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According to Reuters:
Just months after the College Board unveiled the new SAT* this March, a person with access to material for upcoming versions of the redesigned exam provided Reuters with hundreds of confidential test items. The questions and answers include 21 reading passages -- each with about a dozen questions -- and about 160 math problems.
Reuters doesn't know how widely the items have circulated. The news agency has no evidence that the material has fallen into the hands of what the College Board calls "bad actors" -- groups that the organization says "will lie, cheat and steal for personal gain." But independent testing specialists briefed on the matter said the breach represents one of the most serious security lapses that's come to light in the history of college-admissions testing.
To ensure the materials were authentic, Reuters provided copies to the College Board. In a subsequent letter to the news agency, an attorney for the College Board said publishing any of the items would have a dire impact, "destroying their value, rendering them unusable, and inflicting other injuries on the College Board and test takers."
College Board spokeswoman Sandra Riley said in a statement that the organization was moving to contain any damage from the leak. The College Board is "taking the test forms with stolen content off of the SAT administration schedule while we continue to monitor and analyze the situation," she said.
Then, of course, there's the problem of unprepared "students" clogging up the already sluggish educational system...
* [Editor's Note] The SAT is a standardized test widely used for college admissions in the United States. It was first introduced in 1926, and its name and scoring have changed several times, being originally called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, then the Scholastic Assessment Test, then the SAT I: Reasoning Test, then the SAT Reasoning Test, and now simply the SAT.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @08:56AM
If people are able to cheat the test merely by having the questions, then chances are the test is terrible and relies on rote memorization. This is not appropriate for subjects like mathematics.
Standardized tests as they are now are designed to make it easier and cheaper for the test takers to grade, not to test a someone's actual understanding of the subject. I guess they eliminate people who didn't even bother to memorize the material, but Jeopardy! geniuses--of which there are many--will still slip through.
(Score: 3, Informative) by maxwell demon on Thursday August 04 2016, @09:06AM
That doesn't follow. For example, let's assume there's a test that requires you to write an essay about a certain subject told to you at the beginning of the test. Clearly that is something you cannot do with rote memorization. But if someone leaks the subject to you before the test, you can ask someone to write the essay for you, memorize that essay, and write it down at the test.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @09:42AM
This is true.
Put differently, a test can be vulnerable to rote memorization of answers without being dependent on (or even testing) rote memorization.
Unfortunately, standardized exams which are predominately multiple choice are very vulnerable to rote memorization if the test bank is compromised.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @10:25AM
Unfortunately, standardized exams which are predominately multiple choice are very vulnerable to rote memorization if the test bank is compromised.
Current standardized tests are also very largely dependent on rote memorization. So that makes this problem even worse.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @10:52AM
OP is saying that because this approach is possible - having someone write the answer for you and then memorizing - the test type used for literature is bad. I agree with him about literature testing in my country (idk how SAT is).
Even when you don't have the questions, rote memorization is the best way to study for literature. You read acclaimed analyses of the relevant works in advance (reading the actual works is optional), memorize the key points in advance, and when you get the essay topic you just regurgitate the key points you memorized with some other bullshitting for the relevant works. If SAT intentionally picks super obscure works that aren't in the curriculum to make it impossible for a student to have read a relevant analysis beforehand then the test would be about understanding and thought; if it works on a predictable set of titles then it's about rote memorization.
Contrast maths. Even for an exam with 20 questions and 8 variants that were leaked beforehand, from scratch you can only memorize 2-3 questions with intermediate steps. Anything more would require a herculean effort and you'd find it much easier to just learn how to solve the stuff. Having the key helps, no doubt, but you'll use it to memorize the one question you always struggle with, not to bypass the entire math section.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @10:59PM
People mindlessly memorize how to solve math equations all the time. Knowing "how to" solve the problem isn't the same as understanding why it works; the latter is far more important. Most of the people who pass the math sections of these standardized tests don't even truly understand the math.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Thursday August 04 2016, @10:56AM
And of course add to that that most of the test is multiple-choice, which is the second-easiest kind of question to memorize and cheat with.
That said, college admissions officers won't be fooled if a real idiot somehow manages a very high score, because high school grades count far more than standardized tests in most colleges. They also look for other signs that you might be a good student, including your extracurriculars, what classes you took (e.g. AP physics good, remedial pre-algebra bad), your interview if you had one, and your essay. Cheating on the SAT would at best get you past the first screening where many applications are rejected outright for poor grades and test scores, before they've even bothered looking at anything else.
Even if you successfully cheat on everything and manage to get admitted to a school you are not qualified for, after 1 semester odds are you'll be unable to keep up and will end up on academic probation, and then after 2-3 semesters you'll be kicked out.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Thursday August 04 2016, @08:28PM
This is why it will be bad for the cheater (unless they can keep cheating throughout college.) But it's also bad for the college and the person who doesn't get in. And, it makes the SATs less useful as a tool. Relying on the long-term self-realization of cheaters that in the long run they're screwed has quite high costs on everyone involved.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 04 2016, @03:46PM
If people are able to cheat the test merely by having the questions, then chances are the test is terrible and relies on rote memorization. This is not appropriate for subjects like mathematics.
Wait, what? How does this even make any sense. I challenge you to name *any* non-athletic test which is not made easier by knowing the question in advance. Literally any test. A cooking challenge (you can look up recipes in advance), an essay (you can research the subject matter and know references, if not outright have an outline or draft), mathematical proofs (you can figure them out in advance), vocabulary (you can look up words you don't know in advance), etc. They might not get 100%, but I guarantee the prepared person will do better.
I literally can't think of a single test in which two students, one knowing the questions in advance and one going in blind, will have a fair comparison.