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.