Ready, Fire, Aim: New SAT Will Be Validated, Eventually
6th March 2014
Steve Sailer calls Bullshit!
Yesterday, David Coleman of the College Board announced a new SAT that will go into use in early 2016. Some of the ideas sound pretty good, some not so hot, but my big question is: Is Coleman just making this up as he goes along? Or have they actually tested these planned changes and found they work as hoped?
The usual practice with the SAT is to slip experimental questions into real SATs. The unvalidated new questions don’t count for the students’ scores, but ETS checks to make sure they aren’t worse than the old questions. I don’t see much evidence that this has been done with Coleman’s reforms yet.
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So, the College Board won’t be able to tell you whether a 500 on the new SAT is better or worse than a 500 on the old SAT until after hundreds of thousands of kids take the new one for real in April 2016.
Is Coleman just making this up as he goes along and is hoping the psychometricians can eventually come up with data to support his intuitions? My guess is that Coleman’s intuitions are less stupid than those of most figures in the education reform biz, but still …