Upcoming Changes to the National Tests
Beginning in the fall of 2023, students taking the national PSAT/NMSQT test will experience the digital test in person at a test center, using their personal or school-issued laptops or tablets. The following spring (2024) will bring the first digital SAT test. Applicable students will test on their own devices in a proctored, in-person environment.
The shift to digital will also bring changes to the format of test content. Reading passages will be shorter, and the overall testing time will be reduced by approximately one hour. The new tests will feature a slight increase in advanced math questions and more concisely worded math problems; additionally, calculators may now be used on all math questions. Furthermore, the use of digital technology will bring another innovation to the test—adaptive test sections. This means that a student’s performance on an initial set of test questions will determine the difficulty of a subsequent question set.
This won’t be the first major test revamp that KD College Prep has navigated. Since 1992, KD’s staff has watched the tests undergo many major pivots, from changes in test questions to changes in scoring or test sections. Through every remodel, KD has found ways to continue to prepare students for their national test dates.
“For years, KD has produced practice tests that accurately replicate the type of content found on the official tests, and these new digital practice tests are no different. We believe that our new digital testing platform will help KD students better prepare for the test changes they will encounter this fall, which will greatly increase their chances of reaching their score goals,” Steininger said.
Building a Digital Practice Test
The development of the new digital platform took several months, and it involved the collective knowledge and experience from teams across the company.
KD’s seasoned team of in-house curriculum writers and test prep instructors collaborated with the development and design team to produce new test content. KD’s proprietary core curriculum is rewritten on a yearly basis, so writing new passages and questions for the practice tests was already on the to-do list. However, this year’s curriculum involved a new approach.
“The curriculum team had two important tasks to help produce the new content for KD’s digital testing platform. First, they had to determine a new breakdown of types of questions that would likely be found on the new, digital versions of the national tests. Secondly, they then had to use their creative minds to come up with their own questions that would mirror the types of questions a student would see on the national tests and create similar testing outcomes,” Steininger said.
The new set of core curriculum also includes a revised final lesson in which instructors go over specific guidance for how students can improve their scores during this unique transitional period when some students will need to prepare for both the paper and digital versions of the national tests.
While the curriculum team worked on new test content, the development team went to work on the new testing platform. The scope of this project involved score report changes, an enhanced test review experience, and beta-testing the new digital testing platform. After many rounds of edits and functionality checks, the first digital practice test was ready for release.
Digital Practice Tests Now Available
KD released the new digital practice tests to enrolled students on May 13, 2023. At the moment, this test is only available to students who are enrolled in an in-person or live-online classroom-based program, have been granted access to the KD Student Portal, and have followed instructions for how to take the digital practice test. New students should note that access to the student portal could take 24-48 hours after registering for a KD Student Portal account.
“We are thrilled with the final product. We’re confident that it will give students the ability to become familiar with what to expect on their official test dates. So far, it’s been a huge success,” Steininger said.
Students can take the digital practice test at home, or they can take the test in person at their KD campus. They must bring their own fully-charged personal device and a charger. Students may not use their phones to test and must contact their KD campus to sign up for a digital practice test or schedule a proctored testing time.
The first set of digital practice tests will prepare students for the October PSAT test. Practice tests designed to prepare students for the SAT test will become available in the fall of 2023.