Changes to
Admission Testing
Jed Applerouth
Nationally Certified Counselor
PhD Educational Psychology
The two tests were initially created to
measure different things
Aptitude
Achievement
SAT Origins (IQ tests)
Carl Brigham
1920s updated Army Alpha Tests
1923 wrote A Study of American Intelligence
1926 converted Army Alpha into Standard Aptitude Test,
under the auspices of the College Board, administered test
to 8,040 high school students
1934 Harvard uses SAT to select scholarship recipients
Henry Chauncey
1930 Assistant Dean at Harvard
1934 uses SAT to select scholarship recipients
1943 contracts to administer SAT (Army-Navy
Qualification Test) to 316,000 high school seniors
1945 Becomes first President of Education Testing
Service, ETS
1970 Retires, SAT given to 1.4 million students annually
SAT had its foundations in :
abstract intelligence and aptitude testing
ACT Origins (Iowa tests)
Everett Franklin Lindquist (1901–
1978)
Psychology professor, educational
researcher at the University of Iowa
1929 Created tests which became the
Iowa Tests of Basic Skills
1959 Created the ACT (American College
Testing) in Iowa City, Iowa
ACT had its foundations in:
Iowa standardized public school
achievement testing
The ACT is taking over
1,900,000
2005 1,475,623 1,186,251
289,372
1,800,000
2006 1,465,744 1,206,455
259,289
1,700,000
2007 1,494,531 1,300,599
193,932
1,600,000
2008 1,518,859 1,421,941
96,918
1,500,000
2009 1,530,128 1,480,469
49,659
1,400,000
2010 1,597,329 1,568,835
28,494
1,300,000
2011 1,647,123 1,623,112
24,011
1,200,000
2012 1,664,479 1,666,209
-1,730
1,100,000
2013 1,660,047 1,799,243
-139,196
1,000,000
2014 1,670,000* 1,845,787
-175,787
ACT
SAT
ACT
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
Gap
SAT
College Board’s School day testing initiative is preventing a
more precipitous decline
Why has the ACT dominated?
•
•
•
•
•
Successful marketing!
Focus on achievement versus aptitude
The Battle for Common Core alignment
Statewide contracts
ACT perceived as multi-purpose test,
used to measure school performance
Common Core State Standards Initiative
ACT has leveraged its superior Common Core alignment
to win state-wide contracts across the country. Districts
and states are using the ACT as an End of Course Test.
Explore Plan ACT
pathway
College Board State-wide contracts
Pop: 1,634,464
Pop: 1,330,089
Small potatoes!
College Board has been largely
unsuccessful selling its product statewide
Pop: 935,614
College Board State-wide contracts
Pop: 1,634,464
Pop: 1,330,089
Pop: 935,614
Pop: 9,909,877
CB did just win Michigan because of a
bidding error on the part of ACT Inc.,
First
Big Win
in
Years!
ACT State-Wide Contracts
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
2001: *Illinois and Colorado
2007: Kentucky, Michigan and Wyoming
2009: North Dakota and Tennessee
2012: North Carolina
2013: Hawaii, Louisiana and Montana
2014: Alabama and Utah
2015: Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada
and Wisconsin.
*2015 Illinois is shifting ACT funding towards the PARCC
Common Core assessments- getting the attention of ACT Inc.!
Common Core State Standards Initiative
• The writing is on the wall: align with the CCSSI or get out of
the game
• Current ACT is better aligned with Common Core
Standards, leading to broader adoption
• Testing Consortia, PARCC & Smarter Balanced, funded by
DOE using Race to the Top money, was tasked with
developing CCSSI-aligned assessments: an existential
threat to the SAT and ACT
Common Core is smaller, but still
highly significant
22
15 states
25
22 states
Common Core still central, though
under attack
• 43 US states currently use the Common Core
standards
• 12 states are witnessing political attacks on
the Common Core
• Indiana, Missouri, Oklahoma and South
Carolina repealed the Common Core in 2014
South Carolina case study
• Repealed the Common Core and withdrew from
Smarter Balanced testing
• Decided to follow its own standards and make its
own assessments (GA followed suit)
• Granted the $58.4 million (5-year) contract to assess
grades 3-8 to the ACT Inc.!
