Other People Had Lower Test Scores, Too?!
Dylan took the SAT test in June, and was excited when the SAT scores arrived.
He had been happy with his first SAT score, which was a full 1,000 points above his best PSAT (practice) score. But he wanted to take it again in June, since the county offered a free voucher for any junior who wanted to take it.
He took the test and said, minutes afterward, “I feel pretty good about it. I think I did even better on the math section than last time.”
Notoriously, Dylan struggles with math – so this was good news. Unfortunately, he was not so happy when his scores came in. His English/reading test scores went up 20 points – but his math scores dropped fifty points, pulling down his overall score.
A few weeks later, I got an email from Dylan’s high school career counselor. It offered us a spot in an upcoming seminar – one that would “explain” how and why the June SAT scores were so disappointing.
WHAT?!? Other people had lower test scores, too?!
I didn’t need to wait for some seminar to find out – I wanted to know now! So I hopped on the internet.
Apparently, the SAT questions change with every test – and with the June test, the math questions were “easier” than the math questions on the prior test.
So they graded on a harder curve.
A whole bunch of kids with excellent math results got horrible math scores. One mom had this to say:
Another student was furious.
So I became furious, too. I signed a petition. I posted on Facebook. I fumed around the house. I shared everything I knew with Dylan, who read it with interest.
But … there’s nothing we can do to “fix” the problem. The scores are randomly generated – and also “curved” – by a corporate entity over which we have no control.
And Dylan’s scores are now stored by that same corporate entity, until we give them “permission” to release the scores to colleges.
Dylan’s fate rests in the hands of the admissions offices of those colleges, who may or may not have read the article on the Inside Higher Ed website. And they may or may not think his first score was just “lucky” and his second score was “real.”
I don’t take much stock in SAT scores anyway – but some colleges still do.
What a shame that, for Dylan, so much depends on the College Board. Of course, I emailed them. A week or so later, they responded with a very lengthy explanation of why they were right about a process they call “equating.”
“The equating process adjusts for the variation in difficulty between forms to ensure fairness for all students. And because of the difference between forms, you can’t directly compare the number of questions answered correctly.”
Their email was encrypted, eleven paragraphs long, and said virtually nothing. I think they drafted a form letter to respond to all of the angry parents, hoping that we would be too confused to write again. I wrote again anyway, with a new appreciation for the futility of my effort.
Shane will be taking the ACT, administered by a hopefully less frustrating organization. I only wish I’d thought of it sooner.
Thank you for this! It has been very frustrating. He is in the process of applying now, so we are hopefully going to use this information wisely!
How frustrating! I have been through this with two children already, and most colleges will super score, which means they will take the highest scores from English and Math even if they were taken on separate tests. You should probably submit all scores when he applies to colleges and they will see his best.