Gone are the days of filling in multiple-choice answer bubbles using freshly sharpened #2 pencils. Students across the United States will welcome the digital age as they take the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) online.
The College Board, which conducts SAT testing, states the exam evaluates students’ problem-solving abilities and measures literacy, numeracy and writing skills needed for college success.
The Sopris Sun recently spoke with Cammie Newmyer, RFSD director of data and assessment, about transitioning to the digital test-taking format.
Newmyer explained that the Bluebook testing platform is already downloaded on district-issued laptops. Students who want to take the SAT on their personal laptops must have the app downloaded before arriving for testing.
Students who have taken Advanced Placement (AP) examinations offered by the College Board have already used Bluebooks, a digital testing platform, Newmyer shared.
“Last fall, we took the PSAT [Preliminary SAT] National Merit student qualifying tests digitally and there was a bit of a learning curve. But the technology was able to handle it, and the students did well as far as interacting with the test,” Newmyer said.
“Basically, it’s the same environment as what they did for the written test,” she said. That includes trained proctors — certified RFSD teachers who have completed special training — monitoring the testing environment.
“Cell phones and tablets are prohibited during testing, except for students with medical needs, such as glucose monitoring,” Newmyer explained. Each student is assigned a unique ticket number and may only have pencils and district-provided scratch paper on their desk.
A few benefits of the digital test are:

• The digital SAT assessments are shorter, lasting 2 hours and 14 minutes compared to the previous 3-hour paper tests.
• Test-takers have more time per question, emphasizing skills over speed.
Scores will be available faster — within days.
• Additionally, digital score reports will provide information on local two-year colleges, workforce training programs and career options.
• Going digital enhances test security by providing each student with a unique test form, minimizing the risk of answer sharing.

The digital SAT uses a Multistage Adaptive Testing (MST) methodology, which tailors the difficulty of questions based on a test-taker’s performance. The test starts with questions of moderate difficulty to gauge the test-taker’s ability. Based on responses, subsequent questions adjust in difficulty with correct answers eliciting harder questions and incorrect answers prompting easier questions.
The final SAT score reflects the test-taker’s performance across all difficulty levels, allowing for a more precise evaluation of their ability compared to conventional tests.
Students with special needs will take an alternative assessment, Newmyer shared, or, for example, support for students with disabilities might include taking a break between testing sections or scheduling testing over two sessions.
“We will test our internet capacity because we will have other digital testing in the elementary schools at the same time as SAT testing,” she said. Tech support will be on-site at each school and the test platform will cache data should there be internet connectivity issues.
Newmyer underscored the importance of testing data in monitoring a student’s academic growth from year to year.
“We use growth and achievement data to see where our strengths are and help guide us to know where we need to work. It’s important to see how our programs are functioning. If we get good data from a broad spectrum of students, we get a better picture and can narrow that down. Once we get data, we can target. A good baseline is a great place to start,” Newmyer concluded.