems like a terrible idea.

BlueFalconHD 3y ago
Essentially spyware that potentally records your screen, camera, keystrokes, mouse movements, running processes, and connected peripherals. It might also run constant integrity checks on itself to ensure no modifications are made.
- huytersd 3y ago
  Just use a laptop on the side

foreverobama 3y ago

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TrueSlacker0 3y ago

Ah, I remember this test fondly. Mostly because I "cheated" my way to a much better score than I "earned" on my presat. I remember walking into the classroom to take the test and I recognized a student who ranked in the top of the class. So I sat down next to them. We didnt know each other. We were both taking the test and through "random" peripheral vision I noticed that none of our answers were lining up. So I continues on with the test. I was on the math section with which I am quite confident so I didn't even consider questioning myself and just assumed we had different tests. Then I started my English section for the second half of the exam. Now this is the only language I can speak but I am still terrible at all those words whose definitions mean to lookup another word (is there a word for that?). But again none of my answers lined up with theirs. I started to doubt myself but it's at this point I noticed all my first math questions are lining up perfectly with their second section... No way I think. They don't make multiple versions of the test? No way I think, it can't be this obvious. Then I start checking every English answer I am undoubtedly sure about with their first half and they all line up perfectly. Needless to say I took a "gamble" and if I didn't know all the stupid words in the analogy I just put what they put. This long, verbose story later, I cheated my sat got 300 points higher than my pre-sat and it's all because they made 1 version of this terrible test. If I would have had to take it digitally I would of probably cheated it in some other way. It's absolutely no way to determine intelligence. Simply test "taking" skills.

hirvi74 3y ago
If you are smart enough to cheat and not get caught, then I think the test results accurately determined your intelligence. At least the type of intelligence one needs to make it in a world ran by liars, crooks, and thieves. You earned your score in my book.
Dylan16807 3y ago
> at all those words whose definitions mean to lookup another word (is there a word for that?) A completely different word, or one with the last few letters changed? For the first one, that's just a bad dictionary. Or someone trying to give you a very fast and rough definition.

drak0n1c 3y ago

Perhaps they are following market pressure to streamline operations. The Classical Learning Test (CLT) is a growing SAT/ACT/PSAT competitor that can be taken online or on paper, with either remote or in-person proctoring. It is accepted by 250+ colleges and universities. https://www.cltexam.com/ https://www.cltexam.com/

ro_bit 3y ago

This is a great step for accessibility, but will not go well with Collegeboard's level of incompetence. I took the GRE (administered by the same company that owns collegeboard) remotely online and as soon as I started the test their absolute spyware of a lockdown browser immediately closed. Despite me passing the system check immediately before the test, the lockdown browser thought I was cheating and immediately shut off the test without recourse. After waiting 2 weeks, they came back saying they would not refund me and despite some back and forth, the rep I was interacting with seemed convinced I was cheating and would not give me any further details on how to prevent the issue in the future or any way to further appeal my case or get a refund. I retook the test a couple months later inperson at a testing center (where they used computers with the same lockdown browser) and got 99th percentile scores on everything, and I would recommend anyone planning to take the SAT to still take it at a testing center.

ssdspoimdsjvv 3y ago
I enjoyed reading your comment up until the last sentence where you mentioned your scores, which is completely irrelevant.
- jimbokun 3y ago
  Think it was just making the point he or she didn’t have any reason to cheat.
  - MengerSponge 3y ago
    I'd be less surprised by a 99th percentiler cheating than a 90th percentiler. I know plenty of smart kids who enjoy gaming systems after all.
    - kyleamazza 3y ago
      Your comment comes off as "people who score well on tests are more often cheaters", supported by anecdotal evidence. Above all, it's hardly relevant to the overall discussion and feels more like a grievance.

PeterStuer 3y ago

If I read correct this is about taking the test physically in a testing centre on a computer from the testing centre. It is not about taking the test remotely online from your house or on your own device.

ThinkBeat 3y ago

They are making it quite a bit easier for the students to score high. Which seems unfair to anyone who has already taken the test in the old way > The test is also one hour shorter (down from three hours), has shorter reading >passages and uses digital tools, like a highlighter, a graphing calculator and a >bookmark to go back to skipped questions.

gnicholas 3y ago
That's what I thought at first also. But the test is adaptive, so if you score well on the first part of the math, for example, they give you harder questions in the second part. In theory, it should actually be possible to make the test harder than it was before, using this framework.

ThinkBeat 3y ago

I think these types of tests should only be administered on computers provided to the students. Not bring your own device. The enormously draconian spywear that is installed makes me jumpy. Not just due to the nature of the software, but for unknown errors and crashes happening due to some incompatibility. There has to be a million different ways a computer could be set up, Oh which only a small subset has been properly tested. It also gives rich students a potential benefit, since they may have computers with bigger screens, faster cpu, which might be advantageous. (Of course they already have thousands of other benefits) I think similarly specced computers provided to the students would make this fairer and more reliable.

torginus 3y ago

How in the hell will they prevent cheating?

glazzies 3y ago
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Kaibeezy 3y ago

I have consulted in this sector. An exec I met who has three decades of experience explained to me that software fit for purpose has to operate within these parameters: 1. The highest value exams (like lawyer licensing) can only be in-person proctored, not remote which can’t reasonably stop even moderately clever cheaters, and where any suspicion of cheating undermines the legitimacy of the entire exam. 2. No exam-giver wants to be responsible for the complaints they will receive if they provide the computers, since some number of people who do poorly will seek to blame the hardware, so exam-takers must be responsible for making sure the software works on their own machine. 3. Essay exams (like the bar exam) have to be the same day for all takers, because it is trivial to share meaningful information about the questions sufficient to give late takers a huge advantage. It is possible to use different questions on different days, but this creates major challenges for calibrating the answers fairly. 4. Large exam halls where thousands of people can take the exam simultaneously don’t have good enough wifi to hold all those connections, and even if they did, any blip would be a nightmare, so the software has to be able to work offline.