Chinese education giant helps its students game the SAT

When the new SAT was first given in March, the trial owner has taken unprecedented steps to stop "bad actors" to gather and distribute test material access to all major university.

But in the months that followed, China's largest private education company subverted efforts to prevent cheating, Reuters.

New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc. has consistently provided customers with test items shortly after the exam administration. Since the old SAT records are generally reused during subsequent reviews, items that New Oriental is delivering could provide those assessed an unfair advantage.

New Oriental features some of the elements of the review on its Chinese website. On December 6, for example, the Beijing-based company published a reading passage that was used in a version of the SAT administered in the US. Three days before. New Oriental also published information on current issues on the TOEFL, the English test widely used by universities to evaluate foreign applicants. TOEFL questions are sometimes recycled.

New Oriental also gave students access to a March version of the SAT was administered in the United States, two students from Beijing to Reuters. One of the students showed Reuters 36 pages of this essay.

In addition, the news agency has seen a copy of a full version of the SAT data in Asia last month. Most of the pages of the document were stamped with the words "Oriental New Beijing School," an important training operation run by New Oriental. A person who identified as a teacher preparation for the test at school has written 15 pages of this review on social networks in China.

In response to the findings of Reuters, New Oriental has issued a statement condemning "illegal and illegitimate business practices, whether performed by competitors or any of our employees or ex ... we look at what has been raised And take disciplinary action against anyone who has violated our policies and procedures. "

Reuters new findings cast doubt on the ability of giants of America's standardized tests to contain traps in Asia, where security breaches pose a growing threat to the integrity of admissions in American universities. China from hundreds of thousands of students and other Asian countries are enrolled in US universities.

The head of the SAT, the College Board in New York, attributed the outbreak to cheating in an industry of unidentified "bad actors" operating beyond the reach of the law. New Oriental, however, is one of the best known companies in China.