for those of y'all who are new to this.

This is a live stream that

we're doing every day as the name implies,

to keep us connected and answer questions

and figure out ways to support each other during

these times of school closures.

It's also a forum for you to ask me

and our guests questions,

and we're gonna have a really interesting guest today.

I will remind folks Khan Academy

we are not for profit with a mission of providing a free

world-class education for anyone anywhere,

and we're able to do the work we do

because of donations from folks like yourself.

So if you're in a position to do so,

please think about donating to Khan Academy.

I wanna give a special thanks to several corporations

that have stepped up in the last few weeks

as we see it our Costco hire, do the COVID crisis.

We've seen our traffic be almost three acts

of what it typically is.

A special thanks to bank of America,

Google.org, Fastly, Novartis and AT&T.

So with that, I wanna get right into the conversation,

I have a really great guest today

who's going to be able to address a lot of concerns

that I think are out there.

Lorraine Hastings is the vice president

with the College Board.

For those of you all who are not familiar

with the College Board, the College Board

is a not for profit.

We are partnered with the College Board.

But the College Board also offers the SAT

and Lorraine specializes in relations

with college counselors, and is an expert on all things

that are going on in the SAT right now.

I know there's a lot of questions.

And so first of all, Lorraine, welcome.

Thank you for being here.

I hope everything is good with your family

and this time of social distancing.

Maybe a good place to start is you know,

what's the lay of the land for those of us

who haven't been fully keeping track of what's going on

with the SAT with regards to COVID?

- Hi, Sal, thanks again for the invitation to join today.

I hope you and your family are well as well

as your colleagues.

The work you do at Khan Academy could not be more important

as it is today,

as we all learn to navigate this difficult time.

As the College Board responds to the impact of Coronavirus.

Our top priorities are the health and safety of students

and educators.

In face of school closures,

we're adapting to give students opportunities

to still show their strengths

and continue on the path to college.

We're working hard to make the SAT available in school

and out of school

as soon as the public health situation allows.

Right now public health officials have made it clear

that it is not safe to gather students in one place.

Many states have closed school

for the rest of the school year,

and globally there is widespread school closures

across 192 countries.

Last week, we announced that we will not be able

to administer the SAT as planned on June sixth.

If it's safe from a public health standpoint,

we will provide weekend SAT administration's every month

beginning in August through the end of the calendar year.

This includes a new administration in September,

and the previously scheduled tests on August 29th,

October the third, November the seventh

and December the fifth.

In the unlikely and I say unlikely event that schools

do not reopen this fall,

we will provide a digital SAT for home use.

We of course would ensure that at home SAT testing

is simple, secure, fair

and accessible to all and most importantly,

valid for use in college admissions.

I know that I've shared a few changes,

but Sal, even though it seems as if everything is changing,

there is one thing that's not changing,

and that's the official student practice available

for free anytime,

through our partnership with you all at Khan Academy.

- No, and this is super useful.

And so just to make sure that I understand

what the College Board's position on this is,

is as soon as we're through this stay at home order,

y'all are going to essentially offer the SAT

on the regular schedule thereafter

and offer a few more.

Hopefully you can kind of view these as maybe makeup.

So it's a monthly time period.

And so is your view that this will be sufficient

for guidance counselors out there advising

students or for students, parents, teachers?

How do you think this is gonna

affect the admissions process?

Do you think this will be students will have

an opportunity to get in there

and show that they're college ready on the SAT?

- Yes, as you mentioned, Sal,

you're absolutely correct.

Once we get back hopefully to the new normal in August,

we're gonna add a new testing date in September

which we have not had a September admin before.

And by providing monthly testing beginning in August,

we are confident that all students who want an opportunity

to take an SAT exam will have the opportunity

to do so throughout the fall,

take it more than once if they so desire.

So this once again,

as counselors continue to work with students,

they will be able to advise them,

what's the best administration's

they feel students should be able to take.

- And I wanna encourage everyone listening.

