WHOLE NEW BALL GAME

It may seem a little late, given how we’ve adapted to online technology the past few decades, but over the past two weeks every high school junior in Illinois was required to take the Pre-SAT (PSAT) digitally. This is the first time the digital test is being administered statewide, the print PSAT (except for those special accommodations) having been discontinued, and it poses challenges and benefits for both students and schools.

“Digital administration requires a significant effort by schools—charged, approved devices, updated browsers, adequate Wi-Fi, dedicated testing space, etc.,” says Matthew Pietrafetta, CEO of Academic Approach. “We’ve been helping schools prepare for these changes with our own suite of digital SATs, which enable school officials to practice the test administration, help students acclimate to the new test form, and provide performance data for teachers.”

By working with schools ahead of test day, their assessment coordinators are able to trouble-shoot the logistical requirements of the digital tests, so they can avoid surprises. There’s a lot of pressure on schools to make it all work. In addition, the training offered for administrators has been inconsistent.

“This could potentially be a splash of cold water, as large-scale rollouts like this tend to invariably include some false starts. It’s a high stakes moment, and for students this is the test that National Merit Scholarship is measured by,” he explains. “By the time this goes to press there will surely have been plenty of reporting and discussion about how it went—or didn’t—at numerous schools. The College Board will surely offer make-up testing dates, so students will ultimately have a chance to test, but it will likely be a stressful experience for some.”

Despite any initial rollout difficulties, students should ultimately benefit from the SAT and PSAT’s new digital formats, since so many students are highly proficient in the use of digital technology.

“By and large, especially because of pandemic remote learning, students have adapted to online presentations of curriculum and assessments,” Pietrafetta says. “However, students vary; some have developed learning strategies (such as pencil-and-paper annotations and highlighter use) so rooted in paper that they strongly prefer the ACT, which is still administered in print. Some students need the visual, graphic-motor experience of pencil and paper to learn best.

The College Board, which administers the PSAT, has taken several precautions for what could be glitches in the system. If a student loses internet access, their answers are saved. If they regain access later, the student can pick up right where they left off.

The switch to a digital testing format removes many of the cumbersome tasks involved with administering the PSAT in print. There’s no dealing with shipments of the test, doing the prep work of preparing the test to be taken (all tests required a label to be affixed), and then shipping the print tests back. It was a time-consuming process. Students taking the digital PSAT will now receive their results much faster (early November as opposed to middle of December).

“Digital testing is the future. It’s the way the graduate tests have all gone, and it is a much more efficient model that opens the possibility for testing under a lot of different circumstances,” he says. “It could even be administered off site at some point in the future, so that schools wouldn’t even have to devote classroom space to it.”

Pietrafetta founded Academic Approach in 2001, so he and his team have more than two decades in the test preparation and tutoring field. Given that experience, he has some words of wisdom for parents as they help their kids deal with these changes by the College Board. One of the big decisions kids have to make, if they are taking standardized tests, is whether to take the SAT or the ACT.

“This is not your grandma’s SAT anymore. Even though we have always encouraged students to take both a practice ACT and a practice SAT for comparison, it is more important than ever because it is difficult to predict—without experiencing them—which test a student finds more favorable,” says Pietrafetta. “You could predict previously often based on the student’s curriculum and test-taking history, but now the modalities of testing are so different and the changes to the SAT are so profound.”

The difference between the two tests isn’t just that one is digital, and one is paper. The ACT is linear, while the SAT is adaptive, meaning each of the sections of the test (Reading and Writing; Math) are divided into two modules with each module having the same timing and number of questions. While The difficulty of the second module will be determined by the student’s performance on the first module, scoring is the same (400 to 1600) and the SAT now has a trimmed down 98 questions while the ACT remains at 215.

Pietrafetta says that students who work at a faster pace may be more comfortable with the ACT, especially if they are adept at science (the ACT has a separate science section while the SAT does not). Students who work at a slower pace and are comfortable reading passages (significantly shorter than ACT passages) on a computer screen will prefer the SAT. The ACT will soon offer a digital format, but students will maintain the option to take the test on paper for the foreseeable future.

“The new, digital SAT offers an efficient model for administering assessments at large scale,” Pietrafetta says. “That’s the way the industry should go. Save trees, save time, save administrative labor, and yield actionable results faster.”

For more information about Academic Approach, call 888-571-3993 or visit academicapproach.com.