Diane Ravitch an education historian makes an argument that tests like SAT and ACT are the common standards of education across all states. Read full article here

We are pleased to announce the immediate availability of ACT Test Diagnostic Assessments and Reports for tutoring centers.

Students and tutors who use traditional books, paper / pencil to practice and prepare for the ACT exam can now get the best of two worlds. Work with traditional printed books like Real ACT Test Prep Guide to practice and fill out the bubble sheets on paper; and use Socrato’s ACT Diagnostic Assessment Service to create the best ACT diagnostic analysis.

After paper based practice, in a few clicks tutors or students can enter student test practice responses (bubble sheet data) into Socrato using one of our convenient data entry options: directly enter as bubble sheet (student or tutor), enter in bulk mode, or load files automatically generated via a bubble sheet scanner.

Once done, within seconds the Socrato online service does the grading, scaling, scoring and detailed analysis. This service takes our previous work on our Free ACT test analysis and scoring tool further. It removes all complexities of ACT test scoring, ACT composite score calculation etc. The automatically generated reports can be printed, emailed or viewed online. The ACT report is now on par with our highly regarded SAT diagnostic service.

The diagnostic analysis is one of the best. It covers:

• Full history of student progress, detailed grading, scoring, scaling, and even the point cost analysis in each subject area
• Skills, difficulty level, subject area content analysis, and question responses detail
• Socrato analysis goes “beyond scores” and analyzes student test taking tendencies and behavior

This analysis leads to personalized, concrete recommendations, and performance improvement in less time. You can download the sample diagnostic report for the ACT test for an Individual student here.

Tutors can look online or download detailed diagnostic reports for an individual student to help them one-on-one, or look at a class/group as a whole to optimize the strategy and instruction plan for the most optimal outcome. The entire process is very similar to Socrato’s SAT, MCAS, and other exam assessment offerings. To see how Socrato generates one of the best diagnostic assessments for the ACT, SAT and other tests see the video here.

By combining the best of two - paper / pencil for practice, and computers to do the analysis, Socrato saves time, improves student results, and allows tutors / students to focus effort on instruction and learning.

Socrato allows for branding of reports and customization of learning analytics to meet the specific needs and styles of our customers. If you are interested in learning more about this service please contact us.

An interesting article in Fortune Magazine which gives insight into financials of CollegeBoard (a “non-profit” which owns the SAT and other exams) and American College Testing (which owns the ACT test). According to the article:

• The most recent fiscal year revenue for CollegeBoard is $631 million. Net “excess” (profit) for the same year is $57 million.
• Heads of both organizations earned salaries above $500,000.

ACT financial numbers were not revealed. You can read the full article here.

“Socrato: The Future of Test Prep?” by Matt Fellows

“Socrato has the potential to strip standardized tests of their mysterious, intimidating power, and turn them into more helpful learning tools…”

Read More

Tutors who teach ACT exam prep and Students who are preparing for the ACT exam, feel the pain of ACT test grading, scoring, and scaling. The process requires reasonable manual effort which is prone to error, and is time away from real work (study or tutoring).

We recently published the details for an ACT Score calculator. After iteration we are now making it available for direct download from Learning Analytics blog (blog.socrato.com). This ACT Score calculator simplifies the grading and analysis process for ACT practice tests. The calculator was designed for Real ACT Test Prep Guide but it can be used with other ACT test prep guides.

The ACT Test Score or ACT composite score calculator - captures, tracks, and performs following ACT test score calculations and analysis.

• Correct, incorrect, and omitted question count for ACT practice test
• ACT full scaled score
• ACT composite score calculation
• ACT percentile rank
• ACT subscore scaled score
• ACT point cost at composite score level for each subject area
• Point cost per question for each subject area
• ACT point cost at subscore level
• ACT combined English and writing score

If you are interested in getting a very detailed diagnostic and score analysis for your ACT test practice session, you can also try Socrato’s ACT Diagnostic Analysis Software which greatly reduces the effort on tutors and students. Here is the sample diagnostic report for test practice.

You can download the calculator here.

In addition to the many other methods of conducting test sessions or importing student responses, Socrato now allows tutors and teachers to directly initiate a test session as one of their students. The responses can be entered question by question, or in “bubble sheet” mode.  For large classes, tutors can still import from excel files, use our bulk entry screen, or of course, have the students take the tests online.

We received many requests for a feature that makes it easy for tutors to enter student session data in Socrato where the incorrect responses are not marked on the bubble sheet. Tutors want to avoid populating an excel file for all questions manually when they don’t have scanners - 171 question for SAT and 216 question for ACT.

Based on this feedback we created a new student session data entry mode.  The “Take Test for Student” mode works well if when a tutor does not want to manually review and mark the incorrect questions before hand. Tutors and teachers can also use this feature to “tee up” a test for a specific student without having an actual student account.  This feature is now available on “Groups => Sessions => Enter or Import Scores” page. To use this mode please follow these steps:

• Add student
  • Make sure the student already exists in your member list. If not, go to “Groups => Members => Add/Invite member” and add the student
• Prepare Session
  • Go to the “Groups => Sessions => Enter or Import Scores” page
  • Select Test
  • Enter session date, comment, and tag
  • Under “Enter Results Manually” click on “Take Test for Member”
  • Find student (if not found, go to step “Add Student”)
  • For selected student click on “Take test for member”
• Enter Student Session Data
  • On Take Test page – Select “Bubble sheet mode”, select “Questions by section”
  • Optionally enter “pre-test score survey”
  • Enter all response in bubble sheet
  • Complete test
  • Optionally enter “post-test score survey”
• Enter Essay Score
  • On the Results page click on the “Review” button
  • Go the essay question and enter the score by clicking on “Assign Points”
  • Click Quit
• Generate SAT or ACT Diagnostic Analysis Report
  • Go in you “Groups => Reports => Diagnostic Reports”
  • Select the student and generate report

We have been using this for a while with a few customers with positive feedback.
If you have any feedback or suggestions please let us know.