Feel free to put your questions on YouTube

and Facebook we have team members who are looking

at the questions and we're gonna be able to surface them

up for Lorraine or for myself if they're appropriate.

So there's a lot of questions and I you know,

I definitely wanna underline something you said.

You said in the unlikely event that

we are still in this crisis in the fall,

then y'all are going to try

to do a digital version of the SAT

similar to what y'all are doing for the AP

and in a few weeks.

So I wanna underline that's in the unlikely event

because we are getting questions around

what is that going to look like?

How are you going to prevent cheating?

Et cetera, et cetera.

But that I would guess you're still figuring out

if you even have to go there.

- Yes, and, you know,

a very unlikely event that

we have to do an at-home test.

Test security is, of course, one of our highest priorities.

And we're gonna design a solution that meets

our rigorous standards, we will have a comprehensive,

strict set of protocols in place to prevent

and detect cheating.

And of course, we can't share everything

we're gonna do because we need to maximize the effectiveness

of the things that we will be employing

to make sure that the test is secure.

- And I have a question from Facebook,

Chris Lee asked what about the SAT subject tests?

- So we had to cancel the subject tests

that were administered that were supposed

to be administered in June.

Those are some of the foreign language ones.

And those will be administered later on in the year

and the normal schedule of subject tests

in the fall will continue.

Those will be options for students and the fall as normal.

- And a question from Facebook, Julian Michael says,

"Do you foresee a move to digital testing regardless

"of when schools open?"

And I guess related, you know,

in certain standardized tests,

not that the College Board offers but you know,

I remember when I took the G math,

you know, many years ago it was it was digital back then.

Is this something that y'all are thinking about generally,

or maybe catalyzed by COVID.

- So, of course, we're going to once again

I want to continue to stress, Sal, what you said earlier,

unlikely event, we'll do this.

If depending on what happens in the fall,

we're aware that some places in the country in the world

may open and others may not.

So we are trying to prepare to address multiple different

scenarios whether it's a blended option,

we plan on paper and pencil continuing in the future.

The at-home is only in the unlikely

event that we are not able to administer paper and pencil.

- Yeah, and I'll just triply underline what you said

because we're getting a lot of questions.

But the questions are a good indicator

of how you know what people kind of latch

onto they are like digital SAT?

The SAT's changing?

What you're saying this is in the very, you know,

that's a reality where COVID and it looks,

you know, hopefully, you know, knock on wood

we have we have a handle on it now,

or it's at least hopefully peaked.

But this is in the unlikely scenario

that we're still in this full social distancing scenario,

August, September, October,

which hopefully is unlikely

so people should not index on it too much.

- That is correct.

We're going to continue to monitor

the situation around the Coronavirus

and we're going to USE whatever we learn

to inform whatever our approach will be in the future.

- Yeah, and I had this question from Facebook,

Makai Kiefer, and this is a question that I guess

is relevant even before this.

You hear things about schools being testing optional.

Many colleges and universities have stated

that they will not require SAT exams for students

applying next year.

Do you know how they will handle the situation

and how students without SAT scores

compare to those with scores?

And how would you advise students whether to SAT or not,

if and when it becomes available?

I'd love to your thoughts.

And I have some thoughts there too.

I'm happy to share.

- Sure, so once again,

many colleges are making decisions whether

or not they're going to be test optional in the fall.

Colleges are members of the College Board,

and we work with them, encourage them to be flexible

and different scenarios different situations.

As always, flexibility in the admissions process

is very important for students and colleges have committed

to take that into account.

They are aware of the circumstances

and the public health crisis.

And they will use that when they're considering test scores,

grades, extracurricular activities.

They are truly emphasizing flexibility

and that's what we keep hearing from them.

The best advice for students is always to reach out

to the colleges that they're interested in

and have a conversation with them.

Some colleges may not require the SAT.

But we're still encouraging students to take the SAT,

if possible, to help show their skills.

Because once again,

it's a part of many pieces that

go into the college admissions process.

And the stronger your portfolio

can be for college admissions, the better your chance