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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.
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"
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.