Topic: Did You or Your Kid Take the SAT This Past Year?

[Dracho]

College Board Finds More SAT Score Errors

BOSTON (AP) - The College Board apologized to high school students and college admissions offices after acknowledging that more students received mistakenly low scores on the SAT exam, a mistake discovered just as many students await college admission decisions.

The board disclosed Wednesday that 27,000 of 495,000 college entrance tests taken in October were not fully re-scanned for errors after scoring problems surfaced. When they were, an additional 375 students were found to have incorrectly low marks.

"We couldn't be more sorry for the total stress this has caused students and admissions officers, and families," said Chiara Coletti, a spokeswoman for the College Board.

Coletti said admissions officers and school counselors were being notified Wednesday, and students would be notified by e-mail starting Thursday, in some cases by phone.

"Some students will ask us to intervene" with admissions offices, Coletti said. "We'll do everything we can."

The latest problems came to light following a request that Pearson Educational Measurement, which scores most of the exams, confirm all 495,000 October tests had been rescored, Coletti said. That request followed an earlier oversight in which, a week after saying all the exams had been rescored, the College Board said it found 1,600 more exams that had been set aside for various reasons and had been overlooked. Of those, 18 students got incorrectly low scores, the College Board said Wednesday.

On Sunday, Pearson told the College Board 27,000 of the 495,000 tests had not been "completely processed" and would be rescored immediately, Coletti said. She said she could not provide further details on how the tests had been missed.

Douglas Kubach, chief executive of Pearson, said in a news release that the company is "determined to take every possible necessary step to restore confidence in this process," but a Pearson spokesman said he could not comment further on how the mistake happened.

The announcement brings to 4,411 the number of students who received incorrectly low scores. It is the latest in a string of embarrassing revelations for the College Board, the nonprofit organization that owns the exam, which said after discovering the 1,600 exams last week that it believed there would be no more problems.

"This would be a comedy of errors if the impact on human lives were not so tragic," said Robert Schaeffer of the group FairTest, which opposes excessive standardized testing. "How many more missing forms are there lost in the system? How many other errors have not been reported?"

The latest disclosure shows the need for an independent investigation, he said.

"There's clearly something wrong with the management at the College Board and Pearson," Schaeffer said.

The College Board said that from now on all answer sheets would be scanned twice, among other new precautions, and that it would retain consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton to perform a comprehensive review within 90 days.

The initial discovery, disclosed to colleges beginning March 7, came as many schools were finalizing admissions decisions, prompting many to scramble to reconsider applicants whose scores were affected.

At least 600 students overall received incorrectly high scores on the exam, but those scores will not be lowered.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060323/D8GHBEUO0.html

[E_Look]

Pfaghh.  Back when I took it there were only two points possible on the test: pass, fail.

I know too many kids who do, oh, sooooo well on them, and really they've been coached, pushed, and practiced for it almost their whole life after elementary school.  Yet when they enter college, they have to compete with other kids who did as well, or almost a well, but actually were able to pull those stratospheric scores without all that extra help... and it often shows.

I think admissions people depend just a little too heavily on SATs and ACTs, etc.; but what can they do in the face of high school grade inflation and often, out and out padding by their teachers?

[Lieutenant_Q]

The whole Idea of standardized testing is going to screw us up even more than we already are.  I have friends in the education career, they have to devote so much time to "Teaching the Test" that it takes away from the actual learning.  Add to the fact that we're too concerned about hurting the feelings of the student by failing them, its rediculous, and we wonder how India, Japan and the Republic of Korea are outpacing us in the technology fields...

[E_Look]

I see college students up close.  Foreign students generally beat the pants off ours, gradewise.  What I see on the part of the American kids is that they don't understand the concept of hard work, thoroughness, quality work, substance (understanding) over appearance (grades, scores, wearing cool outfits to class), even if they have the requisite secondary level educational background to begin to compete.

It's partly our cultural attitudes as Americans, and this cuts often across ethnic lines; if a student's family, whatever his ethnicity, has been in America for two or more generations, generally, fuggedabouddit, chances are he's not an A student.

[Dracho]

But our adult students are awesome.  I think it's because we mature about 7 years later than our peers.  Probably, because our lives are somewhat cushioned (compared to theirs) and we are not forced into maturity and productivity as early.

[E_Look]

But our adult students are awesome.  I think it's because we mature about 7 years later than our peers.  Probably, because our lives are somewhat cushioned (compared to theirs) and we are not forced into maturity and productivity as early.

Depends.  Too many of them have forgotten the more basic material they need to grasp the information presented in courses they take due to length of time away from last course taken in college or simple age; they cannot... learn as fast... as a younger kid.

