As the SAT goes digital, this is how the Valley Stream Central District gets ready

Starting next spring, the familiar features of the SAT test-taking experience — filling out answer sheets, paging through booklets, and sharpening No. 2 pencils — are officially no more. The test, taken by thousands of students each year and still to a large extent holds enormous sway in the college admission process, will be administered fully online.

Valley Stream administrators see many upsides to the new digital-only format along with its fair share of obstacles. Students will continue to sit in for the test at school or a designated testing center, but rather than booklets, they will be offered the choice between using their own tablets or laptops or the schools’ devices.

Much, if not all, of the preliminary paperwork leading up to the test has been axed. Its content length has been trimmed down as well, shrinking from three hours to two. That means shorter reading passages and new perks like the option to use a calculator on the math section.

The Takeaway 

• Starting next spring, students will take the SAT on computers instead of using paper and pencils.
• The digital SAT is designed to be shorter and more straightforward, but schools are grappling with challenges including good internet access and technical problems with outside district devices 
• College admission methods are changing as the test adjusts to evolving evaluation methods in an effort to remain relevant.

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According to College Board officials, this leaner, digital-friendly model reflects the College Board’s efforts to make the test more accessible to the modern student. 

“The digital SAT will be easier to take, easier to give, and more relevant,” said Priscilla Rodriguez, vice president of College Readiness Assessments at College Board. “We’re not simply putting the SAT on a digital platform — we’re taking full advantage of what delivering an assessment digitally makes possible.”

While some school districts are in the throes of upgrading their digital infrastructure to have the needed bandwidth to support dozens of digital devices logging into and using the school’s network at one time, others, like the Valley Stream Central district, are far ahead of the curve.

“The concern is that when you have too much internet traffic on the school network, you’ll have glitches, it’ll run slower, you have internet problems,” noted Kelly Whitney-River, director of guidance at Valley Stream Central High School District.

“When we decided five years ago to do the one-to-one initiative, giving each student, almost all 5,000 of them, a computer device, we built in the extra infrastructure to handle all our students using the school district’s Wi-Fi on their device all day every day. So, we are not concerned regarding the traffic on the internet causing a problem.”

The district held the PSAT in the new testing format earlier this school year which Rivera said went off without a hitch. Come their school-day SAT, all students from the district will be using their in-house devices on the district’s Wi-Fi.

“That does not concern me,” noted Rivera. What is worrisome for Rivera is what happens during the district’s weekend SAT test date, which according to College Board regulation, by virtue of being held on the weekend, makes it an open testing site for district as well as non-district student test-takers.

The core of her concern revolves around technical complications that can arise with non-districts students bringing in outside devices. Complications that, at best, means making additional arrangements to help those students test that day. And at worst means turning them away.

“The devices must be able to download Bluebook, the College Board’s testing app, and they can’t take the test without doing the app’s digital readiness check,” which checks the student’s registration data and technical readiness as a safeguard, said Rivera.

“While we have a guest Wi-Fi for these students, if they show up on test day with a digital device that can’t download the app or won’t connect to the network, in strictly following the College Board’s protocols, they tell us we have a right to turn them away.”

The best guidelines on how to handle those unfortunate possibilities are still being discussed among regional and state educators, noted Rivera. While many school districts are eliminating weekend testing altogether, partly wanting to avoid dealing with these logistical headaches,“we want to give our students every possible opportunity to take the test to have them prepared for whatever college application scenario.”

With the fate of college-entrance exams up in the air, noted Rivera, the SAT has itself changed to adapt to the changing landscape of college admissions that is increasingly more willing to evaluate an applicant’s worthiness outside of standardized assessments with test-blind or test-optional policies.

But Rivera says the district urges students to take the test anyway, just in case.

“We don’t want a student to decide not to apply to the college of her choice because she thought the application policy was test-optional and then later find out it’s a requirement to get into that school,” Rivera said. “We’d rather afford our students with more opportunities to give them access to more college options rather than have barriers.”