Sorry to be late to the party here, but can someone explain to me why she has a civial rights lawery?
I thought Civil Rights lawyers handled cases like discrimination for protected classes, and issues involving sex, race, and national origin. Is she saying she is being discriminated against because she is part of a protected class? If that’s the case, can all the kid’s that took texts over seas and whole countries had their test scores cancelled sue?
@marvin100 at #37 - can’t disagree with any of the facts in this post. Both testing agencies have had egg on their face numerous times. Also, CB’s roll-out of the new SAT was a joke. Absolutely appropriate to point all this out and even to support efforts to chip away at the ridiculous stronghold that the two companies have on the college admissions process. While ETS doesn’t seem to have the same amount of scandal and lies, it probably has had its own problems. The system is far from perfect.
But one of the most pervasive problems of all - of course - is cheating on the test and this has become much easier in the age of technology. CB re-using a test is lazy and atrocious and compromises the system - sure - but that doesn’t translate into permission to cheat the system itself. Guessing that simply eliminating the do-over would take care of a lot of this. If students find that they could be shut out of testing altogether if they so much as look like they are cheating, they’ll clean up their act. Appropriate consequences for any bad eggs who are administrators can be easily doled out (and probably are) but the onus must be on the student to put forth an honest effort, since they are the ones who experience the ultimate consequences of testing. If you are credibly (ie beyond a reasonable doubt) found to be cheating, you are out of that test and if you/your parents sue, so be it. Of course this means that the standards must be fool proof and the “jury” rendering the decision unbiased. They keep their methods proprietary so that students can’t think of the next creative way to get around the system, but the statistical modeling at the very least should be fairly straightforward and most techniques are also going to be easy to figure out so keeping this stuff secret is probably useless. Better to air it out and dole out firmer consequences. Nipping the problem at its root will do more to assure fairness than chasing seniors down upon the eve of their graduation.
BTW, cheating the system is bad. CHANGING the system - different story. Colleges that are going test-optional or test-flexible are but one way to make it so that ACT/SAT remain viable as a college admissions tool at all. When you have competition, you treat your stakeholders better.
@3scoutsmom I wrote this on another thread and I am pasting it over here about what I have seen on the case so far.
I don’t think she is implying racism based on what I have seen. Ben Crump is a civil rights attorney, but he got involved due to his connection (Florida St grad) to her number 1 choice school and the fact that some other FSU alum asked for him to get involved is the backstory that I have heard on the case so far.
@ChangeTheGame - his connection to FSU is handy but Ben Crump definitely threatened litigation on the "basis of the violation of (Campbell’s) civil rights . . . " Draw whatever conclusions you wish from that statement.
@3scoutsmom - no, they can’t. Because they are not US citizens; civil rights laws don’t apply.
It is very common in Florida to start school in the summer. Florida requires at least one summer session so many students do it immediately so that they can work full summers in the following years. My kids had friends who started school just a few weeks after hs graduation. One was accepted and HAD to start immediately as that was the program she was accepted to.
@JBStillFlying I haven’t seen that particular quote, but I believe you. Everything I have seen to this point talked about the system not being accountable to anyone and Crump wanting to know what made them think she cheated (wanting to take a look at the evidence that College Board had). It has been about 2 weeks since this has gone public and College Board has 2 weeks to respond to a demand letter so I am sure more information will be coming out soon.
That was my first reaction. If nothing else, I would think that this would be terrible from a PR standpoint for her, leading some to accuse her of trying to “sue her way into FSU.” This could be especially problematic for her because right now, PR is the only thing separating her from the probably thousands of other students who have their scores cancelled each year without ever seeing any “proof” of their cheating or finding out why they were accused of doing so. Without the press, you can bet that CB would not be contacting FSU to make sure she can apply before the score is officially released.
That being said, CB and ACT obviously have a responsibility to prevent cheating wherever possible, both from the perspective of fairness and their bottom line (if colleges get the perception that too many test scores are inaccurate, they’ll be all the more likely to go test optional). There are, however, additional things that these organizations can be doing to reduce cheating:
-
Stop reusing tests is a no-brainer. CB makes more than enough money to write a new test every month; the fact that they are not doing so is simply unfathomable to me.
-
Don’t threaten to punish all the students at a testing center for one student’s actions. I know of one case at a nearby school where school officials were made aware of a credible accusation of cheating but did not report it to CB because they feared that everyone else’s tests would be cancelled too. The accused got their score just like everyone else.
-
Do SOMETHING to ensure that proctors are paying attention during the tests so that they can be meaningful voices in cases of suspected cheating. It’s also amazing how many proctors fail to do even the basic things required of them by testing agencies: namely collecting cell phones before testing begins and assigning seats randomly.
It’s ridiculous to me that it’s necessary to get an attorney to get any substantiation of - or even specific reason for - an accusation of cheating from ETS.
@ChangeTheGame - it was in the demand letter - linking that here isn’t allowed because it’s on google drive and for some reason cutting and pasting doesn’t work, for some reason. But you can get to the letter by reading post #19.
“Without the press, you can bet that CB would not be contacting FSU to make sure she can apply before the score is officially released.”
@mathhappy - where did you read that they were?
@ChangeTheGame - Update to #48 - finally figured out how to download the letter to my desktop. Here is the quote:
“Based on the foregoing, we demand that you release her test scores within the next two weeks (14 days) from today’s date so that colleges and scholarship committees can appropriately evaluate her applications. If not, we will move forward with exploring every possible legal remedy available to give Kamilah the justice she deserves, including but not limited to pursuing litigation on the basis of the violation of her civil rights. In our research into this matter and in consultation with Elder Veronica Morning-Morrison, the Executive Director of Triumphant People, a community taskforce, we recognize that this may not be an isolated incident, and if Kamilah’s scores are not released, we resolve to identify other similarly affected students and pursue remedies.”
