Latest
SAT blunder tests credibility of College
Board
More news of incorrect scores
puts organization under scrutiny
Friday, March 24, 2006 • BY JUSTIN POPE •
Associated Press
Another revelation about scor ing errors
on last October's SAT exam has the College Board, the test's
owner, under heavy criticism even from admissions officers
-- a group that relies on the SAT and typically supports
it.
The SAT could also face legislative
scrutiny: A New York state lawmaker said yesterday he plans
to hold hearings about the scoring problem next
month.
With the academic world at the height of
admissions season, the College Board first disclosed a scor
ing problem with the October ver sion of the test on March
7. It then followed with two new wrinkles, including news
late Wednesday that 27,000 exams had not been re checked as
previously thought by Pearson Educational Measurement, the
College Board's scoring vendor.
Altogether, out of 495,000 tests, 4,411
students were given incor rectly low scores. One test was
off by as much as 450 points on the 2,400-point exam, though
the vast majority were off 100 points or less.
More than 600 students got in correctly
high scores, but those will not be changed.
New Jersey students will likely account
for a quarter of the incor rect scores, said a College Board
spokesman. A state-by-state breakdown of the overlooked
score sheets is not yet available, but it will probably
mirror the proportions shown in the original batch of
corrections. In those, New York and New Jersey were hard
hit, ac counting for more than half of the wrong
scores.
Some admissions officers are
exasperated.
At a time when high school grade
inflation makes it harder to differentiate between
candidates, many say the SAT is regarded as a valuable tool
-- even while they emphasize it is just one factor among
many. The big problem, some said, is how the problem was
handled.
"I think they botched it," said Jon
Boeckenstedt, associate vice president for enrollment
management at DePaul University in Chicago. "There's already
an over- hyped hysteria about the impor tance of the SAT in
the admissions process. For them not to recognize that, but
to take a nonchalant approach to the problems of the scores,
is troubling."
Bruce Poch, vice president and dean of
admissions at Pomona College in California, said "the issue
is going to be the credibility of the College Board and how
it's managed it."
A growing number of schools, including
Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania, do not
require the SAT. Dennis Trotter, the college's vice
president for enrollment and marketing and dean of admis
sion, said the latest errors call into question the test's
"relevancy and dependability in the admissions
process."
"Now it begins to fall into the area of
the integrity of the system," Trotter said.
In a telephone interview yesterday,
College Board President Gaston Caperton apologized for the
inconvenience the errors caused, but defended the decision
not to alert colleges of possible problems when they first
surfaced.
The College Board says the problems were
first identified after two hand-score requests, received in
December, were rescored in late January. It asked Pearson to
investigate in early February, but colleges were not
notified until March. Pearson later said it believed rain
and humidity might have caused answer sheets to expand and
be scanned incorrectly.
"Frankly, we would have created more
questions, we would have created more anxiety," by re
leasing information sooner, Caperton said. "We took the
month of February to fully examine all of the tests, to
check prior testing to be sure that we knew exactly what the
problem was."
From now on, all exams will be scanned
twice, among other new precautions, the College Board said
Wednesday. It has also hired a consulting firm to perform a
compre hensive 90-day review.
Of Pearson, Caperton said: "We don't
expect it to ever happen again, but we stand by their
work."
Meanwhile, New York state Sen. Kenneth
LaValle, the Republican chairman of the Senate Higher
Education Committee, called for hear ings on the matter.
Caperton said the New York City-based College Board has
"nothing to hide." More regulation could increase costs for
students, he added.
Founded by a handful of colleges in 1900,
the College Board is a membership organization whose
trustees are mostly high school and college administrators.
It oversees a variety of programs and research initiatives
to improve college ac cess.
But it is best known for the SAT and AP
exam programs, and as those have expanded in recent years,
the College Board has been criticized by some who work in ad
missions for excessive executive compensation and
contributing to student stress by pushing the SAT. Its most
recently available IRS 990 form, for the year ending last
June 30, shows revenues of $485 million, up 93 percent over
seven years.
David Smith, vice president for
enrollment management at Syracuse University, said the
contro versy has become a "straw man" for College Board
critics. He said the real lesson of the episode should be
that the test doesn't count as much as many fear; at
Syracuse, 166 scores were reported incorrectly, but not one
decision was changed as a result.
But others said the College Board will
have to rebuild trust.
"I feel like the other shoe keeps
dropping, and we've had three or four shoes drop now," said
Trotter, of Franklin & Marshall. "They need to
re-establish credibility. Every student that sits and takes
the SAT now is going to be worried about, is the scoring
going to be accurate?"
Star-Ledger staff writer Kathleen O'Brien contributed to
this report. She can be contacted at ko
brien@starledger.com.
© 2006 The Star-Ledger. Used by NJ.com with
permission.
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