Relates to pre and post test reporting requirements, test site registration and sign in, and establishes crime related to educational testing fraud

Summary of provisions

Section 1: Amends section 340 of the education law to add four new definitions to Article 7A.

Section 2: Amends section 344 of the education law to clarify that test agencies can report the cancellation of a test pursuant to subdivision eight-a of section 344-b of the education law.

Section 3: Amends subdivision 3 of section 344-b of the education law to clarify that test agencies can report the cancellation of a test score.

Section 4: Amends section 344-b of the education law to add a new subdivision 5-a to authorize a test agency to temporarily suspend a test subject's score.

Section 5: Amends subdivision 6(c) and 7 of section 344-b of the education law to clarify that if a test agency temporarily suspends a test subject's test score and refers the case to the proper authorities, the test subject shall have an opportunity to make claims of innocents to the proper authorities.

Section 6: Amends section 344-b of the education law and adds two new sections, 8-a and 8-b in relation to temporary suspensions of test scores upon a finding of test irregularity, which leads the test agency to turn the case over to the proper authorities.

Section 7: Amends the education law to add a new section 344-d in relation to pre and post test reporting requirements and test site registration and sign in requirements.

Section 8: Amends the penal law to create the crime of criminal facilitation of educational testing fraud.

Section 9: Requires the test agencies who administer the SAT or ACT to report to the higher education committees in each house one year from the effective date of this act.

Section 10. Sets for the effective date.

Justification

This bill is necessary to create deterrents from cheating on post secondary standardized tests, to improve identification verification of those who take such exams in this state and to criminalize the facilitation of behaviors that rise to the level of criminal impersonation in relation to taking a standardized test.

In recent months, an SAT cheating scandal was discovered on Long Island. It was found that high school students were paying large sums of money to college students who falsified identifications and took the SATs for them. This scandal included up to 50 students, some of who were middle men who connected the impersonating test takers with the high school students who had the ability to pay up to $3,600 for another to take the exam for them.

The Senate Standing Committee on Higher Education held hearings on this issue in October of 2011. It was discovered that lax test site identification procedures and no test taker reporting requirements; along with test taker's due process rights under the education law, allowed such egregious conduct to occur. NYS law specifically delineates what a testing agency is allowed to do upon the discovery of cheating. There is nothing in relation to the regulation of standardized tests that would be a deterrent from cheating and there are no specific criminal penalties with regard to criminal facilitation of educational testing fraud.

This bill would amend the sections of the education law that prevent testing agencies from reporting to students' home high schools if a test score is cancelled due to the discovery that such student cheated. In addition, this bill creates reporting requirements and establishes the crime of criminal facilitation of educational testing fraud. This new crime will enable prosecutors to charge parents or guardians with criminal facilitation of educational testing fraud when they are providing the financial benefit for someone else to impersonate their child for the purposes of taking an undergraduate entrance exam. Such deterrents will go a long way to prevent cheating on standardized tests in the future.

With the increasing number of college applicants fighting for limited spots, getting into the college of your choice has become more and more competitive. Therefore, there has been increased importance placed a student's SAT or ACT score. When a student cheats, such behavior has the potential to displace honest, hard working students from the most competitive colleges. Students who didn't earn and don't deserve such coveted placements should not have this unfair advantage.

Legislative history

2012 S.7088

Fiscal implications

None to the State.

EFFECTIVE DATE; This act shall take effect on the first November next succeeding the date on which it shall have become law.