The SAT is Corrupt. No One Wants to Know.

“We got a recycled test, BTW. US March 2014.”.

This was posted on the College Confidential site, very early in the morning on December 6, the test date for the international SAT.

Did you get it?

Get what?

I mean how do you know it was a recycled Marhc test? Do you have the March Us test?

Oh, no. I just typed in one of the math questions from today’s test and the March US 2014 forum popped right up.

And of course, the March 2014 test thread has all the answers spelled out. The kids (assuming it’s kids) build a Google doc in which they compile all the questions and answers.

This is a pattern that goes on for every SAT, both domestic and international. The kids clearly are using technology during the test. They acknowledge storing answers on their calculators, but don’t explain what allows them to remember all the sentence completions, reading questions and even whole passages verbatim, much less post their entire essay online. Presumably, they are using their phones to capture the images?

They create a google doc, in which they recreate as many of the questions as can be remembered (in many cases, all) and then they chew over the answers. By the end of the collaboration, they have largely recreated the test. They used to post links to openly with any request. But recently the College Confidential moderators, aware that their site is being exposed as a cheating venue, have cracked down on requests for the link, while banning anyone who links to the document.

So floating out there somewhere in the Internet are copies of the actual test, which many hagwons put out (and pull them down because hey, no sense letting people have them for free), as well as the results of concentrated braindumping by hundreds of testers.

For international students, “studying for the SAT” doesn’t mean increasing math and vocabulary skills, but rather memorizing the answers of as many tests as possible.

And those are just the kids that aren’t paying for the answers.

The wealthy but not super-rich parents who want a more structured approach pay cram schools–be they hagwons, jukus or buxiban–to provide kids with all the recycled tests and memorize every question. No, not learn the subject. Memorize. As described here, cram schools provide a “key king”, a compilation of all the answer sequences for sections, using all the potential international tests. They know which ones will be recycled because the CB “withholds” these tests.

Of course, the super-rich parents don’t want to fuss their kids with all that memorizing. Cram schools have obtained copies of all the potential international tests by paying testers to photograph them. Then they pay someone to take the SAT in the earliest time zone for the International, and disseminate the news via text to all the testers. They just copy the answers from the pictures. Using phones. Which they have told the proctors they don’t have, of course.

I don’t know exactly how all this works—for example, are the cram schools offering tiered pricing for key kings vs. phoned in answers? Do different cram schools have different offerings? I’ve read through the documented process provided by Bob Schaeffer of FairTest (a guy I don’t often agree with), and it seems very credible. He’s also provided a transcript of an offer to provide answers to the test. Valerie Strauss got on the record accounts of this process from two international administrators, Ffiona Rees and Joachim Ekstrom.

Every so often Alexander Russo complains that Valerie Strauss shouldn’t do straight education reporting, given her open advocacy against reform.

Great. So where’s all the other hard reporting on this topic? The New York Times, whose public editor Margaret Sullivan just encouraged to “to enlighten citizens, hold powerful people and institutions accountable and maybe even make the world a better place”, bleeds for the poor Korean and Chinese testers anxious for their scores and concerned they’ll be tarred with the same brush. Everyone else just spits out the College Board press release–if they mention it at all. While most news outlets reported the October cancellation, few other than Strauss reported that the November and December international tests scores were delayed as well.

At the same time Strauss reported the College Board is stonewalling any inquiries as to how many kids were cheating, how many scores were cancelled, or what it was doing to prevent further corruption, an actual Post “reporter”, Anna Fifield, regurgitates a promotional ad for a Korean SAT equivalent coach.*

Well, you can understand why. The millionaire Korean test prep coach-called-a-teacher story is one of the woefully underreported stories of the 21st century. I mean, we only had one promo put out by the Wall Street Journal the year before, and another glowing testimonial CBS a few months later (even mentioning the tops in performance, bottom in happiness poll). But really, only one or two a year of these stories have been coming out since 2005.

So you can see why the Post felt another story on a Korean test prep instructor making millions required immediate exposure, if not anything approaching investigation or reporting.

These stories are catnip to reporters who get all their education facts from The Big Book Of Middlebrow Education Shibboleths. First, unlike our cookie cutter teacher tenure system, Korean teachers work in a real meritocracy where kids and their parents reward excellence with cash. Take that, teachers!

Then, unlike American moms and dads, Korean parents care about their kids and put billions into their education. Take that, parents!

