It’s much easier to teach when I have access to dozens of official tests. But having to work without them has made me a better tutor.
Several years ago, SAT and ACT tutors enjoyed an unprecedented abundance of official practice tests. We had SATs via the QAS and ACTs via the TIR, adding up to well over 30 of each. But then the SAT went digital, the ACT went enhanced, and we were left with exactly zero official tests. Both companies have released practice tests, but none were actually administered and used to generate real scores. There aren’t even that many of them (7 SATs, 4 ACTs). It reminds me of the old joke: “The food was terrible. And such small portions!”
‘Terrible’ is not right – the official tests are very useful. But there really aren’t that many. Which makes all tutors sad. Official tests do so much for us:
Simulate the experience of the real test. It doesn’t take much to make a student feel uneasy during a real test: a different number of questions in a section, a weird writing style, the bubble sheet, the amount of blank space on the page, even the font. You don’t have to worry about any of this with an official test.
Provide material for targeted practice. I used to assign the last 20 math questions of three ACTs to top math students, so that they’d get extra practice on hard material. Or I’d assign four Science sections from different tests. I’d also pick and choose certain passages and problem types for students once I knew what was hardest for them. If I did that now, I’d run out of tests in a week.
Generate accurate score predictions. It’s hard to beat the score prediction of an official test that’s been taken in test-like conditions.
Save tutors time. If you know you have lots of tests left, and you know the student hasn’t taken the next one on the list, it takes very little time or thought to simply assign the next test. You don’t have to cobble together worksheets, or check to see what a student did before. You just assign it.
It’s also worth noting that practice tests are relatively popular assignments. No parent will question them. And it’s the assignment students like best, because they get a chance to earn the scores they want.
But as great as official tests are, they are also traps.
They aren’t very efficient, first of all. When a student takes a 44-question SAT math test, there are only 10-15 questions that are good targets for score increases – the others are too easy or too hard. These tests also aren’t adapted to the student. Suppose a student really needs help with percents and semicolons. Even if both appear on every test, you’ll only be seeing them once per week – not enough to cover every variation and remember them all. So students will learn the most common types and the ones that are easiest for them to learn, but they won’t be able to master questions that appear less frequently and are more difficult. They’ll hit a plateau, taking test after test but getting the same scores.
Tests are also not very convenient. Students usually need at least 25 minute blocks of time, and that’s just for one section. For realistic mock tests, they’ll need 2 - 3 hours. And they need to be at their best during that entire period. Busy students don’t have a lot of these large blocks of high-quality attention. But they do have lots of 5 - or 10 - minute pockets of time. You can get a lot more work from students if you assign things that can be done in short bursts.
And while I want students to be comfortable with the actual format of the test, I also want them to be resilient. The real test will be different in some way. The kid next to you may tap his pencil the whole test. It may be incredibly hot. The questions may feel harder (even if they aren’t). If you’ve practiced with lots of different materials, in all kinds of formats, you are less likely to be bothered by these distractions.
Finally, there is always the chance that the official practice test results won’t be accurate. I think every tutor has heard a version of these comments:
“Well, I meant to put that, so technically I got it right.”
“My brother came in halfway through, so I gave myself a couple minutes at the end.”
“I took it after lunch – 8am is too early!”
That’s just a taste – the number of ways you can take a test incorrectly is astoundingly large.
Because practice tests are not totally reliable, I will often employ a checklist. It’s not too elaborate. I just need to know that a student can check every box before I’m confident that he’ll achieve a certain score. For example, let’s say a student wants to score 750+ on SAT Math. This is what’s on their checklist:
Earn multiple 750+ scores on official Bluebook practice tests that were monitored by an adult.
Get to 780 on Mathchops.
Earn all of the 780 category challenge badges on Mathchops.
Master my list of hard questions from the old SAT.
Master your redos from the Bluebook tests.
(Optional) Score at least 750 on multiple trusted third-party tests.
This checklist hasn’t failed me yet, but every individual item on the checklist has. In a way, it’s similar to the recommended question answering technique for reading. If you find the information in the passage, have your own idea of what the answer should be, and find something wrong with three choices (thus getting the answer three different ways), you are much more likely to get it right than if you only check one of these boxes.
You can do this for any kind of test. For example, I used to have a checklist for ISEE Upper Level Reading students that included materials from the old-old SAT, the ACT, the SHSAT, untimed articles, third party ISEEs, and official practice tests. It worked a lot better than just relying on the official practice tests, which were very inaccurate in certain ways (most egregiously, the passages were less than half the length of those in real tests).
It takes some work to find these materials and learn how to use them. But once I do, I can help my students get better results than they would have gotten with official tests alone.
Checklist is a great idea. I have a checklist that only I see, but serves a similar purpose, for each student.
BTW on practice tests: I always spend some time selectively going over questions that the students got right. Is the student using the fastest way to solve each question? Are there clues in the question that will form a hypothesis that one might use to guide oneself towards the answer with greater confidence? (such as a root-2 or root-2 lurking near a triangle?)
I recently helped a student shave about two minutes off his SAT hard module working entirely with questions he always got right, but was doing the slow way.
Speed savings: check!
Great food for thought, Mike!