SAT Cheating Inquiry Opens at Calabasas High

The national agency that administers the Scholastic Aptitude Test to college-track teen-agers is opening an investigation into charges that some Calabasas High School students obtained answers before taking the exam, school officials said Thursday.

The Educational Testing Service, which administers the SAT nationwide, will investigate complaints that some students may have received bootleg answers from a private tutor in the western San Fernando Valley prior to the examination Oct. 10, according to school officials and students.

The Princeton, N.J., agency has also inquired into similar allegations at Taft High School in Woodland Hills, but it was not clear whether a formal investigation will take place there, school administrators said.

“All of the allegations have been turned over to the . . . Educational Testing Service, and they are investigating,” said Assistant Supt. Leo Lowe of the Las Virgenes Unified School District, which oversees Calabasas High.

“Obviously, if there’s some shortcoming, we’d like to know about it.”

Officials of the testing service declined to comment specifically on either probe, saying the company does not “confirm or deny any investigation that we’re in the process of.” However, spokesman Ray Nicosia said on-site investigations are conducted only if the agency believes there is a strong possibility that “something was compromised, like somebody getting a test booklet in advance.”

Most four-year colleges and universities look to SAT scores as a principal element in determining which high school applicants to accept. The contents of the rigorous tests, which are given nationwide on certain days to provide a uniform basis to compare students, are closely guarded secrets. Competition is intense to get a high score, which can determine a student’s future.

The upcoming investigation at Calabasas was sparked by two anonymous letters and an anonymous phone call to campus officials last week, Assistant Principal Steven Rosentsweig said. The typewritten letters and the adult caller alleged that some of the 240 students who took the exam at the school “had gotten access to answers from a private location,” Rosentsweig said.

“No names are ever mentioned,” he said. “We don’t have any evidence of anything . . . It could be rumor; it could be true. We just don’t know.”

Rosentsweig said no students have yet come forward to speak with administrators on the matter. But the school officials, following standard procedure, contacted ETS.

The allegations apparently centered around a West Valley man who offers crash courses in preparing for the exam and other standardized tests. Students said in interviews that the tutor, who apparently charged several hundred dollars for the course, furnished teen-agers with vocabulary lists including words he somehow knew would be on the verbal portion of the upcoming SAT.

One Calabasas senior who declined to give her name told The Times that a friend who took the class telephoned her the night before the exam, “told me a vocabulary word and said, ‘Know this word.’ And the next day it was on the test.

“I don’t call that coincidence,” the student said.

Another senior, whose best friend had enrolled in the course, also expressed frustration that some students may have had an undue advantage.

“It’s not fair. It’s very frustrating. I go in and try my hardest,” she said.

At Taft, college counselor Linda Zimring alerted the testing service to a possible impropriety Thursday after a parent called this week to complain.

Rumors of cheating were swirling about the campus, and “our kids are all very, very frightened right now that all their scores may be canceled,” Zimring said.

ETS spokesman Ray Nicosia said invalidating test scores is indeed an option if the company detects improprieties, but such a step would depend upon the magnitude of the problem.

“We will act as quickly as possible when we have to do an investigation. For the convenience of the students, we would do a retest as quickly as possible” if warranted, he said.

The agency regularly receives complaints after tests are administered, Nicosia said. Although “we take every call or letter to us very seriously,” an on-site investigation is launched only if there are significant indications that security measures were breached, he said.

About 54,000 students throughout California took the exam on Oct. 10, one of several testing dates throughout the year, Nicosia said. The exams are shipped to designated supervisors at the various testing centers--such as Calabasas High--who are instructed to maintain tight security.

Instances where students secure smuggled copies of the test, or test answers, are “very rare,” he said. “But it does happen.”