On Wednesday, December 9th, at 6:30 Mass Innovation is organizing an event for MA innovators.  A number of companies will present there. Thanks to everyone who voted for Socrato, we are one of the presenter.

If you are at the event, look forward to see you later today.

Here are the directions: http://massinnovationnights.com/event-rsvp/google-map

Because we frequently receive inquires for ACT Diagnostic Analysis and Reporting, we’ve decided to make the ACT the next test we support as part of our “Companion Series” diagnostic reporting suite.  We know that tutors and students have to deal with the drawn-out scoring process for each ACT test. For experienced tutors, scoring student practice tests has become second nature, but it’s still not straight forward.

The entire scoring and scaling process is scattered across 13 pages for each test in the official guide. If you step back, and look at the entire process of scoring the ACT, it reminds me of filling out an annual tax return.

While you wait for us to incorporate the ACT into Socrato as a simple, efficient, and more effective tool, we thought we’d provide a barebones excel tool in the meantime.

This simple spreadsheet “ACT Scoring Tool” does not reduce the effort by much (as you still have to do the majority of manual lookups and calculations) but it does add value. The spreadsheet tool

• Simplifies the process of capturing the data. All calculations and results are captured on 1 page – instead of 7.
• Does some of the calculations and validations (in your manual worksheet process there is no way to know if you missed the questions in your count)
• Does some interesting and baseline analysis – e.g. What is the point impact of each wrong / missed question
• Makes data visual by automatically generating graphs

Since we’re in the midst of incorporating the ACT into Socrato, please send along any suggestions and feature requests.  Our ultimate vision is to create the best diagnostic analysis for the ACT.  To see how the process will work, watch the Socrato Overview video. If you want to know what the diagnostic analysis will look like, see the equivalent SAT Diagnostic analysis report.

If you are a Tutor and need to do the calculations for an ACT assessment test again and again, drop us an email at info@socrato.com and we will be happy to send you a copy of the current tool for free. All we expect in return is some feedback and encouragement.
Thanks

Recently collegeboard released the new version of Official SAT Study Guide (2nd Edition – Jul 21st 2009) which has 10 practice tests. This new guide replaces the older revision – The Official SAT Study Guide by The College Board (Paperback - Oct 7, 2004) which has 8 practice tests.

On close examination of the content in new guide, you will find that the last seven tests in both books are exactly same. The test mapping starts from the 4th practice test (in revision 2) onward. The full mapping is as follows.

Second Revision test –> First revision Test
Test # 4  =>  Test # 2
Test # 5  =>  Test # 3
Test # 6  =>  Test # 4
Test # 7  =>  Test # 5
Test # 8  =>  Test # 6
Test # 9  =>  Test # 7
Test # 10 => Test # 8

Another interesting change is how SAT categorizes the difficulty level of the questions for new tests. In the three new tests (test # 1, 2, and 3) of second revision, the difficulty level is on the scale of 1 to 5 (1 being easy and 5 being difficult). All other tests (#4 to 10 in second revision) the difficulty level is categorized as Easy, Med, Hard. I am not sure why won’t they make it consistent across all tests.

If you already have an old copy (revision 1), you can certainly use that. If you don’t have any old revision, it will be a worth while investment to buy the new book, even if you are registered for some professional tutoring help.

By the way, mistakes happen during publishing, even when you are publishing your flagship product (SAT prep guide). Collegeboard has already come out with an ERRATA (https://satonlinecourse.collegeboard.com/SR/home/bookOwnerArea.do?fromSecondEdition=yes)
for The Official SAT Study Guide: Second Edition.

They will tell you about that only after you have purchased the book and registered on their website. You will have to dig deeper on collegeboard website to get access to Errata link. There are updates in following areas:
-    Answers
-    Difficulty level for questions
-    Questions content has changed
-    The score conversion tables for number of tests

Fortunately collegeboard do not have to send “their score” any place regarding these errors. If you know of any other changes let us know.

One of the interesting features of Twitter is the ability to “follow” anyone and then listen to their tweets. Effectively the person you are following becomes the “filter” for you for certain types of content and information.  You receive immediate updates on what’s going on.

While working with a number of teachers and tutors, we noticed that many of them create their “binders” (a set of favorite questions, tests, and other materials such as reading passages) in real life, which they often share with others by photocopying. The binders contain a collection of their best material with lots of thought put in. We noticed a similar usage pattern in Socrato where many teachers collect their special questions and content, aligned with particular topic areas, or to help students with certain needs.

So taking a cue from Twitter, we just released features that allow a user (teacher or tutor) to follow other users (teachers and tutors). Whenever the “followed” user shares public material they have created, the “follower” will be notified. This way a teacher can assemble a content set, and all of their followers can reuse and collaborate on that material. Each individual user has privacy controls on how much of their profile and content is visible to other users.

Last night we released the “follow” feature in Socrato. Let us know what you think.