50 Students, Parents Boycott Retest for Invalidated Exam

A biology test was given Saturday in Montrose, and two groups of students showed up--one to take it and one to boycott it.

More than 50 people, including students from Crescenta Valley High School and their parents, demonstrated outside Glendale Community College’s Montrose campus to protest an advanced placement exam being given there.

The test was a makeup exam for one given Crescenta Valley students in May. Educational Testing Service, the national testing organization that gave both tests, invalidated the scores from the earlier test after seven of 79 students were caught cheating.

That angered the students who said they did not cheat. For all of the students, Saturday’s retest posed a dilemma--either go through the grueling ordeal of studying for and taking the exam again or stand up for their sense of right and wrong.

Did Not Take Test

Melissa Dodd chose to stand up. She did not take Saturday’s test.

“Making us take the test over again doesn’t send out a good message to those of us who were honest,” said Dodd, 17, who will enroll at UC Irvine in a few weeks.

Dodd said she will have to take two biology classes because her earlier score on the advanced placement exam was invalidated. “It really makes me angry that I have to do all this extra work because of this,” she said. “It’s going to cost me $1,000 to take extra units, and I’ll have more work. I already have a valid score.”

Dodd was one of two dozen students who filed suit in U. S. District Court in Los Angeles on Thursday, saying the exams were unjustly invalidated because the majority of students did not cheat. They said they were being punished for their honesty.

Most colleges grant credit for introductory college courses to students who score well on the exams, which they can take in their junior or senior year of high school. The protesting students said they prepared for the May exams for nine months.

U. S. District Judge Stephen V. Wilson set an Oct. 31 trial date on the suit.

Another student who refused to retake the test, Cyndi Stiglich, 17, said she was so angered by the invalidation that she is switching her major from veterinary science to law.

“No one should have to go through what we’re going through,” she said. “What this is telling us is that it pays to cheat because you get a second chance. That is just not right.”

The cheating was revealed in May after several students told counselors that they suspected others of cheating. Several days later, seven students admitted that they had copied the answers of other students or opened their test booklets too soon.

“This shows that honesty is obviously not the best policy,” said Nicole Nowakowski, 17, who boycotted the test.

Parent Jan Whelan said she was glad that her daughter, Wendy, had decided not to take the test again. “This shows moral integrity for what they believe,” she said. “It was a real difficult decision. But this lesson teaches you something that no biology class could teach.”

However, there were those who did decide to take the test. They emerged after more than three hours, frustrated but relieved.

“I don’t think it was smart for those kids not to take the test,” said Diana Fort, 17. “I blame the school for not having good testing procedures. It just was not supervised well. I don’t blame ETS.”

The school’s advanced placement biology teacher, Erik Lundberg, praised students who boycotted the test. But he had special words for those who took it.

“I’m very proud of you,” he told the group. “I think you did the right thing.”