The latest administration of the SAT has been canceled in South Korea, due to allegations of widespread cheating. The nation is known for its “hyper-competitive academic environment.”
Test questions that were on the exam scheduled for May 4 were circulating in test prep centers. Staff members at some test prep centers were detained for questioning.
Thousands of students were affected.
The article says:
“Though academic cheating is a world-wide concern, high-profile scandals over unfairly earned or bogus qualifications are commonplace in South Korea. Those seeking top government office are among those who have been caught with plagiarized dissertations or fake degrees. Huh Tae-yeol, the chief presidential secretary, issued a public apology in February—when he was still a nominee for his post—for copying part of his doctorate degree in 1999. He argued that standards at the time weren’t as stringent.”
South Korea has the highest number of college graduates among the advanced nations of the world and high scores on the international assessments.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
don’t know if you consider this a parallel, but you might want to read AP psych tests for Md. high school under review
apparently my link did not come through
http://wtop.com/46/3318609/AP-psych-tests-could-be-invalidated-because-of-cellphone-video
I’ve been hesitant to say this before but I’ll say it now: I live near a community in California that is predominantly Korean (nationals and Korean-Americans). Many of the parents are over the top in regard to the academic achievement of their children. As my own doctor (also Korean) told me, “My children don’t know what real pressure is. My parents were really hard on me.” Although most of these children survive this kind of pressure, others become ill. Once in college, some burn out. (Of course, this is true of all groups of people, but it appears to be much more so among this particular group.)
There is a magnet for gifted students at the high school in this community. Competition for admission is fierce and the many prep academies find various ways to get hold of the exam so they can give their clients an edge. Every few years or so, there is a story about rampant cheating in regard to acceptance to this school, as well as in the pursuit of straight A’s once in.
Has this philosophy now spread to our country? If so, are we destined to lose our competitive edge in the world and become more like the testing meritocracies that don’t even come close to our nation’s creativity and productivity?
Are high-stakes testing and extreme academic pressure for children examples of “Be careful what you wish for because you might get it?”
might I suggest a counter to that kind of pressure, which exists even independently of immigration of large numbers of East Asian families.
I suggest people explore the work of my good friend Vicki Abeles about the Race to Nowhere
Linda,
I couldn’t give a shit about if we are destined to lose our competitive edge in the world. Show me in each states constitution where it says that one of the goals of public education is “being competitive” in the world.
I think our traditional child-rearing practices (not just our schools) are largely responsible for the awesome achievements of the American people. Until recently our homes and schools focused on creativity and natural development in the child. Typically our students didn’t feel much academic pressure until the later years of high school or even college. I see this as a good thing. But now we are following those countries that put a heavy emphasis on test prep and test scores, even for young children. I predict this will lead to a loss of creativity and academic burn-out by the time a student reaches college. It’s my understanding that this is exactly what happens in some of these high-pressure countries. In fact some of these countries recognize their shortcomings and study our educational methods.
Perhaps the phrase “competitive edge” was not the best but until recently the United States nurtured some of the best minds in the world and our citizens have excelled in almost every field of endeavor. So why are we copying nations that have not done as well? That was my point.
Think Michelle Rhee.
Thanks for saying it for me. I didn’t have the nerve!
Great point!
Think Arne Duncan and secret clout list.
Excerpt: Crain’s recently reported that presumptive Illinois gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner used his influence to gain admission to Walter Payton College Prep High School for his daughter in 2008. She apparently leapfrogged over hundreds of better-qualified applicants because Mr. Rauner placed a call to Arne Duncan, then Chicago Public Schools CEO.
http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20130503/OPINION/130509907/confessions-of-a-cps-parent-who-doesnt-have-arne-duncan-on-speed-dial
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/25/bruce-rauner-clout_n_3157634.html
So true!
Comment of the Day, Ellen!
NAH, she’s a North Korean agent sent to the USA to destroy public education so that NK can become the top dog nation of the world.
Don’t forget to thank her minions.
Is this another example of Campbell’s Law where so much pressure is put on the students that they feel the need to cheat? Or the administrators to have the students do better than other countries, that they cheat? Sometimes I feel as though our world is going crazy. There are so many concerns that are more important like starving people and victims of wars (Sudan, etc.). How about being the best we can all be without all this turmoil?
It makes you wonder if cheating has ALWAYS gone on and has only come to light now because of the way it is being used to privatize public education. The question then becomes: should tests be used for anything but within the classroom and the school to evaluate and diagnose student learning? Doesn’t this show that entrance to university and the job market should be based on demonstrations of student proficiency by methods other than high stakes testing?
Any test results that are used for any thing other than the purpose of the test is UNETHICAL.
And yet our students are always being compared to other nations and told that we’re stupid. Wonder how often the system is gamed…
I have to put this somewhere. Here’s the actual text in a job posting for a CT Charter School. At first, I thought Edushyster typed it up as a joke. Is anyone is playing Reformer Vocabulary BINGO?
“Family Urban Schools of Excellence is looking for experienced teachers who are able to demonstrate their effectiveness at closing the achievement gap.
