<p>Hey guys, I just talked to my computer science teacher who attended the National AP Conference for computer science. After asking her about the change in the exams for next year where the guessing penalty would be eliminated, she told me it was because of gender bias. Boys are more likely to take chances than girls. The College Board’s research team saw this as having boys take more guesses on the exams than girls, affecting the scores by gender. I just thought that you guys would be interested to hear the reasoning behind the change. (:</p>
<p>Then why don’t they change it for the SAT as well?</p>
<p>That’s a stupid, stupid reason.</p>
<p>Lol, this is certainly amusing.</p>
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<p>Most idiotic reason for eliminating the penalty rule.</p>
<p>political correctness to the extreme</p>
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<p>Skewing the scores in favor of boys or in favor of girls?</p>
<p>What…The…F***?</p>
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<p>I think that the scores would favor the boys. With more guesses (especially when one or more answer choices are eliminated), the overall score should be greater than 0. I’m not sure how to explain this well, but I think you can understand what I mean.</p>
<p>I agree this sounds as if girls were ?afraid to guess? even when they had narrowed it down to 2 answers, where guys would go for it. This created a skew toward higher male scores compared to females when they knew the same amount of information…</p>
<p>Just my interpretation of the info the teacher brought back from the meeting.</p>
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<p>I didn’t ask which way it was skewed, but I agree with your analysis.</p>
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<p>My teacher said that it’s currently a work in progress.</p>
<p>^Holy s***, glad I’m taking the SAT soon then. No guessing penalty would lead to harsher curves, which would be disastrous on the SAT.</p>
<p>Males do better on the ACT as well, so we cannot easily attribute the gender gap in SAT scores to the guessing penalty.</p>
<p>Plus, CB is making it worse and worse for people who employ strategic guessing methods such as really only “guessing” on two questions per each section of the SAT.</p>
<p>I support the College Board’s move to do this, because it eliminates the strategic aspect and focuses on the content; they should do the same for the Subject Tests, which are achievement tests. I do not, however, support doing this for the SAT Reasoning Test, because I have always thought of the guessing/omitting dilemma as some sort of additional aptitude test. Some people are less efficient and less strategic at opting for the most probabilistically favorable choice, and indirectly measuring that seems meaningful.</p>
<p>What the fu…Wow…just wow…-.-</p>
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<p>Please show me some statistical proof.</p>
<p>^ <a href=“http://www.act.org/news/data/09/pdf/National2009.pdf[/url]”>http://www.act.org/news/data/09/pdf/National2009.pdf</a> </p>
<p>Page 15 of the PDF, tables 2.7 and 2.8.</p>
<p>Gracias.</p>
<p>Hmm…the composite is very close. But it shows that more females took the ACT than males did. It might be more accurate if the report showed about 200k more male stats.</p>
<p>^ Are you saying that the sample size is insufficient, or are you saying that disproportionately significant self-selection among male test-takers has taken place? The latter concern seems valid.</p>
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<p>Yes, but the difference in the percent of people meeting all four benchmarks should not be too easily dismissed: 35% more males meet those college readiness thresholds.</p>
<p>How very silly. I’m a girl and my problem on the tests is that I guess too much; ommitance means admitting defeat!</p>
<p>No, the sample size is sufficient. Just saying it’s disproportionate. I said it was close because if it were proportionate Males could be higher or be very close to Females. </p>
<p>Yes, the college readiness is very important too. But what do you mean 35% more? I see 7% more; Males: 27% and Females: 20% for meeting all four.</p>