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SAT
Chanthorn Peou of San Diego, Calif., takes the SAT aboard the USS Kitty Hawk (U.S. Navy photo by Jason T. Poplin)

Is it actually surprising that students in a tony New York suburb figured out a manner, co-ordinate to law-enforcement officials, to crook on the Sat? When I first saw the headlines, I was slightly shocked at the audacity of a scam that allegedly involved a 19-year-quondam college student accepting large sums of coin to take the SAT for at least half dozen other students.

Then I remembered the dozens of stories I've written over the years about the race for spots in the nation's most competitive colleges and universities. It's an arms race that turns parenting into a competitive sport, and provides the wealthy with whatever-it-takes tools to give their progeny a boost. Higher admissions boot camps, consultants who help build student resumes and guide applications, essay-writing services, and—e'er—tutors who tin charge well over $500 an hour.

Every bit long equally you can pay for it, information technology seems, anything goes.

Why should cheating daze us? After all, discussions and headlines abound these days about cheating scandals and erasures by educators on standardized exams. The message that winning trumps thinking has begun to prevail, even at a fourth dimension when Washington Post columnist Jay Mathews correctly questions the continuing relevance of the SAT.

Then when I was asked final night on NBC's Nightly News if I was surprised by the adulterous scandal at Long Isle's Smashing Neck North High Schoolhouse, I realized I wasn't.

The declared ringleader has since been arrested and charged with a scheme to defraud, falsifying business records and criminal impersonation.

But I chop-chop wanted to modify the conversation—something that'due south difficult to do in a 20-second television set advent. I didn't want to talk about new means to game the system and help kids who've already had sufficient advantages increase their chances for spots at elite institutions. I wanted to focus on the graduation gap and how far the U.S. is falling behind other countries when information technology comes to getting higher students to graduate. If we don't modify the rate at which we produce 2-year and four-year college graduates, the U.South. will face up a projected shortfall of 23 million college-educated adults in the American workforce past 2025.

For every American student who graduates from higher, two drop out.

Those are the bug and questions that demand to be deeply examined by the printing, policymakers and politicians. President Barack Obama has pushed for a new graduation initiative to accost this, simply as The Hechinger Report's Jon Marcus recently noted, Obama'due south initiative faces more than a few stumbling blocks.

Of form, in that location volition be lots of headlines about the kids from Swell Neck and their attempts to game the Sat. I but hope they'll be followed by attention to what we can do to become more U.Southward. students to and through higher. Performing well on the SAT and getting into college are just two pocket-size parts of a much larger and more important equation. And once students get to college, learning to call back critically has to accept center stage.

Yous tin can't pay someone to do that for you lot.

The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on educational activity that is free to all readers. But that doesn't mean it'southward complimentary to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed well-nigh pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, fifty-fifty when the details are inconvenient. Assist us go on doing that.

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Liz Willen, a longtime pedagogy journalist, has led the award-winning Hechinger Report staff as editor in chief since 2011. A sought-after moderator of didactics conferences and events, Willen besides writes...