College Board is cancelling people's paid and confirmed registrations for March SAT...

Test Preparation
221

You have no evidence that the boards of education in the states using the SAT did not perform due diligence. I don’t have the standing to demand, as a taxpayer, to examine the bona fides of state contractors in any field, whether construction, food service, etc. That’s done by the state authorities.

And the idea that adult tutors provide a quality check for the SAT is not credible. If you’re not able to legally discuss a test in any form, it would be difficult to provide a review.

It will be interesting to see if banning adults who are not applying to college programs from the non-disclosed editions of standardized tests will decrease the scores of their students on those questions later on. If it does, this step will have increased test security. After all, adults have been caught falsifying passports and identification–a felony–in order to take these tests under assumed identities. Cell phones and camera technology have improved to the point that it is possible to take pictures of test booklets while taking a test. The College Board has had to cancel test sittings for entire countries more and more often in the last few years. This cannot go on.

It is in the interest of all the students taking the test that test security be increased. This is only one step.

222

I’m a private tutor of both SAT and ACT. I have no stake in either. Nor am I employed by a big testing company.

This is an interesting discussion. Excuse my long post.

RE @jgoggs last question: “If the taxpayers of a state are paying a contractor to provide a service/product, should they not be able to examine the quality of that product/service? If not, why not? In what other context do we simply take a contractor’s own word that it is providing a good service/product without having the opportunity to check for ourselves?”

To answer your question: PARCC testing and before that, NCLB testing. We currently spend millions of taxpayer dollars for standardized testing that is not transparent at all. Indeed, Pearson-- the company behind PARCC - issued gag orders to teachers & (not sure how legally) to students. The test making companies not only create the test without scrutiny or accountability, they score it as well. As a teacher, I can tell you that the tests are really poorly designed, much more poorly written than the new SAT, with inexplicable emphasis of random skills & not others, poorly worded questions, etc. There is literally no one to complain to. The company is not accountable. I realize there are those who will say that this is simply a teacher being afraid of being ‘held accountable’ but ask yourself, just as jgoggs does: Should we not be able to examine the quality of the product we are paying for, its scientific rationale (with research), proof of its efficacy in achieving its stated goal?

I think the reason SAT is racing to get these tests out before they are fully normed and fully formed (I totally agree with jgoggs about the objections), is that it is positioning itself to replace Pearson’s PARCC (in addition to losing ground to the ACT). It clearly wants to be the alternative testing for four years in our schools. This is also why there is a sudden jump in reading in the math section, an emphasis not on logical deduction as before but instead on simply content knowledge in math and ability to decipher meaning from sentences (as opposed to just numbers) --because this is what Common Core wants. And again, it wants it for no reason at all. There is no scientific support for why it wants it; it just does.

As far as trusting CB to provide due diligence–why? They have already messed up several times. No one is discussing this because the media won’t report it. That doesn’t mean it’s not an issue. I think the errors spoken of - only four tests for instance - are because they raced to get this out before the test was fully normed. (This is why they are talking about combining the March and May results, and why they raced to have the PSAT be the new format-so they could get enough data to help norm the tests more accurately.)

It’s easy to mock or ridicule parents and students who are anxious about the sudden changes and errors that have bedeviled the new SAT. But the fact is that, fair or not fair, like it or not, so much rides on this test–not just getting into college, but also really valuable source of grants and scholarships.

It’s a stressful situation, but what are we to do except plow on.

But my two cents as far as tutors: I don’t see why any tutor would have to take the actual test in order to be a good tutor. I can tutor my students quite well with the materials available; I don’t need to take the actual test. This is usually something testing companies require their tutors to do so they can see if they’re qualified. I don’t think it’s necessary. And I agree fewer adults should be taking this, unless of course they are nontraditional students trying to return to school. But I’m not convinced that CB is objecting to the adults because of fear of cheating; I think it may well be fear of scrutiny. Moving forward, they really need to get a handle on the cheating, which will only get worse. They are aware of that though, I’m sure; cheating harms their brand.

223

Terrific post, @generations
Agreed on all counts.

224

@jgoggs-I agree with the points you make in post 219. CB may very well be lying about its motives. I advised my own child to take the ACT well ahead of the new SAT. He scored very well on that and we have no intention of having him be a guinea pig for CB. If he has to take SAT because he makes NMSF he will do so. Otherwise, we are out.

However, you are trying to make a point that CB shouldn’t regulate adult test takers because there is no proof that adult test takers have actually been involved in cheating. I think that is a weak argument.

225

Collegeboard will accept any SAT taken 10/14-12/16 for NMSF.

