Did NECO Students ‘Pirate’ Exam Answers?
The National Board of Examiners in Optometry (NBEO) is investigating whether students and one faculty member at the New England College of Optometry (NECO) “engaged in an organized attempt to memorize confidential, copyrighted exam content in order to reproduce it for use by other students taking future administrations of the exam,” the NBEO posted on its website. The NBEO refers to this as “piracy” of exam items. NBEO’s Board of Directors determined that the widespread exposure of pirated items compromised the validity of the examination as a whole at NECO. As a result, the Board cancelled the test scores of the entire NECO class of 2011 for the Part 1 exam, which had been administered in March. NBEO has also visited at least one other school of optometry as part of the ongoing investigation, says Jack E. Terry, O.D., Ph.D., executive director of NBEO. Dr. Terry declined to name NECO, the NECO faculty member or the other school in question because the board is still conducting its inv
