SAT Establishes “No Breathing” Policy
“Achieving More” means sacrifice.
Among the changes that came with the New SAT, the College Board is most excited to implement its “No Breathing” policy.
“Once we have tried this new initiative, we believe that by now we will have covered all the bases when it comes to cheating”, says Daniel Coleman*, the CEO of College Board.
“Our AP exams have eliminated watches with calculators and calculators with dictionaries from every vicinity. No longer can these pesky rascals use them to obtain unfair advantages. Mechanical pencils and water bottles, which students can use to store rolled-up cheat sheets, have also been confiscated at almost every testing room. We’re still working on that one.”
But Coleman believes that these precautions were only trivial compared to what students have been contriving recently.
“These teenagers are inventing signals and codes similar to the ones created by Morse. As we have taken note, students have a tendency to sneeze, cough, and breathe heavily during testing season, which for most people occurs during the spring. While we have suspected that these incidents of sneezing and coughing could have been due to pollen season or freezing testing sites, we were witty enough to point the source to the students’ desire to cheat. These obnoxious noises are actually a part of this intricate system of code.”
The most difficult challenge, he states, is trying to interpret the linguistic complexities of the code.
“I think that cough means ‘C’ and that wheezing is understood as ‘D’. The other ones we are still investigating.”
Regardless, the College Board decided that the best action would be to ban all forms of respiration.
“Since students already endure hardships such as parental pressure and the dreaded question of ‘Where will I go for college?’, we believe that not breathing will not be as much of an obstacle in light of everything else.”
College Board, despite its enthusiasm to make the announcement public, has so far decided to withhold it until the release of the next test.
*Not real name of the CEO of College Board
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Dr. Gary Davison • Oct 7, 2016 at 6:50 am
I find the connotation of the mindset of College Board to be indicative of a poor belief in kids. Yes, cheating does occur, but to paint all students with the same brush is not the correct plan of action. Many students I know have seasonal allergies, have test anxiety that manifests itself with sneezing, twitching, coughing, and other manners that it appears will be mistakenly construed as cheating. As a principal I have spent my career by believing that kids are good and inappropriate behavior will reveal itself… To start with ththe mindset that all are bad sets a poor example.