226

I get the feeling some people just like to argue for the sake of arguing. No one has yet to explain how this move benefits anyone but the College Board, but people still keep turning out to defend it.

Pardon? “[N]ot able to legally discuss a test in any form”? Are there really laws against discussing the test “in any form”?

Or are you just referring to some terms to which test takers are asked to agree?

If the latter, I can assure you that those terms are ignored by pretty much everyone–and rightly so. They benefit no one but the College Board, and they potentially harm everyone else. If test takers did not discuss the test, how would the misprint mishap last June have been identified and publicized? If test takers did not discuss the test, how would problem questions be identified and cancelled? If test takers did not discuss the test, how could they ask teachers, parents, or others for help dealing with difficult questions and concepts they had encountered? How could they confer with parents, teachers, etc. to make study plans, decide between SAT and ACT, and so on?

As for the role of tutors, let me give you a concrete example from the parallel world of the ACT. Until 2015, ACT science sections had unfailingly contained exactly seven science passages. Then, last year, tests with only six science passages began to appear. This change had significant implications for students’ pacing strategies, but ACT had not announced it in advance. Indeed, ACT still sells a “Real Guide” that is badly outdated not only for science but also for reading and writing. So who made sure the world knew about this change and others? The test prep industry–tutors. But they were able to do so only because people who took the test discussed it afterward.

If you are talking about the Chinese scandal from last year, adults were certainly involved, and adults certainly took adult tests (such as the GRE) under assumed identities on behalf of other adults, but I don’t remember seeing any suggestion that adults over 21 had taken the SAT under assumed identities on behalf of high school students. Didn’t this cheating operation have high-school aged students take the test on behalf of other high-school aged students?

I meant that they are accountable to taxpayers collectively.

I do not expect taxpayers in general–or parents in particular–to continue accepting the status quo: that they are paying College Board to write and administer a required state exam, but that no parents or other adults are ever allowed to examine this important exam–or even talk about it?–because College Board wants to make more money selling the same test again later. I really don’t think that will last.

227

Fair enough, @generations – there are indeed analogous testing situations without transparency or accountability. It seems we agree that they are all regrettable.

I agree that it isn’t strictly necessary, but I don’t agree that it is as trivial as you may be suggesting.

One example I would mention is that test prep teachers and tutors over a certain age are unlikely to have taken the ACT, at least if they grew up on either coast. Can they still learn about it simply by studying released tests and published materials? Sure–but I’m not convinced anything is a substitute for actually registering for the test, forcing oneself to sit down and do full tests within the time limit, and then going to a test center and doing the real thing live.

228

Then what is the strong argument in favor of regulating adult test taking?

229

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/fifteen-chinese-nationals-charged-fraud-scheme

A 19 year old is usually no longer enrolled in high school, if he follows the normal schedule. So no, this was not a scheme in which high school students took exams as ringers for high school students.

230

@Periwinkle

Thanks for the links.

On the previous page, I wrote:

The articles you have posted here do not reveal that adults over age 21 took the SAT under assumed identities on behalf of high school students. The 19-year-old is obviously not over 21, and he or she would not have been prevented from taking the SAT under the action taken by the College Board last week–only test takers over 21 were blocked. Moreover, he or she was 19 at the time of the indictment; he or she may well have been younger than 19 at the time of the crime he or she was accused of committing.

Since you also bolded “GRE,” let me mention that that is the Graduate Record Exam, taken by adults who wish to enter Masters and Ph.D. programs. The TOEFL is the Test of English as a Foreign Language and is taken by non-native speakers of any age who wish to study at any level (from high school to graduate school) in English-speaking countries.

As I have mentioned throughout this thread, this scandal did involve adults and adult test-takers, but I see no evidence that it involved adults over 21 fraudulently taking the SAT on behalf of high school students.

231

@Periwinkle

Perhaps more importantly, any scheme like the one detailed in those articles entails registering with the actual student’s information. That is, no adult would be registered; it would simply be an adult showing up with a fake passport with the student’s name, date of birth, etc. Thus, any effort to screen out registered adults would have no impact on this kind of cheating, since no adult would be registered.

232

Look around–there are a lot of 19-year-olds in high school.

233

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/us/15-chinese-accused-of-using-test-taking-impostors-for-college-entrance-exams.html?_r=0

24 year old

This thread is becoming a monologue.

