I seem to be getting a lot of comments about cheating. And how to cheat on the SAT, the MCAT, or the CBEST. My short take "No." It has to do less with weather you're going to get away with it and more about your own personal integrity.

I'll repeat, my friends were caught for mucking with the CTBS, not the CBEST or the SAT. They weren't doing it for long term personal gain. They did it because they were lazy, and the wanted to play cards instead of taking the same test for the third year. The consequences were that show that they will not expose the incompetence of LAUSD standardized testing procedures.

That reminds me of the other group of kids who thought it was injustice to be made to take a test that didn't count for anything exept for school prestige, and thus the local realators would take the results, and then property values in the neighborhood would rise and fall based on how well the kids did on this test. Since the kids thought it was wrong, a group of maybe 15 or 20 of the brightest kids figured out that since their names weren't on the test, they would miss every question on the test. Well they did it and the school had a drastic drop in scores, which was befuddling the the administration and the LAUSD, how could their one of their best schools, be doing so poorly?

The administators found out, and realized that since it was a humanities magnet, and that they had been teaching the kids to be free thinkers. Then they in a sense were doing their job. And the kids had thought through the system and come to a valid conclusion.

Does anyone believe in the MCAS

Yes there were people who cheated on the SAT's. They had someone else take the test for them. And yes they were caught. I am infuriated that ETS did not more severely punish the perpetrators. But the more I think about it, it was somthing that should have been dealt with at the local school level.

So my answer to Peter and what the consequences of cheating are, is that yes the system will forgive you. The consequences are not forever.

Should you do it anyways. Will it come back to haunt you later in life... Maybe. People have enough identity issues in their lives as it is, if you want to add this to the mix how are you ever supposted to stand as a man of inegrity, if you aren't even reconciled with the actions of your past.

There are cases where people have cheated on the SAT and probably gotten away with it, and even gotten caught with minimal penalties. And you could do the same for any standardized test, cheat on the MCAT? sure. It's an imperfect system designed to be good enough. You can either trust that the system works, or rebel against it.

I do believe that there is justice in the world, and that your actions will be paid for, if not in this life, in some life whether in the past or the present.

Grace exists, because we are imperfect people, without it we'd live our lives in vain trying to make up for our failures.