For these testing behemoths, college
assessment is only the tip of the
iceberg.
SAT/ACT
K-12
The real game is the K-12 assessment piece
College Board witnessed the new
order and knew it had to change
Relevance
SAT’s slow and steady march from
Aptitude to Achievement
Drop
Antonyms
Army Alpha
Pure IQ
Add studentresponse and
harder math
First
SAT
1918
1926
Loaded with
vocabulary
and abstract
reasoning
…
1994
Drop
analogies and
quantitative
comparisons
Add writing
2005
Major shift
towards
achievement
Drop
Sentence
Completions
Harder Math
Grammar in Context
Science Graphs
Evidence-based essay
2016
All Common Core
All the Way
The Great SAT Overhaul
The SAT nixed the guessing penalty
Bring on the Random Guess! No more worries about
that pesky quarter point.
And welcomed Science!
The new SAT will
incorporate tables,
charts, and graphs.
SAT takers will need to
find correlations, plot
points, and manipulate
data as on the ACT.
SAT will incorporate the science items throughout both
the verbal and the math sections.
Put grammar in context
To conform with the Common Core standards,
like the ACT, the SAT is placing all of its writing
items in the context of paragraphs
The passages on the new SAT Writing will be harder
level passages than those found on the ACT.
Made a Common Core math test
emphasizing conceptual understanding
• Less of a focus on heuristics and speed
• Algebra will be the king of the redesigned SAT
Math section.
• Geometry will be taking a major backseat: going
from a whopping 40% of questions on the current
SAT to a mere 10% on the redesigned test.
• Will incorporate most every math topic currently
tested by the ACT and not the SAT (from
trigonometry and radians to equations of a circle
and congruence theorems)
• Integrates numerous multi-step problems with
intensive reading requirements
Took away the calculator on one math
section
The calculator free math
section stresses math
fluency and theoretical
understanding. These
questions are quite
challenging.
Students will need to learn more math fundamentals and
learn how to read and perceive problems differently. The
ability to interpret trumps the ability to solve.
Added many concepts from Math 1
and Math 2 subject tests
• Math 1: trigonometry, complex numbers,
irrational numbers, advanced geometry
• Math 2: inverse functions, radians, more
trigonometry (secant, cosecant, cotangent,
and laws of sines & cosines), more coordinate
geometry and functions
Effectively catching up to the ACT in terms of
content difficulty, and surpassing it in many areas
Demonstrating how new problems
require a deeper understanding of math
OLD
NEW
How long after the second car leaves will it
catch up to the first car?
A) 17 minutes
B) 30 minutes
Which of the follow mathematical
equations represents the scenario
described?
A) 3x + 4y – 19 = 230
B) 4x + 3y – 19 = 180
Made Reading look more like the ACT,
but increased the difficulty level
• Like the ACT, the SAT Reading section will consist
of passages from the domains of Science,
Literature, and Humanities/Social Studies.
• SAT will also add ACT Science-style charts, graphs,
and figures into the science passages.
• Textual complexity is way up!
• The level of difficulty on the science and prose
passages is similar to that found on the SAT
Literature test, demanding a higher degree of
fluency than ever before.
Doubled the timing of the essay, put it
at the end, and made it much more
analytical and challenging
“Your essay should not explain whether you
agree with [the author’s] claims, but rather
explain how [the author] builds an argument to
persuade his audience.”
The new essay is an improvement.
New scoring rubric grants a max of
4 points for reading, 4 points for
analysis, 4 points for writing.
Invoked the “Great Global
Conversation”
If the December preview questions are an
accurate indication of what’s to come, questions
drawn from the “Global Conversation” will
punish students who lack context into our
history and political process.
Allowed more time per question, but
many students will need it for the
harder question types
Seconds Per Question
Section
ACT
Current SAT
New SAT
Grammar
36.0
42.9
47.7
Reading
52.5
62.7
75.0
Math
60.0
52.5
77.8
-
84.2
Science
Even considering the more difficult items on the New SAT, the
extra time will help students with slower processing speeds,
Took the ACT approach and reduced
the number of sections
Current SAT
New SAT
Essay
Math
Reading
Critical
Reading
Critical
Reading
Writing and Language
Math
Math
Calculator Optional Math
Writing
Critical
Reading
No Calculator Math
Experimental
Section
Writing
Optional Essay
But essentially maintained the current
timing of the SAT, including the essay
Current SAT
New SAT
ACT
Essay
Math
Reading
Reading
Reading
Reading
Writing
Writing
3:00
Math
Math
Writing
Reading
Exp.
