In the Washington, D.C. public school system, school board officials are concerned with the possibility that a security seal on text booklets might not be protective enough against tampering with the answer sheets. However, I think that security on standardized testing is a little too protective. It is good that they make attempts to prevent cheating with security measures, but sometimes they go a little overboard. For example, tearing the wrong seal could result in an invalidation of one’s test as well as disciplinary actions. What if someone did it by accident? Most people who would happen to tear the seal likely would not be doing it for the intent of cheating, but rather by mistake. The tests can be somewhat nerve-wracking due to the intense security. I tend to worry more about accidentally doing something wrong security-wise rather than the content of the tests themselves.
In this case of this story, however, adding an additional seal that can only be broken by the student during testing probably would not be too bad. It should reduce the amount of tampering, so in that case, it would likely be beneficial. Reducing the amount of tampering would be more fair for everyone and would also improve the accuracy of statistics. However, the security should also be altered in that consequences would not be as harsh for people who simply breached the security on accident. Doing something such as breaking the wrong seal is not too difficult to do, and one should not be strictly disciplined for doing something they did not mean to do. The ideal changes that could possibly happen would be the addition of additional security measures paired with the reduction of consequences for those who breach security by mistake, allowing the innocent to be able to take tests with less worries. Hopefully, however, the rate of cheating or tampering will decrease over time, and standardized tests would become more fair for all.
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