Students will no longer have to travel to whichever school has an opening on a Saturday morning to take a college prep exam.
Starting this year, students will scrap the pencils and scantrons in favor of an SAT exam that’s entirely digital, and students will take the exam during the week at the school where they’re enrolled.
The changes are the first major shift in the SAT exam since 2016, when the exam nixed the writing section, and the 2400-point scale dropped to 1600.
With the SAT being offered during the school week, it will replace the ISTEP exam at the high school level for state accountability purposes. Students who score well enough on the exam will be able to use their score as a pathway to graduation, though the cutoff score likely won’t be determined until this summer, said Duke Lines, assistant principal at Whiteland Community High School.
“Students will be here in person but taking it on a Chromebook,” Lines said. “We’ve offered the SAT on Saturdays for our students or other people (and) students have gone to other schools to take the SAT. But now for the juniors, they are going to have the opportunity to take it during the school day. They will use the score for colleges, scholarships, and we’re also using it for school accountability for the state assessment.”
Schools can offer the exam on any day between Wednesday and Friday, though like other local schools, Whiteland is offering the exam on Wednesday, so students who are absent that day have two days after it to make it up. Students will spend about four and a half hours on the exam, which includes time for a practice section and breaks, with exceptions for students who have extended time accommodations, he said.
On exam day, freshmen will simultaneously take the PSAT exam, the precursor to the SAT, and sophomores and seniors will have an eLearning day, Lines said.
Greenwood Community High School will also administer the exam on Wednesday. Having the exam during the school day requires an all-hands-on-deck effort from educators, said Terry Terhune, superintendent.
“There is some work for administration to do previous to the test, such as setting up accommodations for students. This takes more time before the test is given,” Terhune said. “Administration must also have plenty of staff and teachers available to proctor the exam, which means we will have an eLearning day for grades not testing.”
At Indian Creek High School, juniors will take the exam Wednesday while freshman, sophomores and seniors will complete their work remotely. Schools are already used to administering exams via computer, such as the ILEARN and ISTEP, principal Luke Skobel said.
“You could say that the College Board is catching up to K-12 education in this respect. Students and teachers had been preparing for the last few years to take ILEARN and ISTEP online, so this is not a great change for them. Still, we have added to our teachers’ toolboxes to help prepare students for the SAT and its formatting,” Skobel said.
