The ethical treatment of students' exam scores

The ethical treatment of students' exam scores

Setiono, Jakarta

A Ministry of National Education policy on the conversion of
students' national exam scores has caused quite an uproar
throughout all levels of society.

Those who are involved either directly or indirectly in
education here have bemoaned the policy. The strongest reaction
has come from education observers. They have called the policy a
"rape of intelligence", "fallacious applause", an "intellectual
crime" and "intellectual assassination" by the education
ministry. I personally perceive it as "educational malpractice",
the penalty of which could be severe.

The controversial and ill-fated conversion system, which
increases the exam benchmark from a score of 3.01 to 4.01, was
statistically formulated without sound or defendable reasoning.
But no matter how sophisticated the statistical analyses used to
arrive at these scores, they still could not be used as a valid
standard of measurement nationwide.

Schools in different regions considerably differ in terms of
teaching and learning philosophy, the quality of their teaching
staffs, the teaching resources available and their teaching
materials, just to mention a few factors.

Thus, adopting the same standard established by the education
ministry for different regions sounds unrealistic and ridiculous.
The interpretation of test results from different areas or
situations should be based on broader perspectives rather than on
a single angle. And the failure to foresee the important
variables that can potentially affect students' performance on
the test, and hence their test scores, would engender a bias in
the interpretation of the tests. A biased score cannot, however,
become a valid inference of students' capabilities.

What is really regrettable about the score conversion is that
higher achieving students are placed in a disadvantageous
position. The conversion system lowers the score of students who
can answer correctly more than 50 percent of the questions on the
test and raises the scores of students who answer less than 50
percent. This can be seen as an abuse of power by the education
ministry on behalf of the government.

The endorsement of the score conversion by the minister of
education obviously reflects the lack of ethics or a code of
conduct in the testing. In fact, issues related to the rights of
individual test takers, such as confidentiality, privacy, consent
and secrecy, go to the very heart of the ethical values of any
society. A manipulative act such as converting students' scores
without their knowledge and consent violates the code of conduct
of testing. Regrettably, such individual rights are not
recognized and supported by the legislative and judicial bodies
here.

Just as in other professions such as medicine, law, politics
and business, the evaluation of the National Examination (UAN)
requires a code of ethics. This is especially important given
that the UAN can be classified as a high-stakes test; that is, it
is a test that has a major consequence on large numbers of
students. Such tests are usually used to make important decisions
about students' admission to universities, the awarding of
scholarships and the employment and retention of teachers.

The formulation of a code of ethics in national testing is
badly needed for several fundamental reasons. First, guidelines
as to which professional practices are executed are needed.
Second, because tests have broad societal implications, test
writers should take the responsibility for the development of
tests. Finally, as test scores are the manifestation or indicator
of students' ability, fairness must become a necessary condition.
Ethics, hopefully, can prevent the abuse of tests and test scores
as instruments of power by authoritarian agencies.

With regard to this last reason, it is an unfair and unjust
practice to convert test scores on the basis of one-sided
judgments. The education ministry has no right or authority to do
this without involving all related parties. Tests that employ
methods of scoring that are not fair to all test takers are not
ethical. What is important now is professional morality to
protect individuals from the misuse and abuse of tests.

The serious implication of this bizarre policy of score
conversion is that people will eventually harbor a deep mistrust
of the tests and test techniques. Students, particularly, will be
reluctant to perform at their best on the tests since their
intellectual endeavors will not be much appreciated. Worst, in
the long run there will be a mistrust of the scores (as a
legitimate indicator of students' performance written in the form
of a certificate) students obtain from institutions.

Tests, especially the UAN, that are supposedly used as an
instrument to measure students' capability should be based on
professional concerns and be free from political meddling, which
is by its very nature in conflict with the pure purpose of the
test per se. Interference by outsiders in determining an
individual's score is clearly politically loaded. As B. Herry
Priyono suspected, the idea of converting students' scores may
have been inspired by income redistribution in the political
economy (The Jakarta Post, June 17).

The government's idea to improve the quality of education in
the country must be appreciated. Certainly, marking up students'
scores nationwide using a conversion formula in a bid to minimize
the number of students failing the UAN is inherently deceptive.
Such an attempt is clearly unpalatable and unethical. This
endeavor will provokes further problems that can tarnish the
image of our education system in the eyes of the international
community.

There are still innumerable things that can be done to improve
the quality of our education, such as allocating more money for
education, developing the quality and competency of teachers,
upgrading the management of education, designing effective
curriculums and teaching materials, and improving the education
infrastructure.

The writer is a lecturer at Atma Jaya University.