For the ACT and the SAT, Pencils No Longer Required, but Sometimes Necessary

胡老师

For the ACT and the SAT, Pencils No Longer Required, but Sometimes Necessary
James Yang
by Liz More/NY Time April 15, 2018

For the first time this Tuesday, the 70-member junior class of Chisholm High School in Enid, Okla., will sit for the SAT college entrance exam, but almost all the students will be clicking through Chromebooks instead of blackening bubbles with a No. 2 pencil.

One hundred fifteen miles east of Enid, the Tulsa, Okla., schools were also invited this year to administer an online version of the SAT, the exam that Tulsa’s 1,700 juniors must take. The district chose paper and pencil.

Like Chisholm, Tulsa already gives all its end-of-year tests online. But this is the first year that SAT scores must be reported to the state for Oklahoma’s school accountability report cards, and principals just did not want to risk an internet problem or power outage, explained Erin Lester, director of assessment. There are other challenges for this urban district, too, like how to give an online test to those likely to be in jail, juvenile detention or a mental health facility, a number that could range from dozens to more than 100 on testing day.

“Some of the jails don’t even allow computers with internet accessibility,” Ms. Lester said. “We wanted to be equitable.”

Long in the works, the digital transition by the two college testing companies is taking a few more cautious steps forward this year. But with 29 states, the District of Columbia and many of the largest cities giving the standardized exams to all juniors, the complexity of the task has never been greater.

Out in front is ACT Inc., which began digital testing in 2015 and will move all its international testing online this fall — a year later than planned. ACT offers the digital option to all 16 states and 1,100 districts that contract with it, said Edward Colby, a spokesman. But just 8 percent of roughly one million school-day tests given last year were digital.

“The challenges I often hear are about the entire state having enough laptops for every single junior and senior to take an assessment on the same day,” said Angie McAllister, ACT senior vice president for research. “ACT is responding to what our customers are asking us for, and today, they are still saying we want to do most of it on paper.”

ACT’s archrival, the College Board, are offering digital versions of the school-day SAT in Oklahoma and Ohio this month. Altogether, about 100 schools will take either the SAT or Preliminary SAT exams online, said Zach Goldberg, a spokesman. But it, too, has had stumbles and resistance.


“We will continue to work with educators to navigate the unique challenges of responsibly delivering digital assessments while safeguarding access and equity,” Jeremy Singer, the chief operating officer, said in a statement.

Digital testing offers the potential for lower cost, instant results and more accurate scoring. Eliminating test booklets and answer sheets provides greater security from test theft, a serious concern after major cheating scandals in the United States and abroad. An increasing share of professional, licensing and postgraduate exams are digital-only, including the GRE, MCAT and GMAT.

Digital literacy in schools was a core goal of the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, which mandated annual testing of schoolchildren grades three through eight and in high school to hold schools accountable. The Common Core academic standards, released in 2010 and accepted by most states, called for state accountability tests to be administered online.

But developing an online version of a high-stakes standardized test requires exhaustive studies of such factors as laptop scrolling speeds, screen loading of various equipment and fine-grained statistical comparisons of scores, Ms. McAllister said.

Test administration poses its own challenges. In South Carolina last year, the first statewide mandatory online ACT exam was marred by technical difficulties, forcing some schools to administer makeup tests and delaying some score reports. Mr. Colby blamed a nationwide outage beyond ACT’s control, but Ryan Brown, an Education Department spokesman, said the state encouraged districts to seek waivers for paper tests this year, and many did.

“Frankly, we don’t trust ACT’s capacity to test an entire state online,” he said.

ACT adapted by requiring a new test setup this year. The approach, known as proctor caching, is in place in suburban Edmond, Okla., where 1,692 juniors are taking the ACT online for the first time at three high schools and an alternative academy. Each school has a dedicated server that downloads and administers the test to individual students’ work stations, thus avoiding web-related problems.

“We have not had one phone call from a parent concerned or questioning,” said Angela Mills Grunewald, associate superintendent. “I think online testing is so much the norm that it’s not a concern.”

But Oklahoma City opted for the paper SAT this year, because the city does not yet have enough equipment and its older buildings are prone to power and network failures. The 2013 debut of Oklahoma’s online statewide testing is remembered as a debacle.

“Many students already experience anxiety while taking exams such as the SAT, and disruptions in testing may further increase this anxiety for students,” said Beth Harrison, chief communications officer for the Oklahoma City schools.

It’s not just students who are anxious, said Thomas Tucker, superintendent of the Princeton City School District in Cincinnati, which plans to give the SAT online on Tuesday.

“When you change from one mode of test administration to another, scores typically drop — we know that for a fact,” said Mr. Tucker, who serves on a College Board advisory panel. Adept as this generation is online, teenagers are most at ease using phones, not keyboards, he said. Though scores tend to rebound later, Mr. Tucker said many of his colleagues do not want even a temporary score drop on their watch. “They don’t want to bite the bullet,” he said.

Closer study has shown that scores drop only among students who do not use computers for everyday schoolwork, said Tracy Weeks, executive director of the State Educational Technology Directors Association.

The College Board and ACT emphasize the practice value of their online exams in earlier grades, as well as their free online test prep: The College Board promotes the score-boosting power of its partner Khan Academy, commonly used in school and after-school curriculums, while ACT this spring began its own ACT Academy online test prep.

Nevertheless, many students still feel more confident with pencil and paper. Bryce Kessler, a senior at Princeton High School, who hopes to study musical theater, said he took the online SAT at school last year but did better on the pencil-and paper Saturday ACT for which he had been practicing for years.

“It was kind of disorienting to me,” he said of the digital format. “I know a lot of people who did not finish or said they only got halfway.”

At least one test coach, ArborBridge, is urging its clients to avoid online tests if they have the option, saying too little is known about the testing setup and interface.

“No one wants to be a guinea pig,” said Megan Stubbendeck, ArborBridge’s senior director of instruction.

That prospect apparently does not faze the juniors in Enid.

“I personally am nervous,” said Kassidy Diel, junior class secretary, who is aiming for Oklahoma State University and a career in veterinary medicine. But she admitted that is just her mind-set about tests.

“Everybody has taken at least one big test online,” she said. “I think they know what to expect.”