The College Board, the organization which administers and evaluates the Scholastic Aptitude Test, announced a new plan Wednesday to check for scoring accuracy in response to a recent error in which 4,411 tests were scored incorrectly from students who took the exam in October 2005.
As a result, the College Board announced a new plan to help eliminate scoring errors in the future and calls for Pearson Educational Measurement, the organization which scores the SAT, to scan each answer sheet twice, according to a Mar. 22 press release. The Board also outlined a plan to improve software to identify if humidity affected the markings on the answer sheet and will enlist the counsel of Booz Allen Hamilton, a global strategy and technology consulting firm, to provide recommendations to improve technology.
According to a Mar. 23 statement on the College Board website, the College Board released its third statement in two weeks that detailed its estimation of the miscalculated tests were wrong, explaining that 27,000 of the 495,000 October tests were not “fully evaluated” for errors, and after these tests were rescored, 375 more students than previously detected reported to having scores that were too low.
According to the statement, 1,600 October tests had not been rescanned to idenify scoring mistakes, and of those, 18 students recieved higher scores.
The College Board statement also said the maximum scoring error was not 400 points, as they originally suggested, but 450.
The 4,000 miscalculated exams represent 0.8 percent of the 500,000 students who took the newly reformatted test, which replaces the old 1,600-point scale with a 2,400-point version.
College Board officials released an appology in their statement, saying “Our goal is that students and their families never have to experience such inconvenience again and colleges never have to be caught in such a trying situation during the hectic admissions season.”
The College Board’s Executive Director of SAT Information Services Brian O’Reilly said the errors were due to a combination of excessive moisture on the examination papers and partially completed bubbles on the answer sheet which resulted in scanner failure.
“It was a mechanical problem. It should have been caught by the scanner, but it wasn’t,” he said. “We are working with [Pearson Educational Measurement] to prevent things like this from happening in the future.”
O’Reilly said the College Board will distribute refunds for both test registration and any score reporting fees to affected students.
While O’Reilly acknowledged at least a temporary blemish on the SAT’s reputation, he expressed hope that people would view the mistake in the proper perspective.
“The test has been [administered] for 80 years and this is the first scanning error we’ve had,” he said.
Once the errors were identified, the College Board sent lists indicating only the applicants whose original scores were reported too low to their respective schools via overnight mail, according to the College Board website. Individual students were notified first via email and allowed to view their revised score online before a paper report was also sent to the schools.
In light of the scoring errors, colleges have been forced to reevaluate certain affected applications that possibly cost students financial aid, honors programs or even a spot at the school, according to the Mar. 16 edition of The Johns Hopkins News-Letter.
Carol Rowlands, director of admissions at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania, said that all 48 applicants with miscalculated scores would have their applications reviewed again before any decision letters are sent to the prospective students.
“Any changes will likely not be significant unless the discrepancy between the erroneous and actual scores is large,” she said.
Rowlands said that the test provides a level playing field in which applicants can be evaluated equally.
“[The SAT] gives information that is consistent across the entire applicant pool,” Rowlands said. “We look at scores in relation to the academic opportunities of the applicant.”