Oddly similar test questions spark suspicions over CSAT
Published: 08 Jan. 2024, 18:47
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- LEE SOO-JUNG
- [email protected]
![College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) question no. 23 from the English section for the academic year 2023 (left) and mock exam question provided by famous lecturer at major cram school (right) [JOONGANG PHOTO]](https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/data/photo/2024/01/08/7f023328-becf-40b5-a2df-d90c2c35ae4f.jpg)
College Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) question no. 23 from the English section for the academic year 2023 (left) and mock exam question provided by famous lecturer at major cram school (right) [JOONGANG PHOTO]
The Education Ministry said Monday that it sought police help last July to investigate how the cram school’s mock exam question was so similar to the actual CSAT question for the academic year 2023.
The ministry's move appears aimed at breaking the alleged collusion between cram schools and CSAT exam writers.
After the CSAT in November 2022, some test-takers said question No. 23 from the English section was identical to the mock exam question provided by a famous lecturer at a private CSAT preparatory academy. They said only a single sentence differed.
The two passages were based on an excerpt from “Too Much Information” (2020) written by Cass R. Sunstein, a professor at Harvard Law School.
The CSAT question asked students to find the most appropriate topic encompassing the whole text, while the private prep school’s material required students to find out-of-context vocabulary.
More than hundreds of appeals and complaints were made to the CSAT administrator, the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation.
The petitioners argued that those who took the specific lecturer’s class at the cram school had an unfair advantage over other test-takers.
However, the administering authority at the time said it was an “odd coincidence” that the texts from the actual CSAT and the private cram school’s mock exam overlapped.
The institution also noted the difference in question type and answer choices.
The authority rejected the appeals as they were not about errors in the text or answers.
“Although the institution’s officials check the workbooks available at bookstores [before the CSAT], we cannot go over every single question or teaching material distributed or taught during each cram school’s lectures,” the institution said.
However, when the same appeal reached the Education Ministry’s irregularity reporting center eight months after the CSAT, the ministry changed its stance.
The police are investigating whether antigraft laws were violated, especially regarding how the text used in the cram school’s mock exam appeared in the actual CSAT.
The Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea also launched an investigation of both the Education Ministry and the Korea Institute for Curriculum and Evaluation for their belated responses.
The ministry also asked the police to scrutinize four incumbent school teachers who traded questions with cram school lecturers in return for money.
The Education Ministry said Monday that the cram school lecturer who used the same text that appeared in the CSAT was also accused of trading questions with school teachers.
BY HAN YOUNG-HYE, LEE SOO-JUNG [[email protected]]
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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