This claim is simply false. As mentioned above, there is no requirement that one be a student in order to take the SAT, nor are college applications the SAT’s only use. For example, middle school students take the SAT to qualify for talent searches like CTY. High school graduates can use it for various purposes, including enhancing job applications (yes, some companies ask for SAT scores) or qualifying for societies such as MENSA.
There are also specific benefits–to everyone, including parents and students–to allowing teachers and tutors to take the SAT. Suppose it is fall of 2016, for instance, and you need to choose an SAT tutor for your child. Other factors being equal, would you rather have someone who can tell you that he or she has already taken the new SAT twice and earned perfect scores, or would you rather have someone who has only looked at “practice tests,” as you recommend?
If you would choose the two-time perfect scorer, then you already recognize some of the benefits of having tutors and teachers take the test–keeping the teachers themselves qualified and knowledgeable and helping students and parents determine who is qualified and who is not.
There is another benefit, though, and that other reason may well be related to College Board’s decision to bar adults from this coming Saturday’s administration: professional SAT teachers may simply be better able to spot problems with the test, may be more assertive about pointing those problems out, and may be taken more seriously when they complain. Indeed, many are speculating that College Board made the last-minute decision to ban adults from the March administration because it simply does not want the test it is about to give to receive a lot of scrutiny. If that is the case (and the fact the all the adults have been moved to May suggests that there is no general concern about adults being involved in cheating, as some posters above want to believe), then how does this decision benefit anyone but the College Board? Considering that this March test will not be released, wouldn’t students benefit greatly from having thousands of professionals scrutinizing the tests and publicizing any problems