Internet connection issues cancel Oakland SAT schedule

(TNS) – Hundreds of students who had come to Oakland to take the SAT on Saturday were told — after hours of waiting in the testing room — that the exam was canceled due to Internet connection problems.

The College Board, a nonprofit organization that runs the SAT, said in a statement that about 1,400 students had come to the Marriott Hotel in downtown Oakland to take the college entrance exam. Although the SAT is entirely online, students are required to take it at test locations. But a shortage of those places across California has forced many families to travel long distances to test sites — if they can find one with open seats.

Lainie Motamedi, board president of the San Francisco Unified School District, said she was excited to find a last-minute spot for Saturday’s SAT for her son, an 11th-grader. They even booked a room at the Marriott so he could be in the exam room at the scheduled test start time of 7:45 am.

The problems started right away, said Greyson Jones, an 11th grader from Half Moon Bay. Students tried to access the exam, but the online system only displayed a “loading” message. Testing officials checked back, but only said they were working on a Wi-Fi problem.

When officials finally announced they were canceling the exam, students cheered, Jones said.

“We were very tired,” Jones added.

But the students could not leave yet. The custodians had collected their phones, and when they realized how long it would take to return them one by one, they placed all the devices on a table so students could find theirs — a process that some of them took almost an hour, potentially. making phones vulnerable to theft.

“Overall, a pretty horrible experience,” Jones said.

The College Board said in a statement that the number of students who want to take the SAT on the weekend has “exceeded capacity” due to a lack of high schools and other sites willing to host the exam. The nonprofit added that while it contracted with a vendor to manage test administration at hotels and other locations, it will “revisit the vendor’s processes to ensure students do not encounter problems moving forward.”

“We know this was an incredibly difficult situation for students who worked hard to prepare for the test,” the College Board added. “We deeply apologize to all affected students. They will receive a full refund and we are working to ensure they are able to retest.”

Marriott Hotels did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Eunice Charles, who drove her 11th-grade son from El Sobrante to take the test, said he doesn’t necessarily need to take the SAT, since the University of California and California State University systems don’t consider the scores. of students as part of their admission process. Some other colleges have made entrance exams optional. But many students in California still want to take it, Charles said.

“They just need to open more sites,” she added.

Motamedi, the SFUSD president, said the next SAT date she could find within 100 miles of San Francisco was an October test in Fairfield. But she’s reluctant to sign her son up for the slot because he’ll already have to deal with college applications in the fall.

“It’s a lot to balance,” she said. “That’s why we were trying to do it in the spring.”

The tests “fill up really, really fast, and it just doesn’t seem fair or equitable,” Motamedi added. “It’s just another unnecessary stress and burden for these kids.”

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