Tuesday, April 18, 2006

It was only a matter of time

According to The Chronicle, the first lawsuit against The College Board for the scoring snafu that came to light last month has been filed.
The lawsuit, filed in early April in a state court in Minnesota, was brought on behalf of an unidentified high-school senior in Dix Hills, N.Y. The lawyers who brought the case are seeking class-action status to allow any student who took the test in October, except those who received falsely high scores, to join the lawsuit.
UVA was affected by the errors. A few of our applicants had scores that went up and the CB says they won't tell us if anyone had scores that went down after the error was found. The problem I have is that now, we can't give students our SAT stats without a big conversation about how they might be off a bit. It's bad enough that we have no history with this exam, now we're back at square one.

In a way, though, this problem is getting more people, both in admission and outside of it, to see things in a more realistic light. Application review as a holistic process, not one based on formulas and rubrics. If the SAT ceases to be reliable, maybe more educators will see it for what it is: a four hour, standardized test. Nothing more, nothing less.