The official newspaper of the Hackley student body NEWS
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Randi Kramer Named Editor-In-Chief
The launch of the Dial website
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The Dial staff has recently appointed junior Randi Kramer as Editor-in-Chief for the 2011-2012 school year. Randi’s current position is assistant managing editor. She has brought tremendous leadership and creativity to the Dial this year. She’s thrilled to have recieved this honor and is looking forward to filling John Rapisardi’s shoes next year.
The new Dial website consists of printed Dial articles and news, graphics and video clips never seen before. Even though the website isn’t yet fully completed, students can still access great information and articles that haven’t been in printed issues before. SEE PAGE 3
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an inside look at the College board and the SAT itself randi kramer - assistant managing editor A he correct answer is (e). To B be fair, psychometricians C aren’t the people who write D E the actual questions, but their impact on the SAT is both significant and largely unnoticed by the students who sit for some 1.5 million exam administrations each year.
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Dr. Wayne Camara is one of them. The Vice President for Research and Development at The College Board, he has around 75 psychometricians and educational psychologists working under him. Psychometricians devour the data from test administrations, regardless of what a particular exam is testing. “For example, I don’t know anything about accounting, but I do work on the Certified Public Accounting exam. I don’t know how to answer any of those questions, but I don’t even care what the questions say,” Dr. Camara said. “I just want to see the data.”
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sychometricians want to know how many people got D an answer right, how many E got it wrong, and who those people are. “Consider the people in your class,” Dr. Camara said. “Some are extremely bright, some not so bright. Let’s say we administer a test to every kid in eleventh grade at your A B
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[A]
students coming from a family income of $200,000 or more received scores around 100 points higher in each section than students coming from a family with an income of $20,000 or less.
[B]
school. [If] 95% of kids get an item wrong, that is not a hard item—that is a bad item.” In that case, there must be something wrong with the question itself. Similarly, if 95% of students get it right, then the question does not help differentiate and is therefore also a bad question. Psychometricians are the people who gather and interpret this data and who make sure the questions on a test really work. At his current position, Dr. Camara is “involved in the scientific, educational, public policy, media relations, and business aspects” of the large testing programs such as the Advanced Placement, PSAT/NMSQT, and SAT tests.
inside testing and the SAT itself
Testing dominates most teenagers’ lives. From assessments in school, the road test, medicinal tests, to the SAT or ACT itself, teenage testtakers support a system whose validity has been debated by teachers and psychologists alike. Hackley students have not missed that point. Junior Aja Faranda identifies a fundamental variability in student emotional response to high-stakes
asians who take the SAT perform highest: with an average of 1623 total points, whites have an average score of 1580
March 2011
Vol. 112, No. 5
SAT [C]
testing. “You can be book smart, but how you feel on the day of a test can completely alter your score,” she said. “Testing is unfair,” junior A.J. Wolf said. “You can be a good student and not get a good grade, but, unfortunately, it’s the only way to judge.”
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owever, Dr. Camara disagrees that emotional facC tors undermine a test’s D E purpose. “Tests engender significant emotional reactions from many individuals and groups, yet there is a strong research base that supports their validity, utility, reliability and fairness in education and psychology,” he said. A B
While studying psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, Dr. Camara became interested in the use of assessments to provide empirical evidence to support judgments. He focused on the individuality of testing to determine “exactly what a student does or doesn’t know.”
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he use of testing, Dr. Camara argues, provides an C objectivity that is informaD E tive to both students and colleges. “I’ve always been interested in what differentiates individuals,” he said. “It’s really about individual differences. What are the factors that A B
if the college board encounters a question correctly answered by many white students that is incorrectly answered by many black students with similar scores, they will throw out that question.
[D]
4 6 11 14 15
What do you call the men and women who created the SAT?
A. Evil geniuses B. Life-ruiners C. Brilliant D. Psychometricians E. All of the above we can understand to better prepare kids for their transition to college?” The SAT test itself, however, is much more than any of the one-onone individualized tests Dr. Camara had studied. A lot of effort goes into each math, writing, and reading question in order to ensure each is an accurate judge of aptitude.
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he writers of the math questions usually hold a C Ph.D. or a master’s degree D E in mathematics, statistics, or sometimes a scientific subject. Eight to ten staff members then review the completed question before it is even pre-tested. A B
The pre-testing system allows for questions themselves to be tested by students. One section, commonly known as the “experimental” or “pretest” section, is placed in each actual SAT. The section is not graded, but the psychometricians work with the data collected from those sections. The data determines the validity of the proposed questions and the equality of difficulty level between questions, to ensure each SAT test is not more or less difficult than another.
Dr. Camara cited recent trends that “students who take the ACT generally have lower grades and go to less prestigious schools.”
[E]
your ability to read critically and your problem solving skills will determine your success in college almost as much as your SAT score will.
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