Close to Home: On scale of 1 to 10, new SAT scale is at the bottom

My vote for the most confusing thing of the year?

Nope, it's not which presidential candidate I should vote for. It's the dreadful new SAT scale.

For those of you who don't know, there is a new SAT this year. This is the most radically changed SAT: harder math that is chock-full of Common Core concepts, difficult reading passages, a longer, optional essay and so on.

To make it worse, many families have reported a series of disappointments with this new SAT: late PSAT scores, bad test-prep material and a severely understaffed customer service group to handle issues.

The latest problem is the scale that the College Board has chosen for the new SAT.

From 2005-2015, the SAT has had a 2400 point scale. Previous to 2005, the SAT had a 1600 point scale. This has made it fairly easy for many parents to compare their scores to those of their children. Just take your kid's score and divide it by two thirds. In other words, a 2100 on your kid's scale was fairly close to a 1400 on your scale. An 1800 on your kid's scale was fairly close to a 1200 on your scale, and so on.

When the new SAT was announced, the College Board stated that it was moving back to a 1600 point scale. Many parents sighed in relief. Now understanding their children's scores would be even easier. It was a straight-up comparison, right?

Wrong!

Just a few days ago, the College Board released the March SAT scores and the scale for the new SAT. Somehow (and remember the College Board can choose to set the scale any way it likes), the New SAT 1600 scale doesn't match the Old SAT 1600 scale at all.

All of a sudden, an 1100 on the new SAT is just above average (closer to the low 1500's on the 2005-2015 scale and around 1000 on the pre-2005 scale. Your son scored a 1400, think that's a phenomenal score? Nope, it's just merely good — in the high 1900's on the 2005-2015 scale and mid 1300's on the pre-2005 scale.

So, to really know what's going on, your best move is to go to the College Board website (www.collegeboard.org). There, you will find a concordance chart so that you can understand the proper comparison between the 2005-2015 SAT scores and the new SAT (2016 and after) scores.

This also means that you need to be extremely careful when you look on college admission websites. You don't think that some colleges are going to botch this? Also, be happy you're not me. All day long, I have to break bad news to parents that their kid's SAT score was not as high as it appeared to be.

And, if you're a parent reading this, here's the good news: You don't have to take the SAT ever again. Just do your child a favor: Learn the new SAT scale.

David Benjamin Gruenbaum, along with his wife, Heather, co-own the private education company, Ahead of the Class in Santa Rosa. Gruenbaum teaches SAT and ACT classes at Cardinal Newman and Maria Carrillo High Schools.