A group of students at a Los Angeles high school is suspected of cheating on the ACT college entrance exam by paying a former student, who used fraudulent identification, to take the tests. The testing agency recently began investigating the claims, which could result in cancellation of scores provided to colleges.
But those colleges will not be told why the scores are invalid, nor will the students' high school be clued in.
In all likelihood, the students will simply retake the test with few consequences, the result of a little-known policy by the ACT and the College Board, which owns the rival SAT, to keep such irregularities confidential. Each year, millions of stressed-out students take the two tests, hoping a good score will secure them a spot at the nation's top colleges.
But most students know little of what occurs when a score is in dispute. And the policies of the two nonprofit test companies seem to satisfy no one. Some complain that scores are arbitrarily canceled without evidence, while others criticize the companies for giving a free pass to cheaters.
If a score is invalidated, colleges receive a fairly generic alert like this one sent recently to UCLA:
"The ACT cancels scores for a variety of reasons, including illness of the examinee, mis-timing of the test, disturbances or irregularity at the testing site. . . . It is the ACT policy to treat the ACT's reasoning for canceling a specific score as confidential."
The agencies say their only concern is the integrity of scores, and that it would be impractical to expose student cheaters or try to exact punishment, such as barring them from retaking the test or noting infractions on transcripts.
"We don't tell schools or anyone else; we simply cancel the score," said ACT spokesman Ed Colby. "What we're trying to do is make sure the scores that we send to colleges are valid. It's not our intention to go around punishing students who make mistakes or who've done something they shouldn't have done."
The Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT for the College Board, had a similar response.
"The SAT does play a very important role in the college admissions process, and to prohibit somebody from taking the test . . . that might hinder their educational future, seems a bit extreme," spokesman Tom Ewing said.
But critics assert that such evasions let student cheaters off the hook.