@JBStillFlying re: post #49
It’s unclear who initiated the contact, but either way it wouldn’t be happening if this wasn’t a national story.
@mathhappy - couldn’t agree more.
Edit/update: that might be a generic statement (just read the article and that new snippet of info). This might be the case for all students who are in the process of a hold pending review or arbitration. They didn’t identify that this was specifically regarding Ms. Campbell. If it is, and esp. if CB initiated, then other students have grounds for major lawsuits against the CB for not doing the same for them. But it does point out the importance of contacting the university of choice if this happens to a student. It’s really between the student and the university to work out timing issues because the testing company is delaying the score beyond typical (or even reasonable) expectations.
@JBStillFlying #41
I don’t really know what that’s all about–it has nothing to do with my actual argument, which is that ETS hasn’t given any real evidence that its methods are “sophisticated” and that honest test-takers have had their scores canceled for opaque reasons (ones that I don’t believe).
The rest of the stuff about how cheaters are to blame for cheating is truism, and I’ve expressed the same sentiment many, many times here. I’m as staunchly anti-cheating as they come, and I’ve made a career doing so in a market tainted by cheating.
Yeah, see, the whole claim is “the weeds.” Without the weeds, it’s just “take our word for it,” and I have no reason to do so given the testing companies’ routine dishonesty and self-serving opacity. That, combined with my personal knowledge of honest, hard-working students’ whose scores were cancelled through zero fault of their own, is why I remain (probably intractably) skeptical of this completely unsubstantiated claim of “sophisticated statistical methods.”
@marvin100 - you are missing the point. Weeds is detail but it needn’t remain secret. In fact, CB says they provide “evidence” and have done so for Kamilah Campbell and her attorneys. Are you saying they are lying?
Frankly, a tad surprised here - you are a test prep expert. Do you not understand the type of statistical analysis that these companies do? Also, no one likely doubts that your clients are very nice people but unless you are trying to drum up business with your strong advocacy for “the innocent,” your repeated emphasis on that subject belies your supposedly staunch anti-cheating position. What is the real problem here - cheating, or sweeping nets that catch guilty and innocent alike? Asked another way: how many are caught innocent vs. cheat on a standardized test in a given year?
There are multiple problems, as is almost always the case, and none of them are mutually exclusive. Here are just a few, in no particular order.
- cheating
- test recycling, which leaves the door open for the most egregious forms of cheating
- opacity
- punishing the innocent
I’m concerned about all of them, but this thread is particularly relevant to the latter two, and claims of “sophisticated modelling” with no backup (and the scare quotes around the word evidence in your comment are apt!) are unconvincing to me. You find them convincing, I get it, but either give some good reasons I should agree or accept that I have good reasons to disagree.
@marvin100 - don’t find them convincing or unconvincing. I don’t have particular knowledge in this area other than that the modeling tends to be used - whether well or poor is something that you should be able to weigh in on with some intelligence. Haven’t seen it yet. The thread covers cheating as well. It’s not clear whether Ms. Campbell is innocent or not but it’s clearly the pervasive existence of cheating that led to her score hold.
You’ve listed problems - now please list them in order of importance this time. You have an opinion on that. Please share.
@JBStillFlying
I think it is specifically about Ms Campbell because otherwise they wouldn’t be mentioning FSU. They just can’t say that that’s who they’re talking about because I’m sure that their policies prohibit them from discussing individual cases publicly. I think I read in one article that because of privacy concerns, they were only commenting on information that the student had already made public.
Also, now that I think about it more, I don’t think that this is really about “winning” the legal case at all. I think we can agree that this is not a civil rights issue since it has nothing to do with Ms Campbell’s race, gender, or anything of that nature. Rather, it’s about getting publicity in order to put pressure on CB to return a favorable outcome, which, if the ACT cheating thread is any indication, does not happen all that often, even in cases where students present compelling evidence to the testing organizations.
It should also be noted that students have sued ETS and other testing companies in the past over this issue (for a solid overview: https://digitalcommons.law.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1210&context=elj) but the student almost never wins. The closest thing I’ve found to a student “winning” was in Dalton v. ETS where ETS was required to re-conduct its investigation because the court found that it hadn’t followed its own policies, namely by not considering evidence that the student submitted in defense of himself. There was also Cortale v. ETS (in regard to the GRE) where the court found that ETS didn’t act in “good faith” because they destroyed the student’s test booklet while the investigation was on-going.
The thing is, as long as the test organizations are following their own policies, however unreasonable they may be, there’s nothing the courts can do about it. They’re not public institutions, so “innocent until proven guilty” doesn’t apply and the Terms and Conditions do spell out that they do not have to “prove” that a student has cheated in order to cancel a score and that the reasons for cancelling a score are not limited to things that are within the student’s control (ie proctor messes up the timing).
I’d love to know your knowledge about that–please share!
I don’t have a strong opinion on that, to be honest, but from a pragmatic perspective, several of the other problems could be ameliorated or even solved if test recycling were ended. Obviously stopping cheating is important, but the CB/ETS/ACT have shown little to no ability to do so, and their continuing reliance on test recycling suggests they don’t really even care all that much or at least aren’t willing to put their money where their mouths are. As a teacher, if I have cheaters in my class, I catch and punish them when I can, but I also have a duty to enact procedures to make cheating as difficult or unrewarding as possible. The two go together hand in hand.