Sunday, March 21, 2010

Cheating scandals add new burden to SAT students

Many Korean students roaming school corridors today carry a burden that remains unresolved. It’s a burden that makes many institutions here wealthy, while nagging at parents and keeping students up all night.


That burden is the Scholastic Aptitude Test.

Originally targeted at high school students in the United States, the test has come into more frequent use in Korea as more and more students aim to study overseas. And recently its escalating popularity has resulted in some serious problems.

The first scandal broke when it was revealed a few teachers at Korean private institutes leaked the January 2010 SAT questions to some students studying in the United States.

Next came reports that one of the most renowned SAT teachers in Gangnam had been abducted and beaten after he deciding to transfer to another institute.

These incidents, although unrelated, have had an immense impact on students - especially those who took the January SAT.

“The moment I got home after taking the SAT on Jan. 23, I saw the article [reporting on the cheating] on the Web,” said Lee Won-ki, a senior at Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies. “Right away I felt this sudden deflation. I was afraid that all the effort I had put in during the last few years might mean nothing just because of somebody else’s misdeeds.”

His concerns did not end there.

“A few days later, I learned that an SAT teacher had been beaten up,” Lee said. “Since I did attend a few institutes to help my scores, I felt guilty even though the institutes I had been to, as far as I know, were never involved in anything like that.”

The stories also had an impact on those who had yet to take the SAT.

“Of course it concerns us,” said Kim A-young, a rising junior at Hankuk Academy of Foreign Studies. “It means we have to choose institutes more carefully, to avoid something like this happening again.”
Still, she doesn’t think the problems should worry Korean students taking the exam.

“I mean, it’s not our fault, right? They were just the illegal actions of a few people,” Kim said. “It isn’t fair for us to be discredited in any way, and I know that the College Board [which supervises the SAT] is aware of this.”

Ahn Jae-min, a student at Daedeok Mechatronics High School, said he wasn’t too surprised by the reports. “Cheating does happen, even on the Korean college exam,” he said. But he added that the scandals have cast students trying to study abroad in a negative light.

Ahn said that because the recent events involve a lot of money - bribing test takers, paying teachers - some people believe “international students” are rich.

With so many students expressing concern about the SAT and overseas education, the institutes themselves are worried about how they’ll be perceived in the future.

“There will be some changes, obviously,” said Elina Jin, a teacher at a private institute called PJE. “We’re going to have to take precautions to prevent these kinds of things.

“There will be more regulations and inspections in both the employment and management of instructors in many institutes. But there won’t be any drastic alterations, since that would kind of suggest guilt, which is totally unnecessary.”

link: http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2918065

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