We anticipate two full-time openings for Pre-Kindergarten Teachers. Applicants should have a history of relentless pursuit of excellence, and a dedication and passion to do whatever it takes to help children expand their innate love of learning and realize their academic potential. New teachers who think innovatively and are willing to rise to the challenge are also encouraged to apply.”
Baffle em with bullshit??
There is cheating, and then there is incompetence, as Gotham Schools reports.
City could cancel Pearson G&T contract after new error revealed
by Philissa Cramer, at 4:05 pm
Department of Education officials say a fourth error by Pearson in grading city students’ gifted screening exams could be the final straw in their contract with the testing supergiant.
Last month, the department announced that Pearson had made three serious errors when grading the screening tests, leading to nearly 5,000 children getting scores that were lower than they deserved. The department issued new score reports and extended the deadline for applying to gifted programs by three weeks.
Today, on the new application deadline, the department revealed that Pearson had made yet another error. Like the first ones, the mistake was detected only after a parent asked for an explanation of how her child’s score had been calculated, officials said. About 300 additional students’ scores were artificially depressed because of the latest error, according to the department.
(More) http://gothamschools.org/2013/05/10/city-could-cancel-pearson-gt-contract-after-new-error-revealed/
Family Urban Schools of Excellence… FUSE… hmm… fuse to a stick of dynamite used to blow up public education?
“Though academic cheating is a world-wide concern” The world wide concern should be the total invalidity of the “standardized tests”. They are completely invalid.
Small issue, easy fix: test security. Ha
You really have to wonder. Why all the cheating? And why all the test prep? For what?
The SAT is a badly flawed and virtually worthless test, unless one is interested in determining the family incomes of students. And many colleges are, for reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with academics. It’s really all about the cash.
See, for example: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-08/colleges-soak-poor-u-s-students-while-funneling-aid-to-rich.html
An excerpt: “U.S. colleges… are using financial aid to lure rich students while shortchanging the poor, forcing those most in need to take on heavy debt…To increase their standing on college rankings, more private colleges are giving ‘merit aid’ to top students, who are often affluent, while charging unaffordable prices to the needy…”
We’ve known this for quite some time. And what do colleges use as a basis to dole out the “merit” aid? SAT and ACT scores. And how good ARE these tests (and scores)? In short, not good at all.
The best predictor of success in college is high school grade point average (including SAT score doesn’t add much). Moreover, research shows that “the best predictor of both first- and second-year college grades” is unweighted high school grade point average. [Note: A high school grade point average “weighted with a full bonus point for AP…is invariably the worst predictor of college performance.”]
The College Board, which produces the PSAT, SAT, and Advanced Placement courses and tests, now recommends that schools “implement grade-weighting policies…starting as early as the sixth grade.” The SIXTH grade! If that sounds rather stupid, perhaps even fraudulent, that’s because it is.
College enrollment specialists say that their research finds the SAT predicts between 3 and 15 percent of freshman-year college grades, and after that nothing. As one commented, “I might as well measure their shoe size.” Matthew Quirk reported this in “The Best Class Money Can Buy:”
“The ACT and the College Board don’t just sell hundreds of thousands of student profiles to schools; they also offer software and consulting services that can be used to set crude wealth and test-score cutoffs, to target or eliminate students before they apply…That students are rejected on the basis of income is one of the most closely held secrets in admissions; enrollment managers say the practice is far more prevalent than most schools let on.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/11/the-best-class-money-can-buy/4307/2/
The authors of a study in Ohio found the ACT has minimal predictive power. For example, the ACT composite score predicts about 5 percent of the variance in freshman-year Grade Point Average at Akron University, 10 percent at Bowling Green, 13 percent at Cincinnati, 8 percent at Kent State, 12 percent at Miami of Ohio, 9 percent at Ohio University, 15 percent at Ohio State, 13 percent at Toledo, and 17 percent for all others. Hardly anything to get all excited about.
Here is what the authors say about the ACT in their concluding remarks:
“…why, in the competitive college admissions market, admission officers have not already discovered the shortcomings of the ACT composite score and reduced the weight they put on the Reading and Science components. The answer is not clear. Personal conversations suggest that most admission officers are simply unaware of the difference in predictive validity across the tests. They have trusted ACT Inc. to design a valid exam and never took the time (or had the resources) to analyze the predictive power of its various components. An alternative explanation is that schools have a strong incentive – perhaps due to highly publicized external rankings such as those compiled by U.S. News & World Report, which incorporate students’ entrance exam scores – to admit students with a high ACT composite score, even if this score turns out to be unhelpful.”
So, students compete to get high test scores. And colleges compete to get high US News rankings. And students take on more debt, especially students who can least afford it. And college endowments and pension funds – including the pension funds of educators – profit from it. See:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/09/sallie-mae-student-loans_n_3247979.html?ir=College
Anyone who thinks corporate-style education “reform” will be easy to derail had better think again. It’s going to be a long, hard slog. Worth doing? Yes. But the problem is far bigger and more ingrained than many perceive it to be.
I know there is a lot of hype about Shanghai, China, but I’ve read there is a lot of cheating there too. I’m really sick of all the hype about these other countries who have systems that are far worse than the U.S.