Pretty simple. A large part of the cheating is a result of organized groups recreating the contents of tests that were not released officially through the QAS. I am sure you know that the QAS does not work on every administration. The non QAS admins are the ones that are then used abroad. In theory such tests are thus not “seen” by anyone outside the students who sat for that precise tests.
Forcing the College Board (and the Iowa Boys) to release every one of the administrations will simply remove the attraction to go … steal them or recompile them in mildly illegal manners. Obviously, the forced releases will stop the recycling of tests in its track.
This is different from the type of cheating that relies on corrupting foreign officials who might release the test a few days/hours before the test is given.
To make it harder to exploit time zone differences to cheat, the CB could offer 3 new tests each testing date: a different test in asia/pac, europe/africa, americas. And instead of giving it at the same local time, give it at the same Zulu time.
These kind of tests should be computerized with biometric identification of the test takers. Majority of test takers should use their own portable computer with wireless. Questions will appear randomly from a very large database, all questions can exists with many minor variations and random sequence of multiple-choice answers that are scored in real time. They can even introduce adaptive testing where questions will become progressively more difficult if you are answering correctly. This will address complains that the top of the curve is squeezed. There are no technological barriers to eliminate all cheating and make test more indicative of the real academic ability.
“At some point constantly having to cancel/not release scores has to cost more than creating new tests.”
Computer-based adaptive testing does appear to be a strong trend in the industry, but even with that creating new test items is time-consuming and expensive. If it were possible, the test companies would never create new test items because of the time and cost involved. I’ve written items as a sub-contractor for Pearson and others. Everything I wrote went through at least two levels of revision and evaluation before it even got out of my immediate working group. After that each item would have been reviewed by two or more readers at the next level before being handed off to someone inside the exam company itself.
I get it, but hundreds - thousands? - of scores have been held just this academic year. At some point don’t families decide to do the ACT (or something, IDK what the options are) instead rather than spend the money to register for the SAT, travel to the test site and all that for a test that seems increasingly likely not to be reportable?
What proportion of scores are actually held though? OK, a hundred or a thousand scores being withheld or cancelled is bad, but if a million people take the test each year then that’s just a fraction of a percentage. It may still be worth it (for cheaters and non-cheaters) alike to spend the money. I don’t know how many schools even make the SAT test itself optional, so that’s probably another driver. We’re only hearing about the people who get caught, but realistically the cheating incidents that make the news are probably not the only cheating incidents that have ever taken place.
Families may decide to do the ACT for reasons other than reporting controversies. If you’ve had decent science instruction in high school – i.e., including reading data – then the ACT is far easier of a test, i.m.o. The reading passages do not have the range of difficulty and length that the SAT does, the questions about the passages are easier, the grammar tested is much more limited in scope, and the essay prompt continues to be a lame opinion question unlike anything a college student will ever be asked to do. Given that the SAT’s essay section has now been reformed, it may be that colleges will start considering (the new) SAT scores ore seriously than ACT scores. I don’t know, though: I haven’t seen the full range of the new SAT reading passages and am concerned about some of the things Coleman wants to focus on but pleased about other areas. One of the few things I do appreciate about the current SAT is the breadth of reading content which in fact does more closely mimic college variety.
Or, families may even more prefer the ACT because the new SAT essay requires analysis, which not all public school students get enough practice with.
@epiphany - I agree that some parts of the ACT are easier, some harder. D has had mixed results, higher SAT math scores than ACT math scores, the reverse for English. But that is indeed a different discussion.
IDK how available or popular the ACT is abroad, and if it is available, if they recycle tests like the CB does.
As to the expense of writing new test questions, The College Board is officially a nonprofit. They have the resources to write the tests, if they care to.
@Periwinkle - Yes, but would the consumer want to pay what the CB would need to charge for those original-every-single-time exams? Just because an organization is officially non-profit doesn’t mean it can afford to function at a loss.
I suggest you read this article, or look at the Colllege Board’s 990s, available from Guidestar. As of 2011, the then-president earned $1.3 million. Nineteen other executives earned more than $300,000.
“Nonprofit” doesn’t mean it isn’t highly profitable. It just means it doesn’t pay taxes.
“To make it harder to exploit time zone differences to cheat, the CB could offer 3 new tests each testing date: a different test in asia/pac, europe/africa, americas. And instead of giving it at the same local time, give it at the same Zulu time.”
It would be unfair to have tests at 3am for some kids…
“These kind of tests should be computerized with biometric identification of the test takers. Majority of test takers should use their own portable computer with wireless:”
You mean the college board providing multiple devices which are kept safe from tampering for months between tests? then all charged up for the tests? I can’t see allowing people to have wireless communication DURING a test, from their own device
CB ships an appliance that looks like a cable box that is attached to the test center’s internal network during the test and connects to the CB central site over the Internet. Sits in the broom closet between tests. It does not have any test data to tamper with as it pulls test data at the last moment. Students use wireless LAN at test center to connect to this box. When connection is established student’s computer is isolated from any other destinations. SAT app can completely take over the computer making it unusable for any other purpose. Students can test their laptops against CB SAT application in advance or download client app if required. Cost money to design this setup but may save them money in the long run. Once designed they can license this technology to other test providers.
This is just one rough example of what can be done. They can even get rid of test dates completely and allow retesting every month from designated locations at any time. They may allow direct connections to their test servers from these locations so no intermediate box is needed. Many things are possible now. It is time for pencil #2 to go.
I heard from my Chinese friend that their country if you graduate from top college in U.S. will guarantee your rest of your life once you come back. So, parents are willing to spend very expensive college prep course and counseling. I guess good to have rich parents willing to spend so much money to send kids to U.S.
I am pretty sure that colleges are aware of what’s going on. But taking on high scoring internationals accomplishes two primary objectives: (1) boost their statistics for SAT, and (2) get more students to pay the full fare.
Some people argue that there are only a small percentage of international Chinese/Korean students cheat on their SAT tests. But if you look at the college board’s own statistics, there are only something like 0.5% of the test takers in US score 2300+. Since it is reasonable to assume that people who cheat (in the scheme described by the Post article) will score at least 2300+, and given that elite Ivy League admission rates for internationals are at around the 2% level, one has to conclude that most, if not all international Chinese/Korean Ivy League admits have questionable academic credentials. This is because GPAs at the Chinese prep schools in the major cities are totally fabricated and there’re no AP classes offered there.
This brings the question of why the elite colleges are doing this? I think they are doing this in order to boost their aid to the low income/URM enrollment. Without tuition money from the internationals, they would have to take on more full paying domestics, but since there are not a lot of 2300+ US full payers to go around, their all important “upper 25% SAT score” would have to suffer, and the same for their US News rankings.
But you ask do they care for how students turn out after they are admitted? The answer is grade inflation (see remarks by the president of Dartmouth on this just past week). In reality, you only need to inflate the grades for some of the classes to allow the athletes, the non-qualifying URMs and the internationals to graduate. For example, see research on this by Duke Econ professor Peter Arcidiacono.