Scoring Snafus

By Clayton Neuman

Already dreaded by high schoolers, the SAT won no new fans when it emerged in early March that 4,600 tests were scored incorrectly. A week later, an additional 1,600 tests were found to need rechecking. A guide to the debacle:

Who's to blame? The rain, apparently. The morning of the October 2005 testing was so wet that the answer sheets expanded, which meant they misaligned with the scoring scanners. Because the whole process is mechanized, nobody noticed until late December, when two students asked to have their tests rescored by hand (for a fee), which took about a month. Those misscored tests led to the rechecking of the entire year's tests--which was not finished until early March.

How serious is the problem? Tiny. The 4,600 affected tests were 0.8% of the 495,000 taken that day. Only 16 tests were underscored 200 points or more; 95% of the scores were 10 to 90 points too low. Those will be fixed, but the 600 scores that were too high won't be adjusted. "The SAT has been around since 1926," notes the College Board's Chiara Coletti. "In that time there hasn't ever been an error of this kind."

And the 1,600 other tests? Every time the SAT is given, some score sheets need a second look--to investigate irregularities like possible cheating. That's why those 1,600 tests were set aside before rechecking began. They resurfaced last week. Those results will be ready this week.

Are the problems fixed? The contractor that scores the tests is working on technical solutions. Critics carp that the system still has no real safeguards, but the College Board says hand scoring is an adequate control. It is requested by someone from nearly every sitting, giving ample opportunity to catch glitches.