Writing
No Calculator Math
:50
Testing
Time
Math
2:55
3:45
Optional Essay
3:50
+5
Math
Science
:30*
Optional Essay
3:25*
Subject to change
Dropped the Experimental Section in favor
of intermixed experimental items
CB announced that some students who opt out
of the essay may receive an SAT with 5 sections,
with experimental items sprinkled in among all
the official “operating” items.
A sea of
Operating
Items
The occasional
Experimental Item
Returns to the 1600 Scale with
subscores
Current SAT
subscores
New SAT
Reading
Writing
800
Reading
800
“Verbal”
800
Science
800
2400
Writing
Math
“Quantitative”
Math
800
1600
Subscores will be meaningful for colleges and programs
looking for students with particular skill sets
For context: let’s review some sample
Items provided on the College Board
Web Site
Math
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sample-questions/math/calculator-not-permitted/1
Reading
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sample-questions/reading/1
New
PSAT!
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/psat_nmsqt_practice_test_1.pdf
PSAT Caveat
Tuesday 3/24/2015 the CB released the new
PSAT, which appears to be significantly less
difficult than the December SAT problem set.
This leads us to one of two conclusions:
1) CB realized the December content was too
hard and is retrenching to a lower level of
difficulty
2) The SAT will be significantly harder than the
PSAT
In May, once the first SAT is released, we will get a much
better sense of the difficulty level of the new SAT.
The New SAT appears to be the hardest
SAT in recent memory, significantly
more challenging than the ACT
• With elevated levels of reading and math
difficulty, the new SAT may provide quite a
challenge for many students.
• We predict many sophomores will stick with
the current SAT, completing testing by January
2016, or migrating to the ACT.
Coleman’s Long Game
• This bold move by the College Board pays off
if and only if colleges perceive the SAT as a
more predictive assessment, or high schools
perceive it as a yardstick for their students’
academic performance.
• The SAT will likely lose many students in its
inaugural year.
• Coleman is not afraid of rolling the dice!
Which students will do well on the
New SAT?
Students who excel at critical thinking, advanced
math, reading and comprehending advanced
texts should do very well on the new SAT as well
as the current SAT and ACT.
Your top students may be very successful on the new SAT
The ACT is also shifting, albeit more
subtly
•
•
•
•
•
Essay Changes
Extra Scores/Reporting
Digital Assessments
Reading Changes
Optional Constructed
Response subject tests
ACT is getting itself more Common-Core aligned,
gradually and without fanfare
ACT has historically responded to
changes from the SAT
With College Board adding Writing in March
2005, the ACT added its own optional essay in
February 2005
ACT Reading has been changing
gradually since October 2013
New ACT reading sections have compare and
contrast dual passages! Taking a note directly
from the SAT playbook
How is Author 1’s tone distinct from that of Author 2?
Objective
Detachment
Author 1
Irony
VS
Author 2
Responding to the harder SAT essay,
the ACT essay is changing
• will evaluate 4 areas: ideas and analysis, development
and support, organization, and language use.
• It might be longer than 30 minutes
• Students will be provided several perspectives and
asked to create their own analysis of a complex issue
Old Essay
New Essay
Should students who have C
averages in high school be
allowed to get driving permits?
Progressive
Author 1
Vs.
