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Only Two States Have Rules To Prevent Cheating On Computerized Tests
New submitter Williamcole sends news that in many U.S. states, educators will begin administering standardized tests on school computers this school year. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately, for the sneakier kids), only two states have codified regulations to prevent cheating and make sure the tests are secure: Oregon and Delaware. According to a new report (PDF) from American College Testing (ACT), the other states aren't doing enough to prevent keyloggers, transmission of test materials, or even teachers going in afterward to change a student's responses. They also warn that the kids will likely find ways to access the internet while taking the test, letting them look up answers as needed. Even the rules in Oregon and Delaware have weaknesses ACT recommends strengthening before testing begins.
The odd thing is, after succeeding at exams and leaving education with a glowing set of grades, they'll get a job in which if they refused to use the internet to look up answers, they'd be fired.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
We do away with standardize testing. "No child left behind" has become "Every child left behind", because those that are great at particular skills are punished in our education system for being ahead of others.
Just yesterday I was chatting with a student in a programming class. She was complaining that she got in trouble for using language features that were "not taught yet" in the class. And this is exactly why the United States is falling behind in science and technology compared to other countries, because people are punished for self-education and innovation within our "education system"
Ever seen tests run in China? India? MASSIVE cheating on an UNBELIEVABLE scale.
Run Riot!
..why do we need the government regulating school tests?
What are you going to do, bring little Johnny up on federal charges for cheating?
Just speculating, but my guess is that cheating is illegal even without "codified regulations".
While I applaud the effort they're making to prevent cheating on tests (especially by school staff), perhaps they should reconsider the root cause of it -- that by tying a school's resources to the results of a standardized test, they're encouraging the school to do anything possible to up the marks on the test. And I've yet to see any rules or policies making it illegal to waste class time by teaching for the test. They're wasting the youth's education and no one is calling them out on it.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
its not about memorizing useless bullshit that you will never need again, its about learning the material and how to quickly reference it in the real world
the old notion that you will need to memorize to a perfect T something you will never use in your life is dead, just like the teachers in my day POUNDING the fact you wont have a calulator on you at all times .... meanwhile we have pocket super computers on our bodies 24/7
I run a lab of computers used for "high-risk examinations", things involving aerospace (The guys that fly big things above your heads or working on their parts). The security of the stock standard software that we must use (government provided) is awful, it's just Internet Explorer in a wrapper with a bunch of runtime modifications to explorer.exe to remove UI elements like the taskbar and crap. Seeing as we actually understand the threats involved, we have to provide additional security in order to prevent cheating seeing as we can be held liable in some circumstances. Physical hardened hardware (No USB ports or interfaces exposes other than permanently attached HIDs, power leads permanently connected, room has electronic access control), network is ridiculously firewalled off (exams are web based so can't help that but uses MITM SSL proxies etc.), UPSs, systems reimaged before and after each exam, encryption everywhere, smart card access for users, full auditing within OS, screen recording and someone who has actually been trained for the threat model supervising the exam.
To put it simply, it costs a fortune.
I'm all for the separation of school and state ( schoolandstate.org ), but matters are a bit more complex. There are certain types of cheating that should already be covered by fraud regulations. I think commenters might be confusing "normal" school tests with state-mandated testing and with private exams (SAT, etc.) State governments have the right to set the rules for state testing (as long as they continue to compel students to take those tests). But this reeks more of private testing companies (ETS, etc.) trying to get government agencies to back them up on private tests. I'm not in favor of ETS trying to backdoor their way into extra legislation - and I normally would not say that companies like ETS have any place in schools, or supported by a public/government system, except that kids with less access to ETS exams would be less competitive throughout the US.
If an institution has a policy of kicking out or otherwise punishing students who cheat then why bother getting the people in politics involved? Such laws are pointless so it doesn't matter if only a couple of states have them.
Rules may prohibit cheating and possibly reduce it. They definitely can't prevent it.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Everyone knows plenty of smart people who are "terrible at taking tests." Yet often these people are able to run circles around those good at taking tests when it comes to applied work in class. Based on my high school and college experience, I would say that the main reason why teachers avoid making project work the majority of a student's grade (at least 60%, it not over 75%) is that it's easier to make a class look good via testing. I know that if my alma mater had suddenly shifted from tests being 60-70% of the grade to being at most 30% (including quizzes), a non-trivial percentage of my fellow students would have seen their GPA drop an entire point.
If the standardized testing providers do not trust the educators to administer the tests, there is no amount of law or security bells and whistles that can correct that problem. What roll does ethics of the test administrators and educators play?
...or even teachers going in afterward to change a student's responses.
If they solve this here, maybe they can apply it to web based elections! ;)
There's a word for someone who has many opinions, all based on ignorance. Then there are informed opinions, based on learning the facts FIRST and learning on to explain and relate them.
I'm guessing in most states that there are regulations against cheating in general, what makes computerized cheating so special it needs its own regulation?
