Feds uncover admissions test cheating plot

Applying to College
1081

Perhaps rather than limiting the extra time, those taking the ACT or SAT with extra time or other accommodations should do so at special testing sites. Make it easier to qualify (after all, as mentioned by several people, staring at a set of problems you can’t solve for an extra 30 minutes isn’t going to help), but provide extra security. Have regional testing centers, where a room or set of rooms is set aside for those with extra time to all take the test together. Perhaps arrange something with collegiate testing centers - third parties not chosen by the applicant but assigned by ACT or College Board, and no option to request specific proctors or sites.

My middle child should have qualified for accommodations, but the schools resisted a 504 plan until she reached 9th grade. She had an IEP in 11th grade at THEIR suggestion. Had we requested accommodations, I doubt we would have had the necessary history.

This is not really about kids using accommodations they don’t deserve (though there are some that do). This is about a small group of people taking advantage of the system meant to help one set of students, and using it to give special advantage to another set of students. You can’t level the playing field without creating a system that somebody somewhere will abuse. Make no mistake - if “extra time” didn’t exist, they would find another way to manipulate the system. They would provide someone with a fake ID to take the test for the student, someone that looks close enough in appearance that any difference could be attributed to a hair cut, hair dye, or wearing contacts vs. glasses.

1082

@sevmom proving that celebrities really do have the most academically gifted students

1083

To a large degree, you’re attacking a straw man. The number one reason kids get accommodations is ADD/ADHD. Very few of these kids getting extra time had both or even one hands amputated or are blind and need a Braille test. It does seem ridiculous just being ASD would get you extra time.

1084

There are also similarities in the plots of the shows themselves. Macy’s kid was involved in SAT scam with paying someone else to fix SATs. In Shameless, Macy’s kid was involved in a SAT scam with paying someone else to take SATs. Felicity Huffman’s character in Desperate Housewives bribed the baseball coach for her kid’s benefit. The real life scams involved bribing coaches. However, the show had a better outcome than will likely occur in real life.

1085

Lori Loughlin has now been released on $1m bail; her husband put up their house as collateral to bail himself yesterday. It’s curious how they cannot make bail without collateralizing their home (given their alleged wealth).
I will confess, a part of me feels sorry for them…more lives in tatters.

1086

@sevmom proving that celebrities really do have the most academically gifted students

1087

I “think every Division I school should be required to conduct an internal audit of all recruited athlete admits for the past five years. It wouldn’t be very difficult to determine if an admit was a legitimate athlete or not. If an admit never showed up on the team’s roster, that would be an obvious red flag and the coaching staff would need to explain what happened. Also, my kids’ smallish HS typically has a couple of athletes recruited to D1 sports teams every year. If you punch their name and sport into Google, you will come up with plenty of local new stories about them. If you can’t find any info about the kid playing their sport before college, that would be a red flag as well.”

Schools are under no obligation to determine if they were defrauded. And for those who say evertyone at the university knew, you do realize that this would evicerate the case against the defendants don’t you??

1088

@bud123 You forgot playing the oboe. There has been a epidemic of kids switching from alto sax to oboe

1089

It’s a great life lesson, which I imparted to my college freshman today.

“Don’t do the crime, if you can’t do the time.”

1090

@CTScoutmom

That’s the problem with the whole system. Parents have to be highly involved and sophisticated to get their kids accommodations in the first place, and more often than not have to pay $$$ for outside evaluations to document the learning disability. So even among those who truly need the accommodations, it ends up being a privilege connected to relative wealth. The lower-income and working-class families simply don’t have the resources to enter that battle in the first place.

1091

@Hamurtle I recall that mom who gave her kid an adderall before a soccer game just so he could perform better.

1092

The current case involves mostly coaches, perhaps because Singer was a former coach or the coaches were the weakest links in the admission process. But if coaches are corruptible, why couldn’t AOs be also? Power, especially opaque power, corrupts. One side has power, the other side has money, and the process is opaque. Haven’t we seen enough in history to know how that would turn out?

1093

If they sell 5% of their class for $5 million each, that could pay for full FA for an entire class of Pell grant students.

But clearly, they do not admit anywhere near that many Pell grant students (11% at Harvard, 12% at Georgetown, significantly underrepresented compared to the Pell grant student share of all college students).

1094

@calmom

This is one of the many reasons I feel the tests should be “renormed” so that the assumption is the vast majority of kids will have plenty of time to finish. That won’t mean every child will get all the answers correct. It just means that will be getting the wrong because they don’t know how to solve the problem, not because they couldn’t read or calculate quickly enough.

1095

“That’s the problem with the whole system. Parents have to be highly involved and sophisticated to get their kids accommodations in the first place, and more often than not have to pay $$$ for outside evaluations to document the learning disability.” True. And that is a reason to make diagnosis more readily available, not a reason to eliminate the accommodations.

And even kids with better access to testing sometimes refuse needed accommodations because of people like many of the uninformed commenters here who are utterly dismissive of the concept that it is possible to be a smart accomplished person and have an LD that needs accommodation in certain circumstances. I would love it if some of the people here could spend a day living with ADHD or dysgraphia or dyslexia.

