[LONG READ] SATS are being leaked in China & used to cheat & Universities must love it

831's Finest · Mar 29, 2016

Mar 29, 2016

"On the morning of Saturday, March 5, students gathered at test centers around the United States to take the SAT, the all-important college entrance exam. The day was momentous — not simply for the test-takers but also for the College Board, the not-for-profit that owns the exam. The organization was debuting an entirely new version of the SAT whose redesign was years in the making. In Asia, test-preparation companies were eager for information. Any details about what was on the new SAT might be invaluable to their clients. That’s especially true because for years, the College Board routinely has reused SAT tests overseas after first administering them in America.

East Asian cram schools have repeatedly exploited that practice to breach the SAT, and the College Board has come to see the test-prep industry as a daunting adversary. For the first offering of the redesigned SAT this month, the organization imposed an added security measure: It banned tutors and other non-students from taking the exam that day. The battle to safeguard the new SAT was on. It was lost almost as soon as the test began. Test-prep companies had posted teachers outside US test centers, ready to grill exiting students about what was on the exam. Within hours, American test-takers headed online to discuss the new SAT in detail.

On the popular website College Confidential, students described portions of the reading section from exams given on March 5. There was an essay on plate tectonics. A letter by the 1960s labor activist Cesar Chavez. A scientific paper about baby fat. A passage from a Michael Chabon novel. And more. Test-prep companies in Asia picked up this chatter and reported back to clients.Then, last week, Reuters was shown two documents that reveal far more substantial holes in the SAT’s defenses. Both documents contained entire sections from exams given on March 5. The College Board said it has a “long-standing policy” not to comment on what may be on an exam. Reuters verified the authenticity of the documents nonetheless with people familiar with the new SAT’s content – including students who took the test.

The first file, offered free by a Chinese online test-advice company called SAT Helper, reconstructs one version of that day’s exam booklet. It had a 52-question reading section with five text passages – including the Chavez letter and the plate tectonics essay. The second document was shown to Reuters by a Chinese tipster who had warned the College Board last year about security breaches. It contained images of another version of the March 5 test. Among its reading passages? The Chavez letter, the baby-fat paper, the plate tectonics piece and the Chabon novel.

Three high school students reviewed the documents and confirmed that the material came from the actual March 5 SATs they had taken. Reuters is not naming them because test-takers agree when they register for the exam not to disclose what’s on it. “That’s literally the one I took,” said one student, a high school junior in Maryland. “It would have been better if I’d seen it before the test,” said another high school student, a junior in Texas, laughing. “The questions started coming out as soon as I finished the test,” said a third student, a junior in Florida. “I thought this time the College Board had released them itself.”

The College Board says that test security and delivering valid scores are central to its mission. In addition to barring non-student test-takers from the March 5 exam — a practice that will continue on most test dates — it has taken other measures in recent years to thwart the Asian prep industry. SATs are now shipped to and from some test sites in lock boxes, and the College Board regularly sends out “take-down notices” if it sees test material online. But as the brand-new bootleg test booklets show, the cram schools continue to find ways to subvert the defenses of the College Board and its security contractor, Educational Testing Service of Princeton, New Jersey.

What has made such breaches especially damaging in recent years is the College Board’s routine reuse overseas of SAT test material previously given in America. The recycling of exam items has enabled test-prep operators to provide international students an advance look at reading passages, grammar problems and other material that may be on future tests. Sometimes, the cram schools even create answer keys for their clients.
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You can read the rest here, but what I quoted should give you a good idea: http://nypost.com/2016/03/29/the-chinese-have-already-hacked-the-new-sat/

How sad

Alchemist34 · Mar 29, 2016

Mar 29, 2016
Title looks like one of those clickbait articles

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