> Everyone knows plenty of smart people who are "terrible at taking tests." Yet often these people are able to run circles around those good at taking tests when it comes to applied work in class.
At first I nodded my head in agreement, but then I started wondering- is that really true, or is that something said to avoid acknowledging that the person who consistently gets poor grades truly isn't that bright (or hasn't learned the material) . Thinking about people I know, there does seem to be a strong correlation between people who can successfully answer test questions and those who can answer "the mail server is down, what should we do?" Those who don't know what an exponential algorithm is vs a constant- time algorithm do in fact tend to use exponential algorithms.
That said, there are also a lot of poor test questions, mostly used by people who don't know how to use the discriminative index to find poor quality questions. Better education regarding how to maintain a good test bank would do quite a bit toward having better quality tests. There are also a few test-taking skills, but those can be easily learned by grade 5. Running statistics on our online courses, those who spend more time studying the material do better on the test, as do those who get started sooner rather than putting it off until the last minute. Common sense suggests that doing those two things will help you learn the material, so maybe the tests really do measure knowledge of the material, and some people truly don't learn it well. Maybe they're not "bad at tests", they're "bad at learning ".
Laws and regulations?
Don't we already have laws about fraud?
This is what being a test proctor is all about. Maybe for these high stakes tests, having proctors wandering among the workstations/tables isn't such a bad idea.
under the law that can make you a felon just even just use the internet can fit in to the very broad laws much less changing a grade.
http://dcourier.com/main.asp?S...
Felon just for that?
The Graduate Record Exams have been given on computers for a number of years. That's a serious blessing for the long essay portion of the test, especially for those of us who type faster than we can write longhand (and you can edit!). Do they have a problem with cheating? With students accessing the Internet?
These tests are no longer testing the most valuable skills of our students. Instead of making them take tests with both hands tied behind their backs, tests should be embracing the internet. It isn't cheating as long as you're not simply looking up the answers at a site that has cracked the test in some way. The best scientists, engineers, researchers, developers, etc. recognize what tasks need to be performed largely on their own and then perform them as efficiently and accurately as possible without breaking the law. The ability to ask the right questions of the right sites on the internet and recognize the best answer without being led down to many rabbit trails is critical to many if not most non physical disciplines today. In others, the ability to create scripts or programs to solve minor problems quickly might be critical. The internet and programming are tools for extending our minds that need to be embraced during years when the mind is still very flexible in order for the individual to gain maximum advantage. Eventually, these will be integrated into our mind to the point that turning them off will cause major disorientation at the least.
The ideal tests for students should use all of the tools that they are being prepared to use after school. If they aren't being prepared to use the internet and to extend their problem solving skills with at least simple scripts, then you should find them a new school. The tests of course should be much harder because the tools we have for extending ourselves today are much better. We need to embrace and institutionalize the progress we've made.
I am pretty sure that cheating back in the day occurred fairly regularly, but I am willing to wager the farm that, relatively speaking, cheating on computer-based exams today is much easier than cheating back in the old days of pencil and paper. Just take for example the smart watch. It doesn't even have to be an iWatch or the android equivalent. In fact, for a cheater, it's even better if their devices were NOT the typical ones so that they don't set off the ever-watchful proctors. Watches with wifi enabled can be a means for people to get answers much more readily than the old techniques of sneaking in a cheat sheet or whatever methods were used.
Who knew?
> smart people have a high rate of test anxiety
I'm just curious if you have a citation for that. I would think that being unprepared and likely to fail would make someone nervous. I know that for me personally, I never worry about tests BECAUSE I know the material, so I know I'll pass. The main unknowns that affect my score are a) whether I mismark one question or two by hurrying through and b) how many wrong/nonsensical/ stupid questions there are. I don't worry precisely because I know the material or can figure it out, so I'll score at least 85%.
My last sentence does point out something about tests that is either a weakness or a strength, depending on how you look at it. While doing QA for courses where I don't know the subject, I can frequently barely pass by just applying intelligence/ common sense such as "any true/false question with the word 'always' or 'never' is probably false - most rules have exceptions ". That means I can get some questions without knowing the material ahead of time, BUT the same is true in real life - the same logic allows me to fix software written in a language I've never used, or evaluate products I'm unfamiliar with. In that way, the test measures how well I'd perform in that field apart from the knowledge I have in the field.
Having just taken an exam for my distance learning class through ProctorU, I can tell you that the only thing stopping me from cheating were my ethical principles...
Dear little Timmy,
Arrays.sort() is a very succinct way to sort the data in problem #2. But I asked you to implement the bubble sort algorithm.
The intent is for you to demonstrate an understanding of arrays and nested loops. This will be important when we move on to more complex data structures. Furthermore, using a library function --even if included with the language-- does not help you to understand an algorithm.
Your code demonstrates that you are able to use a single built-in function. Unfortunately, that was none of the criteria by which this assignment was graded. For this reason your assignment was marked zero points. If you want to question this grade on grounds that you "already know all of that other stuff," then I will remind you that I can only award points for assignments completed as requested.