Cheating on ACT, SAT college entrance exams has few consequences

[flashl]

A group of students at a Los Angeles high school is suspected of cheating on the ACT college entrance exam by paying a former student, who used fraudulent identification, to take the tests. The testing agency recently began investigating the claims, which could result in cancellation of scores provided to colleges.

But those colleges will not be told why the scores are invalid, nor will the students' high school be clued in.

In all likelihood, the students will simply retake the test with few consequences, the result of a little-known policy by the ACT and the College Board, which owns the rival SAT, to keep such irregularities confidential. Each year, millions of stressed-out students take the two tests, hoping a good score will secure them a spot at the nation's top colleges.

But most students know little of what occurs when a score is in dispute. And the policies of the two nonprofit test companies seem to satisfy no one. Some complain that scores are arbitrarily canceled without evidence, while others criticize the companies for giving a free pass to cheaters.

If a score is invalidated, colleges receive a fairly generic alert like this one sent recently to UCLA:

"The ACT cancels scores for a variety of reasons, including illness of the examinee, mis-timing of the test, disturbances or irregularity at the testing site. . . . It is the ACT policy to treat the ACT's reasoning for canceling a specific score as confidential."

LA Times

Mods: sorry for going over 4 paragraph limit.

[tbyg52]

1. Same thing happened recently with some AP tests

The original scores were thrown out, but the students will be allowed to retake the tests. I don't call that much of a consequence.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. It CAN catch up with you eventually.

True Story.

In July of 1992, a bunch of law graduates were at the Jacob Javitz Center in NYC to take their two-day New York State bar examination. Two of these characters had gone to law school together and cheated their way through their diplomas quite successfully and planned on using their refined methods for this examination.

Before the examination, they went to the mens room and carefully examined the tiles, the mirrors, the stalls for any hidden audio device, and satisfied with finding nothing, they sat down to take their tests.

For each of the two morning sessions and two afternoon sessions, one of them would ask to be excused to go to the restroom. The other would wait a few minutes, and get excused and head for the same place. They traded essay question answers, etc. and went back to their seats.

All went well.

Until they were told to put down their pencils at the end of the second session of the second day. There were two big guys standing in back of their chairs and they told these guys to come with them. The two bewildered graduates followed them into a room with two chairs. They were told to sit down, shut up, and watch a video.

A video of them furiously trading answers four times during the bar examination in the bathroom.

Then the voice told them that they had just pissed away seven years of their parents' tuition money, and they would NEVER practice law, not even in Guam or the Aleutian Islands. And they have been permanently barred from ever applying to take the bar examination anywhere. They will never be lawyers.

And no, they didn't sue the bar examination board for invasion of privacy, etc.

So, this little morality play just shows you that not EVERYBODY "gets away with it".