NY Bill Would Make Crimes Out Of SAT Cheating

NY Bill Would Make Crimes Out Of SAT Cheating

www.huffingtonpost.com

ALBANY, N.Y. — New York would make felonies out of cheating on the SAT college entrance test under a bill released Tuesday as part of a legislative investigation into a scandal in an affluent New York City suburb.

The measure proposed by Sen. Kenneth LaValle of Suffolk County would create new felonies of facilitation of education testing fraud and of scheming to defraud educational testing and create a misdemeanor of forgery of a test. The felonies would apply to a test taker who impersonates someone else for pay.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Why is standaradized testing so important in this country? Entire school curriculums are being tailored around testing once or twice a year instead of a curriculum that is centered around actual learning. Big business is at it again. This article unnerves me just because those SAT tests are not only biased, racists, and sexist, and passing them is a flawed experience, but they are also expensive and really have no merit as to the potential of a future collegiate.

www.huffingtonpost.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

reply to post by ArchPlayer


Dear ArchPlayer,

I prefer charging people with fraud who commit fraud over requiring biometric identification for everyone who takes the SAT as is also being proposed in New York. Good catch, F&S. Peace.

reply to post by Arc- hPlayer

Now, if we could also make it a crime for congress to insider trade, accept lobbying money, cater to special interests, hide money in overseas accounts....

But, If that happened, where would all these SAT cheating high school students get jobs?

Answer - corporations - where the same behavior is also rewarded.

reply to post by Maluhia


I remember in high school taking the SAT and ACT, granted I scored pretty high, but the cost of those tests then were at least 100 a piece. My nephew just recently took the SAT and he paid almost double.

Universities should be outlawed from accepting these tests as apart of entrance. That would force the school system to address the real problem of literacy and maybe teach english again instead of this texting patwa going on all over now. Its a waste of money and an unfair scrupulous business practice.

They don't need a new law...

Just treat this with existing laws... treat this as FRAUD.

Originally posted by ArchPlayer
This article unnerves me just because those SAT tests are not only biased, racists, and sexist, and passing them is a flawed experience, but they are also expensive and really have no merit as to the potential of a future collegiate.

Huh? I've never gotten the ridiculously assinine "racist and sexist" standardized test complaints. How, in the blue hell, is 2+2=4, basic high school reading comprhension, and functional knowledge of common English racist or sexist? Seems like the folks who don't pass the tests due purely to their own deficits in either effort, drive, brains, or even plain old gumption have floundered for an excuse, any excuse really, which deflects the failure away from themselves (where it usually belongs) and onto the test itself. Knowledge CANNOT be racist or sexist... that said, attempting to classify some sort of knowledge as being easier for race XYZ to learn or arguing that some knowledge based problem's solution is easier for sex XYZ to resolve IS absolutely both racist and sexist.

The SAT test costs $49 and the ACT test costs $49 (very little reason to take both) and this fee covers reporting the scores to your choice of colleges. Obviously there are qualifiers, but most requests for fee waivers made through your school are granted, making the test FREE to pretty much anybody who considers $49 "expensive."

For decades America's school system worked flawlessly with standardized tests and expected norms being achieved by proud children who brought their report cards home to their FATHER and MOTHER (under the same roof, even *gasp*) which informed the parents that their children were either excelling, meeting expectations, or needed improvement. The parents would then (usually) reward achievement or actually take an interest in their kid's education and oversee the kid sitting down to work on whatever it was (s)he was deficient in. I don't know exactly what came first, but somehwere along the line 3 factors converged/begat each other, leading to collapse... We saw the deterioration of the family unit, we saw the shunning/excuse train surrounding standardized tests in more liberal education districts, and we saw a lack of direct involvement between parents and their kids' education. Combine that with teachers whose jobs were protected by unions regardless of results and a couple generations of progressively more whiney, irresponsible, entitled students and we are where we are today. The answer is more standardized testing combined with lockstepping results with continued teacher employment (not to mention salaries) and figuring out a way to reintroduce the American parent with the concept known as "Yes, I give a damn about my kids' future."

As far as these laws go, cheating on a test and especially having someone else take it in your name is fraud, and in most states fraud is a fellony, as it should be. How would you feel if your proctologist had paid a buddy to sit for his "Anatomy of the rectum" final or even if your ASE certified mechanic had actually paid his cousin to go through the ASE course for him? My guess is probably very much the same as the college boards who closely examine these tests to determine a better liklyhood of accepting students who will actually make it to graduation feel when they discover Joey BagOdonuts paid a Rhodes Scholar to take the ACT for him and didn't really get the 34 they offered him a scholarship for.

reply to post by burdman30ott6



Don't know what corner of the US you live in, but let me tell you a little about mine.

Standardized tests have been proven and have always been biased on the basis of race and gender, especially if you are a minority growing up in an inner city. Since you are a non believer and can't do independent research, I've enclosed some links for you to read.

New Evidence of Racial Bias on SAT
www.insidehighered.com...

Does the SAT have a Racial Bias?
www.huffingtonpost.com...

Some SAT Questions Are Racially Biased
www.nationalreview.com...

This isn't a new phenomenon, its a proven fact that predominately white schools in suburbs have a distinct advantage over minority students, especially those in the inner city with state of the art everything. And in this argument, it is regardless of whether the student is in parochial or public. Now with the era of charter schools, the gap is even more distinct.

I am going to assume you have never taken the SAT because I have never seen a simple 1st grade arithmetic problem such as 2+2 or "basic" common english. The SAT is divided into sections, with questions that on average half are covered in high school; the other half come from advanced sciences and maths, as well as advanced collegiate rhetoric and anagrams/analogies/and that hiddeous duck is to pond as snake is to grass crap.

