On Tuesday, November 22, 13 students (in addition to the seven first charged in September) were accused of accepting payment or paying others to take the SAT or ACT exams over the past three years. Four of the 13 were charged with felonies for taking the tests and making a business out of it. As Jenny Anderson and Winnie Hu first reported for The New York Times, the other nine are facing misdemeanor charges for paying the offenders.
The test-takers, now enrolled at Emory University, Indiana University, Tulane University, and SUNY Stony Brook bubbled in answers under the false identities of students from Great Neck North High School, North Shore Hebrew Academy High School, and Roslyn High School.
Samual Eshagoff, 19, was arrested for posing as six different Long Island students. For a fee ranging between $1,500 and $2,500, Eshagoff created fake IDs and took the tests for the student. The truth unraveled when faculty at Great Neck North High School heard rumors that this was going on. The suspected cheaters were tracked down, and forty students were investigated. They were questioned because they took their tests at another school. Then, their scores and past academic performance were compared.
“This is a crime,” Nassau County District Attorney, Kathleen Rice, said in a statement. “Educating our children means more than teaching them facts and figures. It means teaching them honesty, integrity and a sense of fair play.”
There is this pressure to get into a good college at any cost, which can cause students to throw their academic honesty out the window. This is just more of a reason colleges shouldn’t base admittance mainly off of standardized test scores. Who knows what they measure anyway?
The SATs are a standardized test that focuses more on general reasoning, while the ACTs focus more on subject matter. Research suggests these tests reflect bias against black and Latino students, who to this day, score worse, on average, than white students.
SATs only measure one’s ability to take the SAT, which is a skill that could be picked up in a coaching class if you have the bank account to do so. For example, The Princeton Review offers SAT classes weekly for six weeks from $799 to $899. Thus, wealthier kids have an unfair advantage by receiving more preparation for the three-hour test.
Educational Testing Service, ETS, which administers the SAT, recently admitted before Congress that cheating is more rampant, according to recent coverage on National Public Radio.
“The original intention of a standardized testing measure was understandable as a backstop, a quality checkpoint for colleges reviewing applications across a vast landscape of high schools varying in rigor and quality,” stated Hewitt’s college guidance counselor, Ms. Petrella. “The Long Island cheating scandal stands at the end of a long line of questions about the value and validity of a test, which as it turns out, doesn’t level the playing field and is quite coachable.”
Some say, however, that completely dropping a college’s SAT requirement would lower standards and lose its fundamental goal of academic excellence. I agree that the test is needed on some level but that colleges should be more open to the other factors that come into play.
This cheating scandal is a perfect example of why this test can’t be used as a judge of one’s worth. It is not fair that a dedicated, driven, focused student who has so many other things going for him or her should be penalized and not even looked at for getting a score that doesn’t meet a school’s criteria. Someone with a perfect SAT score may not be as well-rounded as someone with a lesser score.
I sincerely hope that schools don’t just say that they look at a student’s whole picture when considering an applicant, but that they really do.
I agree that these tests are not a true depiction of a person’s worth and potential. This sort of actions directly effect all of other students, who take the SAT, because most people work hard to earn their scores. This sort of behavior is a slap in the face to all hard-working students.