20 charged in NY SAT cheating scandal

Associated Press

GREAT NECK, N.Y.

At least 20 current or former high-school students from an affluent New York suburb of high achievers have been charged in a widening college entrance- exam cheating scandal that has raised questions not only about test security but about the pressures to score well.

Thirteen students from the Great Neck area, a cluster of Long Island communities with top-ranked schools that send virtually all their graduates to college, were implicated in the latest round of charges, filed Tuesday. Seven others were arrested in September.

Prosecutors said 15 high- school students hired five other people for anywhere from $500 to $3,600 each to take the SAT or ACT for them. The impostors — all of them college students who attended Great Neck-area public and private high schools — fooled test administrators by showing up for the exams with phony ID.

“Honest, hardworking students are taking a back seat to the cheaters,” Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said. “This is a system begging for security enhancements.”

Prosecutors actually suspect 40 students were involved in the cheating, but the two-year statute of limitation had expired for the others, Rice said.

All the defendants but three, who were awaiting arraignment, pleaded not guilty.

The scandal prompted New York state lawmakers to convene a hearing on test security, and a firm run by former FBI Director Louis Freeh was retained by exam administrators to review procedures.