How did this thing work to begin with? Did Eshaghoff,you know, take six different versions of the SAT? And don't you have to have an I.D. just to get into the testing center?
Well, he certainly did.He took tests for six individuals from the same high school where he graduated. They paid him upwards of $2,500. And what he did, as part of this whole scheme, was prepare fake I.D.s in the name of the student for whom he was taking the test. He presented that I.D. as the test site.
And the proctor did not notice anything, even in the event of the instance where he was taking a test for a young girl, one of the defendants who was a girl, and he scored on every single one of those tests in the 97th percentile. There was a reason why these kids were paying him. They wanted good scores on their SATs.
You know,this Saturday, hundreds of thousands of high school students across the country are going to sit for the SATs and the message needs to be sent to all of them that, if you cheat, you're going to get caught and you will be held accountable.
Kathleen, how did they get caught in the first place? Is it because there was such a discrepancy between their grades and the scores?
Well, it started, as most things do, with rumors going around the high school that certain kids had paid someone to take the test for them.
The high school administration undertook an investigation. And what they did was they started, they honed in on those high school students who took the test elsewhere, somewhere other than the high school. And they focused on those kids, they looked at the SAT scores that those six kids, that these kids got, and then they compared them to their GPA. And there was a huge discrepancy with these six students--
I see. who had mediocre GPAs, but they scored in the 97th percentile on the SAT. So that was a big red flag for them.
OK. I do want to get this in here, because we have a statement from Great Neck school district. They say they have been cooperating with Nassau County, with you guys. They say: "It's our hope that the actions currently being taken by the district attorney's office will serve to bring an end to any dishonest practices which may have placed students at an unfair disadvantage and will also bring light to any shortcomings in the security of the SAT testing system."
But here's my other question for you. You know,some people -- in fact I'm getting tweets on this -- saying, hang on a second. Is this really a matter for the legal system? They think it should be a school issue to deal with their own students. What's your reaction to that?
Well, the school handled this situation from an administrative standpoint, but what the kids did is a crime. And that's the bottom line.And the message here is there needs to be a level playing field. The overwhelming majority of high school kids across this country don't cheat. They work hard, they study hard, they take the tests themselves and they try to get into the best school that they can. We need to protect the honest student. They should not be on the second rung of the ladder behind the cheater. And that's what we have here. So I...
