The SAT was canceled in China and Macau due to anticipated cheating. The College Board said that some students got access to the exam.
“Zachary Goldberg is the senior director of Media Relations for the College Board. Goldberg told VOA, “We act on all information.…We work…to [fight] cheating and to protect the integrity of the SAT.”
“Almost 400,000 foreign students registered to take the SAT in 2014.
“SAT cheating scandals have happened several times before. The College Board cancelled the SAT across South Korea in 2013 after finding evidence of cheating.
“Several Chinese citizens admitted in 2015 to being part of an organized SAT cheating group in the United States. International students in the Pittsburgh area would pay group members to use fake passports and take the SAT test for them.”
This may seem an odd comment for a teacher to make, but what is wrong with *everyone* knowing what is on the exam? Why must it be top-secret? People cannot take notes into the exam, after all. I agree it is unfair if only one group of test-takers gets to know what is on the exam, but I have never understood why people shouldn’t know what it is that they are going to be assessed on. When I give finals and mid-terms, I tell students what’s going to be on there so they can prepare.
Indeed, I’d go further than that. If it’s a truly good test, why can’t kids take it home, use whatever books and notes they want, collaborate with whomever they want? In what situation in the rest of one’s life (besides other standardized tests like the GRE or the MCATs) is one shut in a room for four hours not allowed to speak to or even look at other people? Life is about working together to see what you can figure out, not about individually trying to prove how smart you are.
It seems that when the State makes the exams determine your future forever that scamming the test is what the strivers and status hungry will do. For the strivers they must to out last the status hungry.
This will wind up stifling needed creativity and out of the box ideas.
I believe that the Netherlands used to give (and my still be giving) national math exams in which all the items from which the test will be constructed are openly available to the public. Of course, the pool is very large and I presume that enough of them are sufficiently challenging that anyone who can retain answers to loads of them likely knows a good deal of the requisite mathematics quite well. And we’re not talking about multiple choice questions with answers that are all a matter of computations. That seems like a reasonable system.
The Netherlands tracks students from the age of 12. Their secondary system is similar to Germany’s. The three streams in the Netherlands are vocational, general ed, and university prep. The general ed graduates are allowed to attend a polytechnic which awards industry specific degrees. Only graduates from a university prep high school allowed to enter a research university.
There are mechanisms for students to change streams but otherwise their path is set at the age of 12. If the Netherlands gives a national math exam, it would not benefit all students in the same way.