For your average minority inner city student lives in a low income area. That affects the money that school districts get, and 9x out of ten the big money goes to schools in rich communities in suburbs, that don't have to deal with city tax and things like that, who are mostly operating outside of the county within an unincorporated township or a township that generates a lot of wealth. Chicago is a prime example. Their schools suck, are falling apart. Mayor Daley in response lets go almost 7,000 good teachers on some bullcrap and shuts down over 200 schools. The rest that remain are privatized into charters that answer to no governing body as far as curriculum. Those who stay on the CPS system are bombarded with students from the closed schools, which now a class size is anywhere from 75+ kids. The textbooks are from the 1970s, and computers are delegated to the library and are from the windows 98 era.

In Chicago, SAT costs 180 bucks. You cannot pay for it at your local high school, you must go to whatever school is designated in your area by address to take it, and you are charged based on that school's fee. You cannot go online and pay for it either, the fees must be paid day that you take the test. If the student misses it, the only other solution is Kaplan. and Kaplan is a little cheaper at 150, but is terribly out of the way in a far south suburb. And for the record, you only can report your scores to 3 colleges of your choice. After that, you must pay SAT to send the scores to the college of choice. I don't know where you are from but THERE ARE NO FEE WAIVERS for anyone here, no matter what the hardship.

For decades America's school system has worked flawlessly to outsource the qualified teachers and demonize them in order to have a society of brain dead sheeple running around not questioning what the left hand of the government is doing while watching the right. The only reason the US school system was superior in the 50s and 60s was because the US was in a race with Russia to have a far superior educated populous. That all changed when we went from being producers to consumers and bought out by the corporations. It has nothing to do with parents giving a damn or whether or not Mr. Cleaver was at home to smoke a pipe and pet Beaver on the head and tell him how proud he was of his B average. This was also an era when our economic prosperity dictated that one parent could work and take care of the household, while another parent could stay at home in domestic duties. While that is true for your average white American family, that has never been the case for the majority of black families in the US during that time, who worked as domestics and cut grass, and were relegated to good jobs as house help. Both parents worked and still struggled, and may have had a schedule in which both parents were working days and/or nights. The inner city schools during this era delegated placing kids life ambition to those in the trades. Read the Autobiography Of Malcolm X where he describes telling his teacher he wanted to grow up and study law only to be shot down and told to go into the trades.

reply to post by burdman30ott6


We saw the deterioration of the family unit since slavery in the black community, and it has metastasized on itself like a ingrown cancer. The teachers NEED job security, as your average CPS teacher comes in the door making a whopping 17,500 a year with limited benefits. Thank God they have somebody trying to fight for a .9% raise. But nobody wants to talk about the real root of curriculum failure and that is lack of teacher input. In this day and age you have to have a PHD to do anything, and most of these teachers went to school for Elementary/Secondary/Special Ed instead of Curriculum and Development, so their opinion doesn't matter. The budgets in these schools no longer allows teachers to have adequate additional learning materials, but they get overcrowded classrooms. Teachers who go beyond the call of duty and buy their own stuff are told they can't use it because it goes against curriculum. And now these SAT corporations have their finger on the trigger and the gun to the parents head with all this standardized testing. All of this testing doesn't mean a damn thing, and in no way shape or form because of its biases is going to be an adequate measurement on the learning capability of knowledge level of said minority student.

I thought you went to school to learn, not become a programmed standardized test taker.

The fraud isn't who is going through hell to pass a baloney set of tests that make or break you from going to a decent college, its the fact they are required in the first place. It's a racket, plain and simple. Dr. Robert Williams Founder of the Association Of Black Psychologists has his own version of the SAT that is more geared towards minorities and when given amongst white test takers they all failed it. But then the questions are geared toward minorities growing up in realistic urban and rural conditions based on class and race. But of course his test is considered to be a fraud, but Kaplan and the rest of these people can dictate what is and isn't "knowledge". Give me a break.

The deterioration of this country falls in the lap of the downfall of education. Don't blame lack of direct involvement between parents and kids when teachers have been cut out of direct involvement of curriculum and in the meantime parents have been forced to hustle 2-3 jobs to make ends meet in this dying dinosaur of an economy. The teachers union fought a good fight, but so many people like you tend to believe they are the boogeyman that you also put a nail in the coffin as teachers have no job security and they should and again for the RECORD THEY DONT MAKE ANY MONEY! You want to talk about blatant abuse of a salary look at principals, administrators, and curriculum developers. That is why we have a brain dead facebook generation.


And I guess you would support this as well: www.abovetopsecret.com...

DNA plus prison. Sounds like re-education.

reply to post by Maluhia


You nailed, my friend, what can you expect coming from a corrupted political and governmental system, when the law makers and policy makers are nothing but corrupted trash been pay by interest money they get to make laws to keep stepping on the citizens

All in order to promote more profit geared policies and laws.

Still people doesn't get it.

This is no about cheating on test is about introducing "measures" of security for profits and more ammo for corrupted governments to go after citizens.

This is so ridiculous. The tests are already crap. I mean, I managed to get a 5/5 on the AP Calculus exam, but my SAT math score was sub-par. They really don't test anything that matters, and as a matter of point, in my field of study, I have not used math once. Maybe when I was counting artifacts, but that's counting.

The funniest thing about this to me is how all these politicians make their living on cheating other people and lying, yet they are willing to try and send people to prison over cheating on a test that means nothing.

reply to post by Varemia


You're right. It is bullcrap. A test shouldn't measure intelligence. It should be about relevant basic knowledge, not specialization based on a curved bias.