Advanced digital technologies and social media have greatly improved both the learning experience and the assessment convenience, while inadvertently facilitated potential plagiarism and collaborative cheating at the same time. In this article, we will focus on the strategies and their technological implementations to run exams, or in-class tests…

Ten years ago, the author worked as the Director of Assessments for the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). For temporal context, the author arrived after the first of the infamous test cheating scandals and left just before the incident that spawned a second. Indeed, the author filled a new position created to both manage test security…

The amount and severity of security threats have increased considerably over the past two decades, calling into question the validity of assessments administered around the world. These threats have increased for a number of reasons, including the popular use of computerized and online technologies for test administration and the use of almost…

Easy A's may be even easier to score these days, with the growing popularity of online courses. Tech-savvy students are finding ways to cheat that let them ace online courses with minimal effort, in ways that are difficult to detect. The issue of online cheating may rise in prominence, as more and more institutions embrace online courses, and as…

In the twenty-first century, the use of standardized tests as the primary means to evaluate schools and teachers in the United States has contributed to severe dilemmas, including misleading information on what students know, lower-level instruction, cheating, less collaboration, unfair treatment of teachers, and biased teaching. This article…

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the education system has seen immense shifts in its approach to schooling. Previously, students were taught using an extant curriculum with the instructional methods of the teachers at the school; there was little systematic modification to curriculum and methods; and the variable underlying…

Educators, parents, and the public depend on accurate, valid, reliable, and timely information about student academic performance. Testing irregularities--breaches of test security or improper administration of academic testing--undermine efforts to use those data to improve student achievement. Unfortunately, there have been high-profile and…

Tony Alpert, chief operating officer for the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC), ponders whether to allow tablet computers--and particularly iPads--to be used for summative testing online. As Alpert points out, not only would student cheating compromise the validity of the individual student's test event, "worse yet, it could expose…

The cheating scandal that has rocked the 48,000-student Atlanta school system was an egregious, but not entirely unexpected, byproduct of accountability pressures, many testing experts say. The reason: As long as test scores are used in any field to make decisions on rewards or punishments, including for schools or educators, a small percentage of…

College professors often regard their time in the classroom fulfilling and rewarding; the chance to affect the academic and professional development of their students is most likely a key reason why they chose to be professional educators. Unfortunately, with college courses come college credits, which necessitate a course grade for each student,…

Testing and data integrity on statewide assessments is defined as the establishment of a comprehensive set of policies and procedures for: (1) the proper preparation of students; (2) the management and administration of the test(s) that will lead to accurate and appropriate reporting of assessment results; and (3) maintaining the security of…

This case exemplifies the effects of high stakes standardized testing and accountability on education and stakeholders. When schools are pressured for success, educational leaders and teachers often find themselves in circumstances where regulations and procedures are violated, sometimes with noble intent. The case focuses on the ethical and…

The government's plans for students in KS2 and KS3 to be "tested when ready" mark an attempt further to embed instrumentalist views of education. "Testing-when-ready" is seen as an intensification of the harmful regime of testing, targets and League Tables which Mansell (2007) labels "hyper-accountability". Highlighting aspects of Mansell's book…

A technique is described for reducing the incidence of cheating on multiple choice exams. One form of the test is used and each item is assigned multiple numbers. Depending upon the instructions given to the class, some students will use the first of each pair of numbers to determine where to place their responses on a separate answer sheet, while…

Increasing pressure to raise test scores has led to increased cheating by educators. This results in inaccurate information about individual students. Research suggests that significant numbers of teachers witness or participate in cheating and appear increasingly indifferent to cheating. Necessary actions to address the problem of cheating…