I don’t know about you @Knowsstuff but people like Felicity and many private school parents have means to do whatever it takes to get that extra time in SAT/ACT. I already sent an email to SAT/ACT about this and will take appropriate actions what deem necessary!
@LisaNCState. It just seems this topic has been explored in depth already here. Yes, people lie /cheat to try to get ahead. I have known some of them. I can only try to do the right thing for me and my family.
“Singer was one of the co-founders of the University of Miami online high school. I don’t know for sure, but that might be the connection between Florida and California.”
I’m still not seeing any connection. Bradenton (where Riddell was Director of College Entrance Exam Prep for a $75k a year boarding HS) is a 4 hour drive from Miami (where Singer formed an online high school), it’s not like simply because they’re both in Florida they’re likely to overlap.
The Riddell/IMG connection should be investigated. To think Riddell was only perfoming test cheating for a person in California and not doing it for any of the students he’d have direct contact with at IMG sounds very, very naive.
Agreed @Knowsstuff - if one is doing the right they don’t need to worry … Cheaters are the one who will face College Board and FBI music!
I was told long ago . If you don’t do anything wrong then you can’t get caught!
Never ever underestimate the power of mom who wants to do the RIGHT thing!
(Post #1896)
This ^ Yes Yes Yes!
The College Admissions Scandal Shows There’s No Such Thing as a Cheap Bribe…
“They—the kids and their parents—already have so many advantages, and so many very-legal and normal ways to ensure their kids’ future, from expensive tutors and college consultants to major donations. Yet they (allegedly) resorted to this ham-fisted, maximum-risk bribery, to save, perhaps, $800,000, which is in some cases is less than half of one month of after-tax compensation. Now they are paying far more in reputational harm and probably lost income. A very poor trade.”
No one has addressed the fact that SAT/ACT scores are only part (and in some cases a small part) of a student’s application. A more thorough look into their high school, teachers and grades given/earned would be appropriate.
A 34 ACT with a 3.4 GPA is not getting kids into the schools listed in this case.
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Might I remind members of the forum rules: “Our forum is expected to be a friendly and welcoming place.”
Snark has no place on this thread. “I disagree with your opinion” is fine; “You’re crazy to think that” is not.
Additionally, since this thread is moving so fast, and it is impossible for me to write “let’s move on” on the top of every page, please keep to the conversation at hand. Which means, unless there are some ties to the scandal, no discussion of Athletic Index, no discussion of which revenue sport has the most revenue, no discussion of what color dress your kid wore on SAT day, etc. Non-compliant posts risk being deleted without comment.
Having said that, the moderators have been giving users a lot of leeway on this thread. So while I am now saying to stick to the topic, let’s be clear - I am not going through 129 pages of old posts to clean. Keep that in mind if you feel the need to flag a post for review.
A post on an online forum is hardly a reliable source. Even if it were true that a large percentage of students at a private school have accommodations it doesn’t mean they got them dishonestly. Public schools don’t have the money or resources to provide the assistance these students need. It can be extremely difficult to get the schools to properly classify students and harder still to get the tools they need to succeed. Parents with money don’t bother to fight the administration year after year after year. They leave the public school system and enroll their children in private school. So it wouldn’t surprise me if the number of students in private schools who have diagnosed learning disorders is higher than the number in public school. You can’t get accommodations if the school refuses to give them to you.
Are there people who cheat? I’m sure there are. But the public school students who are being denied an appropriate education because districts refuse to give them the support they need are being cheated too. Where’s your outrage for them?
Throughout 128 pages here and numerous indictments and news stories, the GPAs have come up. As part of the scheme where needed, they faked online classes with high grades to boost GPAs from what I understand. With the right hooks, these kids didn’t need perfect GPAs or high rigor, just reasonably solid ones.
Whether they go to schools that tend to have higher GPAs anyway isn’t part of this investigation. College ad coms already have an idea of which high schools over inflate grades and can choose to factor that in if they wish.
Exactly, @austinmshauri. Additionally, there are private schools specifically for kids with LDs, so it would make sense that a high percentage of the students would have accommodations. Moreover, CB has reviewed schools with high numbers of accommodations. Many years ago there was discussion about this at a public HS in Westchester, as was done at another in CT.
Harvard!
“Mark E. Riddell ’06, the former director of exam preparation at IMG Academy in Florida, allegedly tampered with students’ standardized test answers and, in at least one instance, received an exam from a compromised test administrator and took it himself.”
@milee30 the above linked article mentioned Riddell/IMG’s involvement.
What happens when your “right thing” ends up harming students with legitimate learning disabilities, because it becomes that much harder for them to get appropriate accommodations?
The issue isn’t the accommodations. These students didn’t take extra time to take the test. The extra time was a means to an entirely different end. Even if 50% of student as private schools get extra time on their tests at school (and even if that percentage get them at their public schools), most are not getting double time on these standardized tests. A few examples of people abusing the system doesn’t mean the system overall doesn’t work. That’s like claiming that a handful of people working under the table while collecting Welfare means all recipients are cheats. Even these indictments don’t mean that all people in the lower half of the 1% cheat to get their kids into college. Some do, and they use whatever resources and means are available to them.
I would say that what you both (@jym626 and @austinmshaun) have stated your points quite intelligently.
Would you also agree that it would be wise to seek out and stop any prep schools that uniformly create false accommodations for students who don’t need them?
It seems that if some schools have taken that approach that they are being insensitive and unfair to students who do deserve accommodations (as well as to students who do not).
And, by the way, I believe that there are schools that do take that approach…I’m fairly certain of that fact.
College Cheating Scandal Shows a Standardized Test Isn’t Always a Fair One
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/us/sat-act-cheating-college-admissions.html
A few people have asked why take the risk & use the side door?
The NYT podcast The Daily mentioned the parents were highly motivated to nail it down. They wanted certainty re: admittance.
We could migrate some of these problems with limited seats if the elite colleges use their enormous endowment to build more classrooms and have more seats. Since there are limited seats, this also explain why going to college is very expensive, supply and demand.
These wealthy people have kids who are not smart enough to get into college had to cheat to get in. For those who are upset and think that these wealthy kids took their spots, how do you know if your kids would even get in? Some other smart kids could have gotten in and took your kid’s spot.
Should we start putting kids name in a black box, shake the box and pull out the names, like playing the lottery? Would that make life fair for everyone?