SAT before 13th (urban legend or true?)

mathyone
Fri, 29 Nov 2013 15:22:48 +0000

I still don’t see why decisions about any individual kid in any particular program should depend on a percentile ranking vs. a group to which they don’t belong (eg high school seniors), but if you are going to do that sort of thing, I don’t think the SAT is the best choice. The MAP test is designed to be an out of level test. It has norm groups for each grade. It’s not something that kids get private tutors or test prep books or Kaplan classes, or spend years prepping for. Kids take it on an equal footing with no prep. I’m not sure how the difficulty levels of the two tests compare, or which test has the higher ceiling. I think the MAP isn’t terribly good at testing high level students, and the company admits this, but neither is the SAT.

An honors class in one school might be at an entirely different level as at another school, and the typical student in such classes might also be very different. What matters is to match kids with their peers.