Conservative
Author 2
ACT math composition is shifting
Pre-algebra: 14 items (23%)
Elementary algebra: 10 items (17%)
Intermediate algebra: 9 items (15%)
Planar geometry: 14 items (23%)
Coordinate geometry: 9 items (15%)
Elementary Trigonometry: 4 items (6.7%)
More advanced math is coming to the ACT as a direct
response to the harder SAT math
Lock ‘em in early! The new battleground
• ACT Aspire product (replacing the EXPLORE
and PLAN) for grades 3-10
• New College Board assessments for grades 612 in development
Both shops targeting Common Core Assessments and
End of Course Tests
As the SAT changes, the PSAT likewise
changes
PSAT structural changes
2014 PSAT
Time
(m)
Reading
2015 PSAT
Questions
Seconds/
question
Time
(m)
Questions
Seconds/
question
50
48
63
60
47
77
Writing
30
39
46
35
44
48
Math
50
38
79
70
47
89
Total
130
125
62
165
138
72
+ 35 min
+ 16%
New test is 15 minutes shorter than a full New
SAT, without the essay. Students will have more
time per question, though they may need it
PSAT/NMSQT scoring changes
2014 PSAT
Min
Max
Reading
20
80
Writing
20
80
Math
20
Total
600
2015 PSAT
Min
Max
160
760
80
160
760
2400
320
1520
New scoring will be a little confusing at first- similar to
the PLAN 32 to ACT 36 scoring.
And in 2016, PSATs for the young’uns
Section Section Test
Min
Max
Total
PSAT/NMSQT
160
760
1520
PSAT 10
160
760
1520
PSAT 9
120
720
1440
PSAT 8
120
720
1440
Same structure
Same structure
“Vertical scaling” allows scores to build towards the 1600 as
new skills are added, potentially facilitating tracking/growth
CB has plans to build assessments down to grade 6, and
likely younger, in a play for Common Core assessment
dominance. Expect a name change away from SAT/PSAT
National Merit- PSAT
• Students who did well on the 2014 “old” PSAT
have a good chance of doing well on the 2015
“new” PSAT.
• Students will need to specifically prepare for the
new PSAT if they are shooting for National Merit
awards.
• A current SAT will confirm a score for National
Merit from the 2015 PSAT/NMSQT, i.e., a current
sophomore will not need to take the new SAT to
attain National Merit
More PSAT news
• PSAT scores may be delayed from December
2015 to January 2016. They’ll arrive with
new-to-old PSAT concordance tables
• For 2015, schools can administer the SAT on
the recommended October 14th or the
alternate October 28th date.
• 2016 and beyond, optional Spring PSATs will
be available to schools
Practice Materials and Scoring the
New SAT
College Board keeps
kicking the can further
down the line
New SAT
delayed by a
full year
(U.C. system
timing
demands
too tough!)
Dec
2013
SAT practice
tests promised
and delayed:
we did get
some practice
items
Dec
2014
SAT practice
tests promised
and delayed;
New PSAT
arrived 3-24
4 SAT
practice tests
promised;
we will now
get 1 through
Khan
March
2015
May
2015
4 SAT practice
tests promised,
though
without
accurate
scoring
June
2015
Without calibrated, accurate materials, it’s hard
to help students prepare and predict likely scores
College Board is struggling to meet its
own deadlines
• 2 weeks ago, the CB announced it would
deliver 4 practice tests in May.
• Yesterday, we spoke to a CB rep who told us
the CB had downgraded that to a single test
available in May.
• The College Board book should arrive at the
end of June, with 4 non-scaled tests (without
conversion tables)
Announced New SAT Practice
• March 19 CB PSAT (no scoring scales till June-July)
• May: 1 CB-written, unscaled practice test arriving
online via khan Academy (initially promised 4!)
• Summer- 4 CB tests will be bound and printed in
the Official SAT Study Guide,
• 4 Khan Academy SAT practice tests to be released
as printable PDFs, individually, at spaced intervals
via Khan. Upload by cell phone photo to grade!
Without scaled scores until mid-summer, it will be
hard to predict performance or calibrate scores
Scoring practice tests
• College Board will use the May practice test on
Khan’s site to try to simulate conversion tables.
• Once College Board releases scoring scales in
June or July, students will be able to convert raw
scores to scaled scores on Khan’s site.
• New SAT will not be normed or fully standardized
until the March 2016 test, the test against which
future tests will be compared and equated.
• Until the New SAT is normed, all scores are
speculative. CB hopes the estimated scales will
closely align with standardized scales.
Without scaled scores, it will be very
tough to compare SAT and ACT scores
• Students will have to wait until June/July to know
how they are doing on the redesigned SAT
• Accurate comparisons between the SAT and ACT
will be impossible until scaled scores are
released, making it harder to counsel students to
go towards the new SAT.
