The SAT II Math exam is administered 6 times during the 2019-2020 school year. To be used 100 times, it would have to last over 15 years. For IB/AP Calc it's even worse, that is literally given on one day to the entire country (modulo a very small number of makeup exams), so would get two days of use per year (one for AP, one for IB). If you used the same set of calculators for both, we're talking about the hardware lasting at least 12 years on average, ignoring storage and transportation costs. Oh, and then you expose yourself to "the calculator was broken, that's why I failed" when right now they have the excellent defense of "well, you brought it."
You're neither adding all of the College Board tests that use a calculator nor accounting for the discounted wholesale price (or maybe better considering the volume) that would be paid.
The SAT II Math isn't the only test. The normal SAT math component also allows calculators and is generally administered on different dates. The SAT is offered on 21 dates in 2019, so that's a total of 27 tests. Even at a full ~$100 per calculator, charging an extra $1 per test would still cover the cost in a little more than 3 years.
AP Exams: Unlike the SAT which has regional test locations, AP exams are generally administered in the school you attend, and the school should provide a calculator. For that matter, the whole issue could be solved if schools issued them as standard equipment that same way they do textbooks.
Finally, the whole point of these tests is to establish the level of knowledge a student has. That hasn't really been done if the test takers aren't on the same level playing field. All else being equal, the same score for a test taker with a calculator compared to one without would mean very different things. It's supposed to be a standardized test. All students should have the same equipment.
12 years for a well treated, very lightly used TI calculator seems perfectly reasonable. My high school had a few loaners that were used throughout the year (and not always under supervision) and the only sign of their age (about 9 years old) were a few faded button labels.
I have previously been on site for an SAT II reading session (this is the part following the proctoring). It was hard enough to get the logistics right for getting all the scantron sheets and papers to where they needed to go. And overnight shipping printers and other equipment on failure.
Adding any more logistics into this process would increase costs and provide no headline-worthy benefit.
Yes, the logistics would need to be worked out. However I've proctored large LSAT tests and not found the workload of reading instructions and gathering papers to be so burdensome that I wouldn't have been able to deal with calculators. This isn't rocket science, portraying it as insurmountably difficult or expensive really over estimates the problem: A nominal increase to the test fee would easily cover additional costs.
Either way, the headline-worthy benefit, if I take your meaning with that phrase correctly, is that this is a standardized test. You don't get to "standardized" by not providing equal equipment to test takers. Regardless of whether it's "easy" to do, it is a necessary condition for actually being a standardized test.
