Top 4 Guiding Principles for Digital SAT Suite Core Values

Four interconnected issues, out of the plethora of difficulties that have emerged or increased in prominence in the educational landscape recently, have played a particularly significant role in inspiring College Board to create and implement the Digital SAT Suite:

Persistent, widespread worries about how long American students spend taking exams.
Ongoing and escalating security threats.
Ongoing worries regarding the worth and cost of higher education.
The persistent underachievement of a large portion of students, particularly those from underserved populations, in achieving college and career readiness

The subsections that follow go over each of these issues in detail and show how the digital SAT Suite responds to them.

Digital SAT Suite Core Values

The launch of the digital SAT Suite is integral to College Board's larger mission to advance opportunity and access. To make the digital-suite exams easier to take, easier to give, more secure, and more relevant, the digital SAT Suite builds on the solid foundations of the paper-and-pencil SAT Suite.

In the subsections that follow, each of these guiding principles is discussed individually.

1. Easier To Take

The digital SAT Suite tests are simpler to take than their paper and pencil predecessors in a number of significant ways. Pre- and posttest activities as well as administrative time have been drastically cut, making test day a much more streamlined experience for everyone. The digital tests themselves are about an hour shorter.

Digital-suite test questions are focused and brief, making it easier for them to be delivered on digital devices while still maintaining the rigour of the paper-and-pencil SAT Suite tests.

All students are free to use a variety of tools, including a built-in graphing calculator and the ability to annotate and flag questions, on College Board's specially designed test delivery platform, which also provides a wide range of accommodations and supports for those students who need them to access the tests and their content. This is done in accordance with the universal design principles.

2. Easier To Present

The SAT Suite tests are also simpler to administer than ever before in their digital form. It's no longer necessary to ship, secure, unpack, distribute, gather, and repack test materials because doing so entailed operational and security risks. The tests themselves are easier to administer because there are fewer separately timed sections, and the test delivery platform, not the proctor, controls exam timing.

The College Board's Test Day Toolkit app makes it much simpler for proctors and test centre managers to complete the remaining test administration tasks. Given that the tests are significantly shorter, it will be simpler for schools to administer the digital SAT Suite exams during the school day and on their own schedule rather than the College Board's.

The Board is expanding test accessibility by introducing more test administrations and wider, more flexible school day testing windows as a result of the switch to digital testing.

3. Much Safer

In addition to being more secure than the paper-and-pencil tests they are replacing, the SAT Suite exams will be digital. As previously mentioned, the transition to digital has eliminated the handling of paper, which not only burdens test administrators but also poses security risks. Additionally, because only one test question is displayed at a time on the suite's specially designed test delivery platform, it is much harder for malicious users to secretly take pictures of or otherwise copy test materials. The digital SAT Suite assessments have been created and designed in such a way that each student is given a highly comparable but individual version of the test, and this is crucial.

This invention significantly reduces the value of students copying their test-taking classmates or searching the internet for leaked test materials.

4. More Important

Additionally, the digital SAT Suite tests are more applicable than ever to all students.

The paper-and-pencil versions of the SAT Suite mostly succeeded in College Board's long-standing efforts to reflect the broadest range of information, ideas, and perspectives in its test materials. The number of extended (multipara graph) passages used as the foundation for many test questions on the paper-based suite, however, severely constrained the selection of texts that could be used.

The quantity and variety of contexts used as the foundation for test questions have significantly increased with the introduction of digital tests. As a result, the tests have a lot more opportunities to reflect the diversity of people, experiences, and interests both here in the United States and abroad.

As early research by College Board on how students view the digital tests has suggested, this in turn greatly increases the likelihood that students will read passages on test day that they find personally meaningful and interesting. The end result, according to College Board, will be more motivated test-takers whose results accurately reflect their efforts.

What is evolving?

The College Board has taken advantage of the opportunity that the switch to digital testing presents to reconsider the SAT Suite assessments while maintaining their best features.

In order to better serve the needs of students, their families, educators, policymakers, and other stakeholders, it is important to improve what is tested and how it is tested.

Both the suite level and the two test sections that make up the suite's assessments reflect these changes.

At the suite level:

The digital SAT Suite assessments take about two hours instead of three, which is significantly less time than their paper and pencil predecessors.
The digital SAT Suite exams are more than ever measures of students' skills and knowledge, not test-taking speed. Test-takers have more time, on average, to answer each question.
As opposed to the previous paper-and-pencil SAT Suite, students and educators will receive their results much more quickly—in days as opposed to weeks.

Digital SAT Reading and writing are at the level of the test section.

Instead of having separate Reading, Writing, and Language Tests, the digital-suite assessments have a single Reading and Writing section. This change acknowledges the reciprocal, mutually reinforcing nature of reading and writing skills and knowledge while also improving the efficiency of English language arts/literacy assessment on the digital SAT Suite tests.

The passages in the reading and writing section are noticeably shorter and more numerous, giving students more and more varied opportunities to show what they know and are capable of doing as well as to come across knowledge, ideas, and perspectives that they find intriguing and pertinent. In terms of text complexity and academic discipline grounding, these shorter passages maintain the same level of rigour as longer reading passages.

Instead of having multiple questions associated with a few longer passages, as is the case in the paper-and-pencil SAT Suite tests, each passage (or pair of passages) is assigned a single (discrete) question.

Digital SAT Math

Calculators are permitted in the entire Math section. The separate timed no-calculator and calculator-allowed sections of the paper-and-pencil SAT Suite Math Tests have been replaced by a single Math section. The Math section can now more accurately depict how the calculator is used in classrooms and in the real world thanks to this change. Additionally, it simplifies test administration by getting rid of the separate timed and regulated test sections. On the day of the exam, students may continue using their authorized calculator or utilize the built-in graphing calculator.

The average word count for in-context questions (also known as "word problems") has decreased. The Math section still uses in-context questions to gauge how well students can use their mathematical knowledge and skills in both academic and practical contexts. However, College Board paid attention to feedback that suggested longer contexts could act as barriers, preventing some students, not just English language learners (ELs), from demonstrating their proficiency in fundamental math.

For further information about the Digital SAT Info please contact us at info@masterclassspace.com or visit Masterclass Space!