• You may be able to miss 3 items to get a 720 on
the new SAT, or 9 items. We have no idea until a
tentative scale is published.
Expect a very different curve on the
New SAT
The new SAT, as we understand it, will be a
significantly more challenging SAT. Students will
miss more items.
If this test is as hard as the released practice
problems suggest it will be, the curve will be
substantially different from that of the current SAT
College Board is intentionally delaying the March
and possibly May 2016 SAT score returns. CB
psychometricians will use May scores to help
validate the new scoring scale from the March
norming group.
validate
the curve
Establish the
curve, raw to
scaled scores
March
2016
May
2016
Release
the results
Late
May/June
2016
Concordance tables
• PSAT concordance tables arriving December 2015 or
January 2016
• SAT tables- comparing Old versus New- arriving next
summer, May or June 2016
• Derived SAT versus ACT tables will arrive in May or
June 2016. CB announced, “the concordance to ACT
will be derived by matching the redesigned SAT to the
current SAT, and then the current SAT to the ACT using
validated concordance tables.” True SAT-ACT
concordance, from a common pool of students, likely
to arrive in 2017-2018.
The Khan Alliance
• Khan academy will have CB-endorsed practice
material.
• Khan’s site will be in beta in May, and will offer
expanded functionality in October.
• Khan will offer diagnostic baseline tests to generate
personalized practice.
• Khan will eventually link to students’ College Board
accounts to upload PSAT results and eventually SAT
results to create personalized study materials.
Digitization of testing changes the
nature of assessment
• ACT enters digital world
2015, SAT in 2016.
• Adaptive testing. Rich
virtual environments.
(GMAT-integrated
reasoning. GRE)
• PARCC digital tests
• Future of testing moves
beyond multiple choice
New assessments will be adaptive, dynamic, allow
students to display knowledge in new ways
Timeline for SAT-ACT changes
Practice
PSAT
released
March
2015
Digital ACT
and
ACT
changes
Spring/
Fall 2015
New PSAT
for Class
of 2017
and 2018
October
2015
Old SATs
Oct, Nov,
Dec 2015
Final
Old SAT
January
2016
Class of 2017 (rising sophomores) will
straddle the old and new SAT. Many
will take practice exams to determine
their optimal test.
New SAT!
(delayed score
return)
First digital
SAT
March
2016
Students don’t need to take both tests,
though more students are hedging
their bets
2014: over 30% of Princeton applicants
submitted both SAT and ACT, as did roughly 25%
of applicants to Harvard, UVA, and UCLA.
SAT
ACT
It’s more efficient and cost-effective to select one test and
focus all the energies in that direction. Baseline test scores
help determine the optimal test.
How might these changes affect high
schools?
• High schools interested in their students
attaining high SAT scores will need to adapt to
the new Common Core curriculum
• Private schools may need to supplement their
content to get their kids New-SAT ready
• Certain student populations may be
intimidated by the harder content on the new
SAT
How will colleges perceive the new SAT
compared to the old?
• The vast majority of feedback we have received from
colleges pertaining to the new test has been positive.
• No college, to our knowledge, has come out and stated
they will not accept the current SAT for the class of
2017, despite many rumors to the contrary.
• Changes to SAT subject test policies TBA.
• The new SAT may correlate more closely with freshman
and 4-year GPA, as it appears to be a superior measure
of college preparedness. Colleges will have early data
by Summer of 2018.
Sophomore Class
• Must determine whether to take current SAT,
New SAT, or ACT using baseline practice tests.
• A seamless transition between the old and new
SAT is unlikely- these are different kinds of tests
that will require different preparation. Most
students will benefit from choosing a test.
• If you choose the current SAT, you will need to
complete testing by January of Junior year, which
will accelerate the testing timeline.
• If you choose the new SAT, you can start prepping
in late fall/winter
• If you choose the ACT, typical timelines apply
The ideal time to prep
Testing typically lives in Junior year, but in this
year of transition, some sophomores may take
an SAT in May or June
ACT
SAT
SAT + ACT
J U N I O R
Oct
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Jan
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Mar
Apr
May
Jun
Sep
Oct
Nov
APs
PSAT
Good first/
2nd test
Good 2nd /3rd
test
SAT
Subject
Tests
Final Test if
needed
ED/EA
apps
Dec
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