Students Who Cheat on ACT, SAT Exams Face Few Consequences

Student Loan Girl — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 21:31:00 GMT

Students at a Los Angeles area high school are suspected of paying a former student to take the ACT college entrance exam in their place.

The alleged cheaters will likely have their scores invalidated, but the colleges and universities that received the students’ scores may never know why, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times (“Cheating on ACT, SAT College Entrance Exams Has Few Consequences,” July 14, 2008).

While students who are caught cheating in college may face probation or be expelled, students who cheat on one a college entrance exam get a second shot at a higher score. And neither the college nor the student’s high school are alerted about the student’s dishonest behavior.

“We don’t tell schools or anyone else; we simply cancel the score,” said ACT spokesman Ed Colby. “What we’re trying to do is make sure the scores that we send to colleges are valid. It’s not our intention to go around punishing students who make mistakes or who’ve done something they shouldn’t have.”

Cheating Policies Don’t Encourage Ethical Conduct

Critics contend that the ACT’s policy to keep testing irregularities confidential — a policy that is also held by the SAT — sends a message that cheating on the test is OK and has few consequences.

“What they’re basically saying is ‘Try it. You have nothing to lose,’ ” said Michael Josephson, president of the Los Angeles-based Josephson Institute of Ethics. “Why not say to someone who robbed a 7-Eleven, ‘Please give back the merchandise or pay for it, but we don’t want you to feel bad about stealing.’ ”

Josephson argues that the ACT and the SAT cheating policies are too lax and firmer consequences need to be put in place.

Tom Ewing, spokesman for the Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT, said that prohibiting a student suspected of cheating from re-taking the test could hinder that student’s educational future — a move he said “seems a bit extreme.”

The two companies have found that cheating on the tests is relatively rare and prompts only about 2,000 investigations on average out of the more than 3 million tests administered each year. Most accusations of cheating are made by students or exam proctors and typically involve a student copying from another’s exam.

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Can the “Personal Potential Index” Measure What Standardized Tests Miss?

Student Loan Girl — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 16:48:00 GMT

The Educational Testing Service may soon offer hope to students who dream about attending graduate school but have difficulty performing well on current standardized tests. Ironically, ETS is doing so by introducing another standardized measurement tool, the “Personal Potential Index.” But instead of measuring graduate school candidates solely on cognitive skills or factual knowledge like traditional admissions tests, the Personal Potential Index would gauge a candidate’s non-academic strengths and weaknesses.

Developed at the request of the Graduate Record Exam (GRE) advisory board, which was seeking ways “to measure and evaluate non-cognitive abilities,” the Personal Potential Index aims to give graduate schools a broader perspective on applicants, according to a recent article by Scott Jaschik that appeared in Inside Higher Ed (“New Standard for Getting In,” July 6, 2007).

“The development of the index is a significant acknowledgment of the dissatisfaction with traditional admissions measures,” Jaschik writes.

Personal Potential in 6 Dimensions

Supporters of the index, Jaschik says, hope that it will “create a standardized tool that gives credit to strengths that many students … may have that don’t show up on the GRE.”

Intended as a supplement to traditional admissions measures such as test scores and letters of recommendation, the index would be filled out online by three or four people recommending a student for admission. Professors and supervisors would answer four questions for each of the six non-cognitive areas measured, rating applicants on a five-point scale, from “below average” to “truly exceptional”:

knowledge and creativity
communication skills
teamwork
resilience
planning and organization
ethics and integrity

This evaluation could reveal handicaps in people who, for example, don’t play well with others or who collapse like a deck of cards under pressure. A teamwork question may ask whether the candidate is supportive of others’ work, while a resilience question may ask how well an applicant can overcome setbacks and challenges.

In addition to rated answers, the index also allows a candidate’s reviewers to provide written remarks or elaborations in each of the measured categories and to comment on an applicant’s “overall suitability for the programs to which they are applying.” Schools would receive overall average ratings, as well as average scores for each category, and would have access to evaluators’ complete responses for each candidate.

Standardizing the Intangibles

Although ETS hopes that graduate schools may eventually be able to use the index to hone in on which non-cognitive skills will be predictive of a candidate’s success, some critics question if it makes sense for ETS to attempt “to quantify qualities that relate to character and personality in ways that may be unique to individuals and not suited for numbers.”

Some, like Robert Schaeffer, public education director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, say the index simply goes too far. Schaeffer questions, for example, what a 3.8 rating reveals about a candidate’s resilience or organization. “This is overkill,” he’s quoted as saying, “trying to over-qualify everything to a decimal point.” Schaeffer commends the non-cognitive focus of the index, but wonders “why the questions couldn’t be more open-ended with the idea that admissions committees could read what people write, rather than having a score to quickly consider.”

The ultimate value of the index, which is still in the pilot stages, remains to be seen. But for now, at least, ETS is acknowledging that an individual’s academic and testing abilities can’t be the only measures by which to identify educational success. “I think what’s happening is that the largest manufacturer of standardized tests has seen the writing on the wall,” Schaeffer says in Jaschik’s article, “and that the future [of admissions] is not just in testing.”

The student loan advisors at NextStudent are helpful and knowledgeable about student loans. They are a trusted source in getting you the appropriate information about your student loan consolidation and student loan options and in helping students get the college financing they need. Go to www.nextstudent.com for more information.

Be sure to tune in next Monday for my next blog on student loan issues in the news.

Student Loan Girl

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Student Loan Blog : Educational Testing Service

Students Who Cheat on ACT, SAT Exams Face Few Consequences

Can the “Personal Potential Index” Measure What Standardized Tests Miss?