Testing agency must tighten up security

Wednesday, October 8, 1997

Testing agency must tighten up security

TESTING Preventive plan to confront issue directly should follow
irresponsibility exhibited by company

You walk into a test center to take that important examination
which will play a fundamental role in determining your future.
You’ve studied the material you need to do well on the examination.
But have you done enough? How do you get that competitive edge?
Apparently, you have to cheat.

Not because cheating is the way to go. It’s not. It’s because
the Educational Testing Service (ETS) hasn’t done enough to prevent
or address it – it’s almost necessary to compete with others. If
you don’t cheat, you’re at a competitive disadvantage.

ETS found several instances of cheating and didn’t even reveal
what it discovered. It was not until The New York Times conducted
an investigation that the many cases of cheating were revealed to
the public. ETS had full knowledge of what was going on, but
decided not to disclose the information.

Cheating has come to mire the institution of education and
standardized testing, and this affects us all. Recent findings
conclude that cheating is a bigger problem than previously
believed.

The study found that students taking ETS-administered graduate
school entrance exams passed along the questions and answers to
test takers in other time zones. There were also cases where people
who speak no English had certificates indicating they passed
English and civics tests. Bribes were also found to have been given
to test givers.

The company’s dishonesty is very disturbing. It has lied and
kept important information from officials so that they wouldn’t be
forced to take measures to tighten test security.

Cheating may not be wholly eliminated. But when a group of
Louisiana teachers applying to become principals gets ahold of the
test and passes them around with answer keys, you’ve got a big, but
preventable, problem – not one that you hide. You have to confront
the issue head on and formulate a plan to stop such incidents from
arising again.

ETS has a responsibility to ensure that all tests are
administered in a manner that prevents people from cheating. While
no method may ensure that no one will cheat, such acts of
widespread cheating are preventable. It’s only a matter of ETS
being more careful and taking preventative measures.

Students nowadays cannot go through school without running into
an ETS-administered exam. Millions of ETS tests are taken each
year. And with cheating as big a problem as it is, it raises
questions about the validity of everyone’s scores, whether it be
SATs or AP exams.

Did the person next to you perform better on the test because he
or she was more knowledgeable on the material? Did someone from
another time zone call a friend to reveal what was on the test? Did
he or she receive a copy of the test ahead of time?

ETS has become a huge monopolistic entity in the nation’s
educational system. Because of its enormous power and influence, it
may think it does not need to make any changes, but it does. And it
needs to come up with a practical plan to curb this problem –
now.

Because our futures are decided by the results of a test
administered by this one company, we should be able to rely on that
monopoly to ensure fair testing procedures and accurate scoring
without any doubts of authenticity. This is what we need, and ETS
needs to serve its customers.

Otherwise, we’ll have a generation of students getting scores
they didn’t really achieve, outperforming their better-prepared
counterparts. With such a big responsibility, ETS needs more
cautionary measures to provide fair testing conditions for
everyone.