And oy, the faith Anna shows in her subjects. Cha is a “top-ranked math teacher” who “says” he earns a “cool $8 million last year.” Cha says he’s been teaching for 20 years, but refuses to give his age and there’s no mention of the topic or school he attended for his PhD, or if he ever got one. But he’s got a really popular video, so he must be great!

Some outlets are less adulatory. The Financial Times points out that the Korean government is cracking down on hagwon fees and operating hours, and preventing them from pre-teaching topics. Megastudy, the company in the 2005 story linked in above, just went up for sale because of those government changes. Michael Horn of the Christiansen Institute is doing no small part to alert people to the madness of the Korean system. The New York Times, despite its tears for the Korean and Chinese testers, has done its fair share to report on the endemic cheating in Chinese college applications.

But when it comes to the College Board and the SAT, everyone seems to be hands off the international market. At what point will it occur to reporters to seriously investigate whether a large chunk of the money spent on cram schools is not for instruction, but for “prior knowledge” cheating? When will they ask the Korean cram school instructors if they are fronts for an organized criminal conspiracy, if the money they get is not for tutoring, but for efficient delivery of test answers on test day? And how many of those test days are run by the College Board?

People think “well, sure, there’s some cheating, but so what? Some kids cheat.” Yeah, like I’d be writing this if it were a few dozen, or even a few hundred kids. Asian immigrants cheating on major tests in this country is in the high hundreds a year. Maybe more. In China and Korea? I suspect it’s beyond our comprehension, us ethical ‘murricans.

One of the depressing things about the past three years is that I start looking into things more closely. I never really trusted the media, mind you, but I did assume that journalists skewed stories because of bias. I fondly imagined, silly me, that journalists wanted to investigate real wrongdoing. Yes. Laugh at my foolish innocence.

Consider what would be disrupted if public American pressure forced the College Board to end endemic international student cheating. First, the CB would lose millions but weep no tears, it’s a non-profit company. hahahahah! Yeah, that makes me laugh, too.

But public universities increasingly rely on international student fees and the pretense that they are qualified to do college work. After all, the thinking goes, we accept a lot of Americans who aren’t prepared for college work—may as well take in some kids who pay full freight. Private schools, too, appreciate the well-heeled Chinese students who don’t expect tuition discounts.

So suppose public pressure forces the College Board to use brand new tests for the overseas market, require all international testing to be done at US international schools, use different tests at different locations. The College Board might decide that the international market profits weren’t worth the hassle for other than US students living abroad (as indeed, the ACT seems to have done for years). Either way, a crackdown on testing security would seriously compromise Chinese and Korean students’ ability to lie about their college readiness and English skills.

A wide swath of public universities would either have to forego those delightful international fees or simply waive the SAT requirement, but without those inflated test scores it will be tough to justify letting in these kids over the huge chunk of white and Asian Americans who are actually qualified. No foreign students, more begging for money from state legislatures. Private universities would have a difficult time bragging about their elite international students without the SAT scores to back thing up.

Plus, hell, we changed the source country for zombies because we didn’t want to piss off China. Three years ago, the College Board wanted to open up mainland China as a market. 95% of the SAT testers in Hong Kong are Chinese. Stop all that money flowing around? People are going to be annoyed.

At this point, I start to feel too conspiratorial, and go back to figuring that reporters just don’t care. I’ve got a lot of respect for education policy reporters—the Edweek reporters are excellent on most topics—and most reporters do a good job some of the time.

But the SAT is basically corrupt in the international market. I’ve already written about test and grade corruption among recent Asian immigrants over here, particularly in regards to the Advanced Placement tests and grades.

Yet no one seems to really care. Sure, people disapprove of the SAT, but for all the wrong reasons: it’s racist, it’s nothing more than an income test, it reinforces privilege, it has no relationship to actual ability. None of these proffered reasons for hating the SAT have any relationship to reality. But that the SAT is this huge money funnel, taking money from states and parents and shoveling it directly or indirectly into the College Board, universities, and the companies who have essentially broken the test? Eh. Whatever.

The people who are hurt by this: middle and lower middle class whites and Asian Americans. So naturally, who gives a damn?

enlighten citizens, hold powerful people and institutions accountable and maybe even make the world a better place

Sigh. Happy New Year.

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*In the comments, an actual SAT prep coach making millions–no, really, he assures us, millions!–simply by being a fabulous coach with stupendous methods is insulted that I insinuated that the Washington Post story was on an SAT prep coach, rather than the Korean equivalent of the SAT. I knew that, but at one point referred to the guy as a SAT prep coach. I fixed the text.