The ACLU is opposing a pilot project in Rhode Island to track students as they enter and exit school buses. “Steven Brown, executive director of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, [called] the plan ‘a solution in search of a problem’ and saying the school district already should have procedures in [...]

The Association of Test Publishers (ATP) Conference of 2008 ended yesterday. As always, it was a good conference. In 2004 we stated, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Being a sponsor of the conference, we placed a bag of M&M’s (i.e., manage and measure) in each attendee’s conference packet. And, we printed the message [...]

They say that cheaters only hurt themselves. In all honesty, I think that a cheater said that and we believed him. It is often the case that cheaters hurt the people who gave them the test more than themselves. If you are responsible for giving tests, some fool will eventually cheat on your test. How [...]

The State of Florida recently imposed a cell phone ban on students while taking the FCAT. All the parents of school children in the state received a letter explaining the ban. On the other hand, the Legislature in the State of Utah voted down a bill that would require school districts to establish policies governing [...]

There is a children’s game known by various names as “Whisper,” “Secrets,” or “Gossip” where a secret is shared and passed from one player to the next. The last player hearing the secret says it aloud, often with hilarious results. These same distortions happen in the news media, as journalists cite other reports or each [...]

Kathleen Vohs of the University of Minnesota and Jonathan Schooler of the University of British Columbia have created a series of experiments involving cheating on tests as an attempt to associate behavior (specifically cheating behavior) with moral beliefs and free will. In essence, they ask the question, ” ‘If people came to believe that their [...]

Federal investigators are investigating falsified weapons certifications from 2001 where security guards who were supposedly trained to protect federal buildings have been failing weapons tests. Evidently, the contractor who provided the training was also responsible for certifying that the guards could use the weapons. The contractor knowingly did not train, did not test, but did [...]

A student at the Dayton School of Law is suing the school because it did not fix a glitch in the test administration software that allowed other students to upload pre-written exam answers during the exam. He feels disadvantaged because he had to type in his answers, while others uploaded their answers electronically. http://www.daytondailynews.com/n/content/oh/story/news/local/2007/11/22/ddn112307lawschool.html The [...]