Foreign cheating scandal takes place on reused SAT

Foreign students fly to U.S. to retake previously administered SAT exam.

After many of Mira Costa’s students took the August SAT all over Los Angeles, rumors that the test given was the same exact exam taken internationally in October 2017, which the College Board confirmed.

The accusation of cheating began when test-takers noticed many of the students in the room did not speak English and were using Asian passports as their form of identification. This claim raised concern because of the unfair advantage these students would hold if they have previously seen this test.

“I was really discouraged hearing about [the cheating] because it was an unfair advantage,” senior Nicole Barnes said. “A lot of the other kids, including me went in to the SAT blindly and and tried their best.’

Almost immediately after students finished the test, social media posts began to circulate the web about the cheating that could have possibly taken place, senior Jade Siegel said. Many angry students and parents began to create online petitions to invalidate the scores from the SAT.

“The College Board should have never reused the same questions,” Siegel said. “If these students have been exposed to the test before, their scores will not be equal to people seeing them for the first time.”

A week after the test took place, the College Board sent out an email to all test takers. The email informed students and parents that parts of the test had been given internationally and foreign students flew to the U.S. to retake it.

“I was very angry when I found this out because it is frustrating that many students took a test kids have seen before,” senior Sydney Garmoe said. “When I heard they may cancel the scores, I was upset because it meant I had wasted five hours of my Saturday studying.”

In response to the cheating the College Board has promised to cancel the scores of anyone found cheating. Although many students are concerned on how the Board is going to identify these students to make the test scores fair.

“We are going to run ‘comprehensive statistical analysis’ of certain suspect tests to see if an unfair advantage was gained,” the College Board said. “The  overwhelming majority of students who had prior exposure to the material will get away without any penalty.”