SAT Cheating

For no particular reason I decided to read the classified section of my Garden City News. And I noticed an ad—it read: Published writer can help you craft a winning college admissions essay. Check out my website to see samples. And because I was curious, I did. I innocently thought that this woman was a writing coach. I thought to myself—hmm I could coach kids with college essays.  But the woman’s website advertised her as a professional ghostwriter—and that her ghost-written  articles have appeared in several magazines and the New York times.

 I might be really off on this but ghostwriting sounds a lot to me like professional plagiarism. I wondered if people pay professional writers to write their child’s college essays. I wondered if Garden City people are a source of income given the placement of the ad.

There has been a great deal of press recently about an Emory student who took SAT exams for other students. I found this particularly interesting for two reasons. The first one is that the student who took the exams attends school with my daughter—my daughter Kara  is a junior and the boy who took the exams is a sophomore.  Kara, does not know this boy personally, but she is friends with his friends and so while it is all hearsay, she did have some interesting campus chatter.

The second reason this SAT case interested me is because the DA who is prosecuting the case lives in my mother’s building. I hesitate to commit as to whether I am fan of the DA or not. But I do question why the DA chose to bring criminal charges. There seems to be some conjecture as to whether this is in fact a criminal case. I wonder if the DA’s motivation was based more on enhancing personal notoriety than law. I am not a lawyer so I would not know for sure.

What I do know as a mother is, kids are stupid. And even smart, “good” kids make really bad judgment errors sometimes. I can count on 2 hands and 2 feet all the good kids I know who have done really dumb things—some of them even ended up in police custody---like a kid who stupidly showed their fake ID to a police officer when they were drunk---post 9/11 that is a serious crime. Or the kid who thought it was funny to put glue in the locks at the high school—he got nailed for destroying public property. The police didn’t think it was funny at all.

And I think, to that end, blaming the parents for a child’s judgment error isn’t fair either. Many times the good kid who does a dumb-ass thing has caring attentive parents. Every parent has had a young child who in the split second the parent was distracted experienced their child fall and hurt themselves. They weren’t bad parents—they just were the victim of bad timing. Sometimes it is no different when the child gets older—and especially when the child becomes a teenager—only the stakes are higher.

But I did ask Kara how did the kids got the money to pay the student.  How did the parents not miss $1500-2000? And Kara said oh that was easy. The students likely told their parents that they needed the money to pay for a private SAT tutor. The students would have told their parents that the tutor they found had an excellent track record. The parents didn’t check. And the kids would fake going to weekly tutorials. And the parents were none the wiser. And I would guess that when their child got a phenomenal score they likely praised their kid for finding such a quality SAT teacher. They were proud—they thought their kids had it in them all along. To me it’s like all the smart people who invested with Bernie Medoff---there was just enough truth to cover the lie.

When my older daughter took her CPA exam she needed to bring 2 picture IDs. She was fingerprinted as well. And every time she entered or exited the exam room she was rigorously ID’d. This was necessary to prevent cheating.

There is a show on HBO called Shameless. The 17 year old character on the show is a professional test taker. The character gets paid to sit for other people’s SATs and final exams. The writers of the show must have gotten their idea from somewhere: reality.

And while I am not condoning cheating, I think the punishment should fit the crime. I do not see how jail time for stupid kids solves anything. In Newsday last week in the editorial column a woman made the point that if every teenager and young adult was prosecuted for stupidity there wouldn’t be enough jails to house them. I totally agree.

I am more concerned about the woman who advertises as a ghostwriter. She is an adult. She lives here in town. If she is complicit in writing college essays for applicants she is the one I believe should be in legal hot water. In my world that behavior would be more egregious. Maybe the DA should read her Garden City News. Maybe the DA should go looking in her own backyard.