No August or October SAT? Testing and schooling disruptions may extend through this fall

As I noted earlier this week, educational institutions are starting to contemplate and plan for the possibility that they will not be able to reopen for in-person classes this fall.

The College Board, which administers the PSAT, SAT, SAT Subject Tests, and AP Exams, is now openly acknowledging that possibility (emphasis mine):

We’re committed to being flexible and innovative to give all students opportunities to test as soon as the situation allows. We’ll share more details as soon as possible, but right now we can tell you the following:

• Currently, the next SAT is scheduled for the first weekend of June. We’re working with test centers and we’ll decide whether we can safely hold [the June 6th] administration as soon as it’s feasible, given the evolving public health situation.
• We’ll add U.S. and international test administrations in response to canceled administrations. We’ll be flexible in making the SAT available in school and out of school as soon as the public health situation allows. We’re looking at a range of creative solutions to address increased demand and are in direct conversations with states and districts about School Day administrations. Throughout, we’ll continue to place a special focus on students with fee waivers and those with accommodations.

If, unfortunately, schools cannot reopen this fall, we’re pursuing innovative ways to ensure all students can still take the SAT this fall. We’ll provide updates about those plans if they become necessary.

Let’s hope that those potential “innovative” and “creative” SAT solutions don’t resemble the “solution” that the College Board has devised for AP Exams this spring: a 45-minute, open-book, open-note free-response test that will cover only 60-70% of the full year’s curriculum in a given AP subject.  Despite the College Board’s undeniably good intentions and efforts, this type of test will not be fair to students who don’t have computers or wifi, or to students who need certain kinds of accommodations, and even a top score on this type of test will not signify the kind of mastery that colleges infer from high scores on “normal” AP Exams.