The coronavirus is forcing the SAT and ACT to develop digital versions of the standardized tests in case schools remain closed. Critics fear that could deepen inequities.
Pencils down.
The SAT and the ACT, standardized tests that serve as a gateway to college for millions of applicants each year, announced on Wednesday that they would develop digital versions for students to take at home in the fall if the coronavirus pandemic continues to require social distancing.
The switch would mark one of the most significant changes in the history of the admissions tests, which are normally taken with a sharpened No. 2 pencil and paper in a highly secure setting, under the watchful eye of proctors.
David Coleman, the chief executive of the College Board, a nonprofit organization that oversees the SAT and brings in more than $1 billion a year in revenue, described the possibility of at-home testing as “unlikely” in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday. He also announced that the June testing date for the SAT, like others this spring, would be canceled.
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A spokesman for the ACT, the rival test, said it too was prepared to move to at-home digital testing in the fall, if necessary.
CAMPUS CRISIS
Universities anticipate shrinking enrollment and lost revenue as students face economic uncertainty.
Even the possibility brought stark warnings from critics and testing experts, who said at-home tests could exacerbate inequality, raise privacy issues and make it easier to cheat. Test security is a significant concern in the wake of last year’s college admissions scandal, in which prosecutors accused some wealthy parents of helping their children cheat on the tests to get into exclusive universities.
Low-income students already face disadvantages when it comes to testing, including a lack of access to private tutors, study guides and other means available to wealthy students trying to boost their scores. Making them take a high-stakes test at home could put them at a further disadvantage, experts said.
“You’re going to have an upper-middle-class kid with his own bedroom and his own computer system with a big monitor in a comfortable environment taking his SATs,” said Mark Sklarow, chief executive of the Independent Educational Consultants Association, which represents private college admissions coaches. “And you’re going to have a kid who lives in a home maybe with spotty broadband, one family computer in the dining room.”
He added, “I don’t know how that can be equitable.”
The College Board’s president, Jeremy Singer, described plans for a remote proctoring system that “locks down everything else in the computer. The camera and microphone are on, you can detect any movement in the room. If the parents are in there, next to them, that would be detected.”
Experts said many families might be reluctant to give the organization such extensive access to their private devices.
“That’s a big privacy issue, both to lock down your computer and to put some kind of client on your computer to be able to do that,” said Jonathan Supovitz, a professor of leadership and policy at the Graduate School of Education for the University of Pennsylvania.
The development of an online option is an indication that the testing companies are fighting for their lives. The fairness of standardized testing was already under increasing attack before the virus, with some colleges and universities moving away from the tests as an application requirement.
In the wake of the pandemic, more colleges have at least temporarily made ACT and SAT results optional for 2021 applicants, including the vast University of California system, Tulane, Case Western Reserve and Williams College.
TESTING OPTIONAL
Here is a list of colleges that are waiving standardized testing requirements during the pandemic.
Mr. Coleman said the College Board was planning to make up for the loss of spring testing dates by offering SAT exams every month through the end of the year, beginning in August, if restrictions on in-person gatherings have been lifted.
The organization has already announced that it will give Advanced Placement tests at home in May because of the virus. Those subject-matter tests for high school students, most of whom have taken A.P. courses, will become a kind of dress rehearsal for a digital SAT.
All of this has heightened the anxiety level for those applying to college. Jessica Cohen, 17, a junior at South High Community School in Worcester, Mass., had been studying for the SAT and hoping to take it multiple times to get the highest possible score, she said. But now she may forgo the test entirely.
“I just don’t know how many colleges will require SATs,” she said. Among her top choices are Smith College, College of the Holy Cross and Mount Holyoke College, which are already test-optional institutions.
Ms. Cohen also noted that many of her public school classmates did not have reliable internet access, making it unfair to expect them to take the SAT at home. “That would be impossible for them,” she said.
Angela Nguyen, 17, a junior at the School for the Talented and Gifted in Dallas, took the SAT in November but was not happy with her score. She has been preparing to retake the test, she said, and is concerned that waiting until August could affect her performance. She does not expect to be at her peak academically over the summer, after a long break from school.
CONTACT TRACING
This method has helped Asian countries like South Korea contain the spread of the virus. Massachusetts is opting for an old-school, labor-intensive method: people.
With at-home testing, the College Board said it would build on its previous experience giving the SAT digitally to tens of thousands of students in several states. But the scale of a nationwide effort would be much larger, involving more than a million high school juniors.
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Mr. Coleman said the College Board had been calling low-income families in an effort to understand the conditions in their homes, like the amount of internet bandwidth. The testing software would be available in advance, he said, so students would not be logging in for the first time on testing day.
And the College Board would provide a makeup day for students who had technological failures, he said. “Some percentage of students will have errors that cannot be predicted, and we are preparing for that.”
Kitty Bennett contributed research.
A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 15 of the New York edition with the headline: SAT and ACT Could Be Online at Home. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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