Best thing to do is really to make our high schools teach like they did about two generations ago, at least contentwise.  We really have to get back to teaching reading, 'rithmetic, and 'riting... and history, geometry, algebra, even calculus, along with chemistry, biology, and physics.  Dump all those STUPID new teaching methods and ideas that came about just because some lame Ed.D. needed a dissertation topic.  Yes, we will lose a few kids.  But like you guys here have been advocating for along time, we must reinstitute trade schools for those who want or need it.  Of course, well need manufacturing and industry again in our economy...

... see our problem?

Yeah, we oughta just give up, let them teach the way they are doing now, and let Europe and Asia swamp us out in the world market.  Yeah, that's it.

[Dracho]

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon risks running out of scientists to operate and upgrade the nation's arsenal of intercontinental nuclear and conventional missiles, according to a report released this week by the Defense Science Board.

As the nation's veteran engineers and scientists retire, the military will lose much of its expertise in long-range missile technology, the report says. That means the Air Force and Navy, which operate most of the 1960s-vintage missiles, will be unable to cope with system failures or develop improved weapons, the report says.

Not only are fewer American engineers and scientists choosing to work on missile technology, there are fewer of them altogether, the report says. Each year, about 70,000 Americans receive undergraduate and graduate science and engineering degrees that are defense related, compared with a combined 200,000 in China and India, the report says.

The government should pay higher salaries and offer other incentives to attract more experts into the strategic missile field, the report says.

A task force of five outside missile experts spent two years preparing the report at the Pentagon's request.

Although the board lacks the power to force the Pentagon to act, Lt. Gen. Frank Klotz, acting head of the Air Force Space Command, told a Senate committee this month that the Pentagon is trying to improve its recruiting and retention of missile experts. Space Command runs the intercontinental ballistic missile system.

The report does not give specifics on the number of experts who are retiring or the numbers needed to replace them, but it says about 20,000 research and development scientists and engineers work in the aerospace industry as a whole, down from more than 140,000 in the mid-1980s.

John Steinbruner, head of the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland, says few scientists want to work on long-range missiles because "it's not too hard to figure out that American security doesn't depend on this any more."

Instead, Steinbruner says, the Pentagon's priorities have shifted toward fighting terrorism and "low-intensity conflicts," such as the insurgency in Iraq.

The report, he says, sounds like the Pentagon advisory board is "just trying to keep the money flowing" and may be biased toward Cold War-era ballistic missile systems.

The report also questions a Pentagon plan to seek more than $500 million to replace nuclear warheads on some submarine-launched Trident ballistic missiles with conventional warheads. The Pentagon says those missiles could be used to strike fortified targets such as nuclear weapons facilities in rogue nations.

Converting the warheads on these missiles will be difficult, the report says, because the Pentagon lacks the necessary engineering skills. It adds that technical requirements for non-nuclear warheads are much different for long-range missiles from those for shorter-range missiles or nuclear weapons.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/2006-03-23-strategic-missile-threat_x.htm?csp=15

[Nemesis]

Schools teach facts.  They should be teaching how to learn. 

I've seen way to few who can go beyond the facts they were taught and solve the problems they should be able to handle.

[Just plain old Punisher]

Actually, there's alot about that test that has nothing to do with what the student knows. Did you know that each school is ranked based on average test scores for the entire student body and schools that are ranked lower tend to get "bonus points" on the SAT for each student who takes the SAT at that school. It's been a long time since I've taken the tests, and it wasn't a huge number, but still I thought it was kinda funny when I saw how the points broke down.

I think I scored a 1250 on the SAT.

[Tus-XC]

1180, the bare min to get into the academy.... some schools still look at your other credentials (else i wouldn't be here )

[Father Ted]

I took the SAT when I was a sophomore in high school. Got like a 1300. Took the ACT as a senior the day after homecoming with a hangover and about three hour of sleep. Scored a 27(that was the old test, BTW, not the new watered down one that gives you like 10 points just for spelling your name correctly in the little bubbles). Applied for the Naval Academy who told me that while I would probably be accepted just to fill a slot, they didn't think I would succeed academically. I pinned the letter to my dartboard and used it for practice. Meanwhile, West Point was practically begging me to apply. But being young and foolish, I joined the National Guard instead and went to our local college. Worst mistake I ever made, and I've made some doozies.

[Dracho]

My dad, through the Country Sheriff and Gov. Jim Hunt (whom he did a lot of campaign workfor), had a congressman who was willing to use one of his 2 annual appointments to sent me to West Point. 

I decided I'd rather enlist... because I WAS a moron.

[Alidar Jarok]

My statistics teacher tried to bring a real life example of probabilities of errors (or something like that, I can't remember exactly) by reading this article about mistakes in SAT grading.  Then he taught his lesson and, near the end, mentioned the article again.  One of the students spoke up about her test being one of the ones that had an error (I think her score improved by 20 points or so, not a lot).  Of course, she only mentioned it the second time he talked about the article because she wasn't listening the first time he said it.  She isn't the most academic of students