SAT, ACT Ramp Up Security Measures

Students who register for the SAT and ACT will be required to upload a photo of themselves that will be accessible to colleges, part of new security measures announced Tuesday after an embarrassing cheating scandal in New York last year.

The Associated Press reports that beginning this fall, test-takers’ photos will be printed on their admission tickets and proctors’ rosters, then stored in a database that will be open to people in charge of testing for high schools and colleges. Students will be required to show ID when they enter test sites, when they return from breaks, and when they hand in the test.

The changes come after 20 arrests last fall on Long Island, where the Nassau County prosecutor pressed charges against five students for taking tests with fake IDs and 15 others for paying sums of $500 to $3,600 to secure their services. As many as 50 are suspected of cheating in all, but there wasn't enough evidence to charge more students.

The students taking the tests for others scored as high as 2220 (out of 2400) on the SAT and 31 (out of 36) on the ACT. In one particularly brazen case, Samuel Eshaghoff, 18, was charged with taking a test for a female student with a fake ID, recalls the New York Times. He has pleaded not guilty, but the accusations also led to another new rule requiring students to list their gender when they register for the tests.