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Standards for the Ethical Use of Tests within Ohio Secondary Educational Institutions

The State Board of Education in Ohio has adopted rules of ethical practice for the use of tests. These rules are found in the Ohio Administrative Code (OAC). District and school personnel may reference OAC 3301-7-01 and OAC 3301-13-05 for current standards concerning unethical or inappropriate practices that involve preparing students for tests, administering and scoring tests, and interpreting or using results. Additional revisions to the code may occur following the publication of this document.

For example:

No person shall reveal, cause to be revealed, release, cause to be released, reproduce, or cause to be reproduced any secure assessment materials through any means or medium including, but not limited to, electronic, photographic, photocopy, written, paraphrase, or oral.

WebXam staff tries always to be clear about secure assessment material when working with different stakeholder groups but can always answer clarification questions through phone or email.

Except for the practice test materials, the diagnostic assessments, and released tests, all other statewide tests (including any and all test passages, test questions, and any other secure material developed for use with any operational test) are secure until they are publically released. It is not permissible to reproduce any of this secure material or cause it to be reproduced in any format. It is illegal to reveal any test question that is known to be on a statewide test in any manner whatsoever to any student who will be taking a test.

Examples of actions considered a security breach include but are not limited to the following:

  • Creating study guides for students based upon questions known to be on current state tests
  • Releasing secure material to any student, the media, or the general public
  • Altering any student response or assisting a student to cheat in any way
  • Having unauthorized persons present during test administration
  • Trying to obtain or using the log-in credentials of another user (teacher or student) WebXam test data should all be considered secure unless specifically marked as publically released.