1096

@roethlisburger can you provide me a link to backup your statement above? As mother of a student with an LD (not ADD/ADHD) I’d be curious to see the breakdown of reasons that accommodations are given.

1097

I am never going to get tired of talking about this case.

1098

It could be a timing thing. To get a non purchase money loan against a home, there is a 3 day waiting period, which usually means 5 days, plus any processing time for the appraisals. If cash money is in foreign accounts or CDs it could take several days to get the money.

Even rich people don’t have $2M in cash just sitting in liquid accounts.

1099

“Perhaps rather than limiting the extra time, those taking the ACT or SAT with extra time or other accommodations should do so at special testing sites.”

People are missing the forest here. This was a cheating scam, so it really had nothing to do with how normal accommodations work and what imperfections there might be with that system.

The key for this scam was for the kids to get awarded 100% or double time. That is VERY VERY tough to get. If you get an accommodation (which is hard to do) you almost always just get 1.5X time. So a four hour test becomes six hours. 1.5X time tests are usually done at the same high schools and at the same time as the regular time tests are administered. The 1.5X time kids just go to a separate classroom at the HS and they get out a little later on Saturday.

The 2X time means the 4 hour test stretches out to 8 hours. With lunch and other breaks, that means the kid takes it on Saturday and also Sunday. The Sunday testing then moves the logistics out of the usual high school and into some kind of special testing center. Singer had two centers that he controlled. So the 2X accommodation was the key to being able to get the bribed proctor into the room alone with the kid so the bribed proctor could do his thing.

If the Singer clients merely got bogus 1.5X time accommodations, the scam wouldn’t have worked.

1100

And I was flat out rejected last year for UCLA’s Class of 2022. I’m certain one of these bozos’ kids took my spot.

Cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater:

Gamal Abdelaziz, a senior executive of a resort and casino operator

Gregory and Marcia Abbott. Gregory is the founder and chairman of a packaging company for the food and beverage industry, and the former head of a private-label clothing manufacturer

Diane Blake, an executive at a retail merchandising firm, and Todd Blake, entrepreneur and investor

Jane Buckingham, chief executive of a boutique marketing company

Gordon Caplan, a lawyer and a co-chairman of the international law firm Willkie Farr & Gallagher

I-Hsin “Joey” Chen, a provider of warehousing and related services for the shipping industry

Amy and Gregory Colburn. Gregory is a physician.

Robert Flaxman, chief executive of a Los Angeles-based real estate development firm

Mossimo Giannulli, fashion designer, and Lori Loughlin, actress

Elizabeth and Manuel Henriquez. Manuel is the founder, chairman and chief executive of a specialty finance company.

Douglas Hodge, former chief executive of Pimco, one of the world’s biggest bond fund managers

Felicity Huffman, actress

Agustin Huneeus, owner of vineyards in Napa, Calif.

Bruce and Davina Isackson. Bruce is the president of a real estate development firm.

Michelle Janavs, a former executive of a food manufacturer

Elisabeth Kimmel, owner of a media company

Marjorie Klapper, co-owner of a jewelry business

Toby MacFarlane, a former senior executive at a title insurance company

William E. McGlashan Jr., a senior executive at TPG, one of the world’s biggest private equity firms

Marci Palatella, chief executive of a liquor distributor

Peter Jan “P.J.” Sartorio, a packaged-food entrepreneur

Stephen Semprevivo, an executive at an outsourcing company

David Sidoo, a businessman in Vancouver, British Columbia

Devin Sloane, founder and chief executive of a drinking water and wastewater systems business

John Wilson, founder and chief executive of a private-equity and real estate development firm

Homayoun Zadeh, an associate professor of dentistry at U.S.C.

Robert Zangrillo, founder and chief executive of a Miami-based venture capital and real estate firm

Michael Center, head coach of men’s tennis at University of Texas at Austin

Gordon Ernst, former head coach of men’s and women’s tennis at Georgetown

William Ferguson, women’s volleyball coach at Wake Forest

Donna Heinel, senior associate athletic director at U.S.C.

Laura Janke, former assistant coach of women’s soccer at U.S.C.

Ali Khosroshahin, former head coach of women’s soccer at U.S.C.

Rudolph Meredith, former head coach of women’s soccer at Yale

Jorge Salcedo, former head coach of men’s soccer at University of California, Los Angeles

John Vandemoer, former sailing coach at Stanford

Jovan Vavic, former water polo coach at U.S.C.

Igor Dvorskiy, test administrator for the College Board and A.C.T., accused of accepting bribes to facilitate the cheating scheme at the West Hollywood Test Center

Niki Williams, assistant teacher at a public high school in Houston and a test administrator for the College Board and A.C.T. who is accused of accepting bribes

Mark Riddell, a test proctor accused of tampering with students’ test papers to improve scores, and of secretly taking exams in place of students

Martin Fox, president of a private tennis academy and camp in Houston, accused of acting as a middleman for bribe payments