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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I have spent a lot of time thinking about this. I have really bright students who score very high on standardized tests. They are smart and work very hard. I am sure in the future, they will have high SAT scores. However, I don't know if they will be as high as children from college educated parents due to life factors.

I am ok with admitting some students with slightly lower scores when considering these factors. That would include students of all races. I do not think tests should be eliminated. [b]My experience is that 95% of students score within the range of their abilities[/b].[/quote]

Abilities is one thing, but these tests measure the willingness to prep as much as they do abilities.  Some kids can hack it on their own (yours truly, way back when), but others do get a leg up via paid help.  I would love for colleges to start require to disclose any prep, paid and unpaid, received, with severe punishments for not being truthful.  And putting a firewall between them and college consultants - no private convos, public information only.  But they'll never do that because that's how those underpaid junior admission officers hope to make money in a few years.[/quote]

PP.  also, one can very easily design a multiple choice test for math that eliminates most educated guesses, rendering the strategies taught at prep classes useless.  I've taken these types of tests, it's much harder when you can't really guess.  I wish the SAT math would go that way.[/quote]

Are you referring to a guessing penalty? Earlier versions of the SAT penalized had a guessing penalty, but test prep was still effective.

A lot of the moms who's kids are good test tskers want the tests renormed around a much lower mean. Looks like the College Board et al have decided against that. (And if they do it, it won't be for the math section only.)[/quote]

No, I am referring to a different design.  On SATs (and most other standardized tests in US), there is the right answer and the wrong answers are the results of the common mistakes.   Very often you can deduce how they are trying to catch you, i.e. the stupid thing they did to get 3 of 5 answers, and even if you don't know how to get to the right one, you now have 50% chance of getting it right.  Prep teaches you to spot those stupid answers.  Another great one is the geometry problems where the figures are drawn to scale.  If you just measure with a ruler and scale it, you are likely to eliminate a few wrong answers as well, sometimes all 4 of them.

In an alternative design, all the answers are given as ranges, so you can only guess on the magnitude, if it helps (it may not).  E.g., the correct answer is 14, and the answers are given as a) less than 5, b) [5, 10), c) [10, 15), d) [15, 20), e) 20 or more.  You need to answer c).   But the ranges given for each question may or may not correspond to the true magnitude of the answer.  In the example above, you know that if you calculated it multiple times and you are still getting a 1014, you may be right, the answer doesn't have to be between 0 and 25.  Those ranges sometimes do capture the common mistakes, e.g. dividing by 100 instead of multiplying, but the bottom line, you don't get that many hints by just looking at the answers.

I went through a math exam system where the first few exams are done the SAT way and then there are a few with ranges.  There is a noticeable drop off in scores among very smart people once they encounter the ranges.  You can argue that educated guesses also allow you to demonstrate your knowledge, but when the prep courses spend lots of time on "strategy", it's better to use the range based answers to equalize the outcome for the non-prepped ones.[/quote]

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