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.

Comments

Using the Internet to Look up Answers! Tut Tut!

[TechyImmigrant]

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.

Re:Using the Internet to Look up Answers! Tut Tut!

[buddyglass]

I'm not sure there's a good way to test basic knowledge while accurately simulating the real world. For instance, vocabulary (analogies, etc.) would be out, unless you ratcheted the time allowance down low enough so as to preclude looking up the definition of each word. Questions that test students' knowledge of simple algebra would be out; they could just plug them into an online equation solver.

Re:Using the Internet to Look up Answers! Tut Tut!

[Bite The Pillow]

This is only insightful for a myopic subset of the population being referenced.

Make a list of professions where this is the case, and one where it is not the case. Even removing the ones where your grades are not relevant, parent post applies to a minorit.

Re:Using the Internet to Look up Answers! Tut Tut!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Fortunately the knowledge required in school tests is very rudimentary, to the extent that it seems to make perfect sense to me to ask for it - so that these people, once they get a job, would have at least a faint idea what to look for on the Internet in the first place.

Or how about...

[darkain]

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"

Re:Or how about...

[tlhIngan]

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.

Standardized testing is older then NCLB. SATs, ACTs, etc., are all exams students take because there's no way to normalize school marks otherwise. I mean, if you're a university, you can't rely on grades alone to figure out if the student is good (or what they claim as extracurricular activities) Grade inflation happens and even in the same school one class might have a teacher that always scores higher than another. (Or, as everyone knows, which classes to take to guarantee an easy A).

So they've been using standardized tests to produce a normalized academic mark to which other qualities are weighed.

Heck, I even remember doing the whole Iowa Test of Basic Skills way back in the 90s too in middle/high school.

Of course, I advocate MORE standardized tests (with grades that matter) - I see 3% per grade level as an appropriate weighting. So elementary schools it barely counts, but middle school and high school it starts to be worth a lot which reflect that in real life, no matter what you do, there's often a major test you have to pass. Be it in university with final exam weightings of 50% or more (the ones that weigh less typically have a "must pass final to pass course" rule). Or trade schools where you have to take the exam to get your certificate.

I also advocate publishing the grades as a list of numbers, both by class and school so parents can compare their child's result against the rest of class, and their class versus other classes at the school and in the area to see if their child is falling behind, or the class is falling behind, or the entire school. And to raise heck when it happens. (Socioeconomic reasons fall apart if two schools at the same level do vastly differently)

Naturally, teachers unions hate the idea of accountability, so they oppose standardized testing at any level. Every kid's a flower and special in their own way. Heck, here some schools have been forced by teachers to do away with marks or letter grades, just a simple sentence on a report card. (Nevermind "no-fail" policies that don't let you assign a mark of 0 for something not handed in...).

Re:Or how about...

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with standardized testing isn't the test, but the tendency to "teach to the test". One of the best teachers I had in high school was my AP Chemistry teacher. Unlike other AP courses I took, we never saw an AP-style question until we took the exam. He taught chemistry and expected us to be able to handle the test format, not really worrying too much about precisely what chemistry would appear on the test. His students tended to do well on the AP exam.

NCLB and related policies that highlight standardized test scores, have the effect of teachers not teaching content and teaching test taking skills instead, even though that is counterproductive. I don't have a good solution, but the current policies are not it. Personally, I'd argue that schools spend far too much time on measuring student learning instead of actually teaching.

Re:I'm sorry...

[Required Snark]

Because without some form of regulation, some dickhead is going to start selling grades. Just like without regulation, you would end up being poisoned by the food you eat. If you don't believe me, just look at what's going on in China. There was a case last year where someone got caught recycling cooking oil from a sewer. Chinese with more money to spend by imports from Taiwan and Japan, since it is much less likely that they will get sick.

I'm fed up with dolts like you. You live in a place where the government keeps your day to day life reasonably together, and then all do is whine. I hope your mother goes to a medical clinic where someone cheated on their grades, and she ends up dieing. Better her then me, or anyone I know. That is is only way a shithead like you will ever start paying attention.

CB Exams are woeful security wise

[Anonymous Coward]

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.