Originally Posted by Bostonian
The May SAT scores for the entire country of Korea were cancelled because of widespread cheating.

http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/09/world/asia/south-korea-exam-scandal/
South Korea cheating scandal hits university bids
By Dan Rivers, CNN
May 10, 2013

Quote
It is likely the scandal has tentacles extending across Asia. Brokers in Southeast Asian countries like Thailand are understood to have acquired SAT test papers in advance, selling them for large sums to middle men.

At one of the raided schools in South Korea, a flustered teacher insisted off camera that his Hakwon had done nothing wrong. But at another cramming school, not implicated in the scandal, Vice Principal Byung Yeob Yoon claimed cheating is well known among super ambitious "tiger" parents and their "cub" kids, as they are known here, with tens of thousands of dollars changing hands for the test papers.
"The pressure is there to get the scores. They know there are some avenues where you can achieve higher results, through unsavory or unethical means, and this is a very combustible mixture," he said.

"We get a lot of tiger moms and tiger cubs, and that's why all this hyper competition is happening and that's why people are finding ways to you know skirt the system."

"Just from the grapevine I have heard, tens of thousands of dollars (changes hands) for access to these tests. A lot of parents know where to go, whether it's a subject text or SAT 1."

BINGO. (To this and to the article posted above that ID's that same cohort in the US as "at risk")

Americans are fooling themselves if they don't think that the exact same problems are endemic in some places here, too. Why on earth would teachers, parents, and students who think that cheating on state tests is "completely justifiable" have any compunction about doing so with other high-stakes exams? Answer-- they don't.

It's an arms race.

It does society no good-- clearly-- to be offering coveted "elite" educational opportunity to those are aren't (quite) as naturally ABLE, but merely able to appear so...

and it certainly does bright/almost-MG kids no good for their parents to push them so that they APPEAR to be HG/HG+.

I see this locally-- and it's painful and toxic to see. Truly. Parents here are avid-- maybe even kind of desperate?-- to have a child like our DD. It makes me sad for them, but even sadder for their kids.

Admissions tests need to be so difficult that truly, most test-takers never even have the IDEA that they could get a perfect score. Ceilings need to be WAY, WAY higher. Yes, this is partly a selfish thing on my part, but it's also out of concern for a larger societal problem that I say that. I would prefer it if my DD didn't think that "my best" on the SAT was 2400. I'd like it very very well if she had in her head that her "best" was just... well, her best. Not "perfect."



Re-norming has instead seemed to do some of the opposite.

Schrödinger's cat walks into a bar. And doesn't.