234

I would think that if the college board filed a complaint against an adult non student who took the test and was bold enough to, in essence, steal the material that he had agreed not to discuss and shared it with clients for profit (and felt that he had done so rightfully), a crafty prosecutor could certainly charge him with theft, whether by deception, false pretenses, or other. Maybe even burglary if he lied on his registration. Would this ever happen? Probably not… Could it? Yes. I believe that this could not only be considered a violation of some terms that the adult agreed to, but also of the law.

235

Why don’t they prosecute?

236

I would bet that if the adult test taker was obnoxious enough - say bragging on a website that he had taken the test for the purpose of helping his clients achieve better scores and publicly admitted to sharing questions, ot better yet publicly shared that info on his test prep website, they might. Otherwise it would be pretty hard to prove. Maybe someday the CB will pull a reverse scam on cheating test prep companies by sending in adult non students to pose as student clients and collect evidence against the cheaters in their own “classrooms”. Karma.

237

@“Erin’s Dad”

This article seems to discuss a 24-year-old taking the TOEFL, presumably on behalf of someone near his own age, whom he could credibly impersonate.

What we are discussing at this point in this thread is whether adults over 21 (the cutoff point for the March test cancellations) have been fraudulently taking the SAT on behalf of actual high-school age students. No one has yet identified a single case of that happening, much less shown that it is any widespread problem.

Moreover, even if it were a problem, the College Board’s recent action would do nothing to address it. Why not? Because the College Board’s ban affects people whose registration information (i.e., date of birth) shows them to be adults over 21 years old.

But if an adult were going to fraudulently take the SAT on behalf of a student, the adult would not register with his or her own name and and date of birth. The whole point would be to impersonate the student. Thus, the student would have to register with his or her real name and birth date and then the adult would have to show up with false identification and pretend to be the student.

Given the facts above and elsewhere in this thread, can any of you explain why you continue to find this Chinese cheating scandal relevant to March test situation?

238

@Erin’s Dad

Maybe I am missing something here, but my reading of the NY Times article is that the person who DID NOT take the TOEFL test was 24, not the imposter who DID take the test.

I could not find any information in the article about the ages of the people (the imposters) who were actually sitting the tests. The imposter for Zhan (the 24 year-old) is called “an unnamed person” and no information about the age of this person, the actual test-taker, is in the article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/us/15-chinese-accused-of-using-test-taking-impostors-for-college-entrance-exams.html?_r=1

Further, the TOEFL is a test regularly taken by people of all ages, even over 50. The SAT is a test for high school kids. Sending in an adult imposter would attract attention. So it is even less likely that SAT imposters would be adults.

In the Long Island imposter scandal, the imposters were college students a year or two out of high school. They were 21 or younger. In fact, these kids started the imposter ring when they were still in high school, and then continued it into college. Parents of weaker students were giving their kids money to give to the imposters to take the test for them. The adults were the people funding the cheating, not the people taking the test.

I don’t conclude from this that any adult should be allowed to take the SAT. What I conclude is that College Board is defaming honest SAT tutors by implying that these tutors sit the SAT in order to cheat.

I don’t think it is necessary for a tutor to sit the test. I myself never sat and never considered sitting the old test. However, I did consider sitting the new test (although in the end I decided against it.) The reason for this is clear: College Board has released very little information about the content of the new test. For the old test, there were 10 Blue Book practice tests, 10 online course practice tests and many quizzes, all written by the people who wrote the test. For the new test, there are 4 practice SAT’s, 1 PSAT practice test, and Khan Academy.

I have gone through a lot of the Khan Academy material. The form and content of the Khan Academy material are very different from the form and content of the official practice tests. I wonder what this means. Does this mean that there will be questions like the Khan Academy questions, that Khan knows something the official practice tests don’t show?Will the real SAT be more like Khan, or more like the official practice tests? The reason I began to post about the rSAT on CC was to try to answer this question. That was back in September. I still don’t know the answer.

Sitting the March SAT might have helped me to answer this question. But I didn’t register because after I saw the October PSAT’s, I decided the new test was so poorly designed that sitting it under test conditions would have been an exercise in righteous indignation.

239

@plotinus you saw the October psat? It was already released? I thought only the scores were released in January.

240

@201Beastorwest

At the same time in January the score reports were posted to student accounts, the students could access the PSAT test questions from their CB accounts.

The college counselors also returned the original test booklets in the end of January.

The original PSAT test booklets, with the students’ pencil markings, have always been returned to the students. This is to help them prepare better for the SAT, supposedly the main function of the PSAT. In fact, in previous years, my students got their booklets back in early December. This year they got them back almost two months later, and also later than had been promised by College Board. This was very disruptive given that students had planned to study over the winter break when they had more free time.