Test 2

So I posted about this on Tuesday, and have been following the developments in the college admissions scandal that has made national headlines.

A wide-ranging bribery scheme is unsettling higher education, raising uncomfortable questions about the role of wealth and privilege in the admissions process.
As detailed in U.S. Department of Justice filings, the scheme involved a company, known as “the Key,” that illegally manipulated two main “side doors” to secure the admission of its clients’ children to elite universities. The Key, run by William Rick Singer, bribed officials at college-entrance examination companies to allow third parties to take the students’ tests for them. And it bribed college coaches to identify the students as recruited athletes — guaranteeing them preferential treatment by the admissions office — even though they were not so recruited.

FYI, The Chronicle has a great round-up of the news.

In sum:

There’s one main entity you need to know about: The Edge College & Career Network, LLC, known informally as “The Key.” Clients of the Key included parents who wanted to ensure that their children were admitted to elite colleges.

[...]

The Key used several “side doors.” One was through college-entrance examinations like the SAT and the ACT. Clients were told to have their children ask to extend the time in which they took the tests, sometimes by claiming to have learning disabilities. That tended to give the students an “individualized setting” in which to take the tests. The Key would then bribe officials overseeing those settings to let someone else take an exam in a student’s place. Clients would pay $15,000 to $75,000 per test for that service. The resulting fraudulent scores were submitted to colleges.

Another “side door” was through athletic designation. From 2011 to 2018, parents paid the Key about $25 million to bribe coaches and administrators to identify the parents’ children as recruited athletes, thereby giving them a leg up in the admissions process. Coaches are typically granted a certain number of “admissions slots” in which they alert the admissions office to their teams’ needs; coaches who accepted the Key’s bribes agreed to designate one “slot” to an applicant even though he or she was not a recruited athlete. (The Key created fake athletic “profiles” for those students, even going so far as to Photoshop their faces onto the bodies of real athletes.)

Okay, okay. So these folks clearly did a bad thing (or, more likely things). And I'm reading today that there will be some real consequences for Olivia Jade:

Sephora has officially ended its partnership with Olivia Jade Giannulli, the 19-year-old YouTuber and daughter of Lori Loughlin, who's at the center of the nationwide college admissions cheating scam.

In a statement to BuzzFeed News, the makeup giant said that "after careful review of recent developments, we have made the decision to end the Sephora Collection partnership with Olivia
Jade."

...and even bigger consequences for Lori Loughlin:

First it was Hallmark Channel cutting Lori Loughlin loose earlier today after her indicted involvement in the elite college admissions fraud scheme. Now it seems inevitable that Netflix will not be inviting the actor known around the world as Aunt Becky back for the fifth and final season of Fuller House.

But, my biggest concern coming out of all of this is not the tut-tutting surrounding the college admissions process and the idea that the rich can essentially get whatever they want - though it is certainly worthy of a few tut-tuts. Rather, it's the idea that standardized testing may have been an issue among the numerous other issues in the scandal:

The allegations also extend to cheating on the SAT and the ACT. According to the indictments, those involved in the conspiracy encouraged students they were being paid to help to file papers with ACT or the College Board saying that they had learning disabilities. When they received permission to take the test under special circumstances (typically with extra time), these applicants were told to use one of two testing centers that one of the defendants said he could "control." Those taking the tests were then told to come up with fake reasons, such as a family wedding, for needing to take the exam in one of these centers, which were far from their homes. Bribes were then allegedly given to have others take the tests.

[...]

In many of the cases discussed in the indictments, parents working with Singer appear to have engaged in all kinds of violations of the rules of standardized tests: lying to get certified as someone with learning disabilities, lying to justify taking tests at certain testing centers, and bribing proctors. Both the College Board and ACT said that the indictments showed that this type of alleged wrongdoing will be found out and punished. Both said that they were cooperating with the federal investigation.

A statement from the College Board said, "Today’s arrests resulting from an investigation conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts send a clear message that those who facilitate cheating on the SAT -- regardless of their income or status -- will be held accountable. The College Board has a comprehensive, robust approach to combat cheating, and we work closely with law enforcement as part of those efforts. We will always take all necessary steps to ensure a level playing field for the overwhelming majority of test takers who are honest and play by the rules."

A statement from ACT said, "ACT contracts with thousands of people to locally administer the ACT around the country. These individuals certify to follow ACT's policies and procedures to administer the ACT test. In these cases, the two charged individuals allegedly did not follow ACT's rules. ACT is committed to ensuring that all students have an equal opportunity to demonstrate what they’ve learned in school through their hard work. No student should have an unfair advantage over any other. The integrity of the ACT scores that we send to colleges and scholarship agencies is of critical importance to students and their parents. ACT works hard to ensure that the ACT scores we report to colleges are fairly earned."

My emphasis.

So here's the big question that I have (among the rest of the questions that I have): what happens if it is determined that there was tampering with standardized test results? How far will the impact extend? Something like that could potentially invalidate scores for hundreds (or more?) of students.

Lots of folks are asking if this scandal will be the straw that finally breaks the proverbial horse's back, and that's a worthy question for the future. But what happens now if the results come in and we find that scores need to be invalidated?

Jon Boeckenstedt, the AVP of Enrollment Management at DePaul University - and a really smart guy, had this to say on Twitter the other day:

So what if: A) Singer has to turn over his entire client list over several years, B) College Board and ACT cross it against the compromised test centers, C) they cancel all those scores, and D) they notify every college where students are enrolled?

— Jon Boeckenstedt (@JonBoeckenstedt) March 13, 2019

Indeed.

I, like many in higher education, will continue to watch this story with great interest. My hope is that only the guilty in this story will be punished.