The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is the College Board. They administer the SAT exam, the test most commonly used by College administrators for admission purposes. A college board official admits that some students received improperly high test scores. This is after earlier reports of the reverse, students getting lower results than they should have.

This is a complete debacle. Mistakes are going to happen, but The College Board out of embarassment or some other reason isn't being upfront with the extent of their mistakes. According to their executive director, neither the students or colleges will informed of the Board's mistakes. How outlandish and this has to change immediately for all recent SAT scores will come into question. Till then both The College Board and their test results have no credibility.

For screwing the youth of America, The College Board is today's Knucklehead of the day.

Hat tip- Betsy's Page
Open Post- Bright & Early, Basil's Blog, Cao's Blog, Adam's Blog, Don Surber, Jo's Cafe, TMH's Bacon Bits, Is it Just me?, Right Wing Nation, Point Five,

A top official with the College Board acknowledged yesterday that a processing error that left 4,000 students with lower SAT scores also left "a small" but undetermined number of students with higher scores than they had earned.

Jennifer Topiel, executive director of communications and public affairs at the College Board, which administers the college admissions test, said the actual scores of the students with mistakenly higher ones will not be changed, and students and colleges will not be notified of the discrepancy.

"We don't think it is fair for the students to be penalized for something that was no fault of their own," Topiel said. She did not say how many students were affected or by how many points the scores were incorrect. But, she said, in both cases the numbers were "small."

But some college admissions deans said they want to know about all scores and have asked the College Board to provide them.

"They didn't give us the scores . . . that dropped," said Jack Blackburn, admissions dean at the University of Virginia. "They only gave us the ones that went up. I'm begging them to give me those changes. That's not right. I'm dealing with kids who got in maybe because of a very strong SAT score, and if we are not offering a seat to some other kids whose real scores are higher, it's not fair."

The College Board, a New York nonprofit organization, alerted students and schools across the country this week that processing errors had failed to give credit on some questions to a small number of students, 0.8 percent of those who took the SAT Reasoning Test five months ago.

The organization said the score difference for most students was less than 100 points, but Brian Edwards, spokesman for the Montgomery County public schools, said the scores of many of the 30 students affected in that system increased by 100 to 130 points.

Topiel said it is unclear how the processing error occurred. Blackburn said that he could not remember whether such an error had ever occurred but that test results sometimes get lost.

Blackburn and other admissions directors said it is fortunate that the problem was discovered now -- before most admissions decisions have been mailed.

Zina Evans, spokesman for the University of Maryland's admissions office, said that the school was told 158 applicants out of 22,000 had SAT scores that had to be revised and that officials there were reviewing each one.

Evans said SAT scores are one of 24 variables considered for admission, so it is more likely the changed scores could affect decisions on merit scholarships. "There may be students, based on the new information, that may get bumped up" to receive more money, she said.

Mike Canfield, director of undergraduate admissions at Marymount University in Arlington, said the scores of eight applicants there were revised, but "the impact was minimal" in most cases because the applicants had submitted other SAT scores. A number of college deans said many students take the SAT several times, and admissions officers can see a pattern from the results, minimizing the importance of just one.

Ted O'Neill, admissions dean at the University of Chicago, said the mistakes in the SAT scores made no difference to any of his institution's 35 affected applicants because "scores don't really matter very much, and in most cases, not at all."

"We have a lot of information about the kids that we think is more important," he said.

Still, one official at a test preparation company said students they had surveyed were disturbed to hear about the mistake.

"Our students are very upset about this, even the students who aren't directly affected," said Jon Zeitlin, general manager for SAT and ACT programs for Kaplan Test Prep and Admissions, which is owned by The Washington Post Co. "It shakes their confidence in the exam. To truly understand the nature of the errors and how they've been addressed is truly critical."