The Perfect Test

Ask students to write five questions on a unit. Then, have them exchange papers and answer each other's questions. When did they discover?

There are many aspects to writing test questions.

• What is a test trying to determine?
• How accurately does a test measure what it wants to determine?
• How will the test taker interpret the questions?
• How easy is it to take the test?
• How easy is it to grade the test?
• How easy is it to cheat on the test?

Have you ever thought about making a career out of developing tests?

Essay tests on literature are more difficult to take than math tests, but they are a better measure of  understanding the subject than selecting multiple choice options, for example. True or false, yes or no, and matching columns are easy tests to take and grade, but there are many cases where they are not an accurate measure of what you might be trying to determine, and they can make cheating easy, too. Flash the student next to you three fingers, and they can give you a sign for true or yes on question three.

     Besides pencil and paper tests, there are many other types of assessments. Before elections, telephone survey questions are popular. Thermometers take temperatures, barometers measure pressure, and stopwatches time speed. Sensors in fields tell when and where crops need water. Lie detectors catch criminals as do other crime solving forensics. 

     I was reading a scientific research paper a student intern helped write, when I started thinking about test-making careers. Listed in the paper were the kits, such as a "Fine Science Tools Sample Corer," Item No. 18035-02 from Foster City, CA, USA, that companies develop to help scientists anywhere in the world make standardized measurements. The previous post, "Lyme Aid," and the earlier post, "Teens Find Drought and Zika Remedies," talk about the need to develop more medical tests.

     Floyd Landis knows all about the testing kits that already exist. He is the former cycling teammate of Lance Armstrong, who gave Landis his first testosterone patches and introduced him to boosting energizing, oxygen-carrying red blood cells through the process of doping. With these physiological enhancements, Landis set a spectacular time cycling through Stage 17 on the French mountains to win the Tour de France the year after Armstrong retired. His victory was short lived. When he failed the drug test that showed synthetic testosterone in his urine, he was stripped of his title, lost his home and wife, and repaid donors almost a half million dollars.

     Landis suspects testing has not caught up with the latest ways cyclists compromise the sport. Some, supposedly clean racers still set the time he made while using unauthorized measures on Stage 17. Investigations in the UK, for example, continue to find abuses of the Therapeutic Use Exemption system that permits athletes to take banned drugs for medical conditions.

     Of course, athletes and students aren't the only ones who try to game the testing system. Teachers who knew their evaluations depended on the grades their student achieved on standardized tests were caught erasing wrong answers and substituting correct ones on their students' tests. After Volkswagen violated the US Clean Air Law by using a computer code to cheat on emissions tests, the company paid a $25 billion penalty.

     Well aware that doping, match-fixing, and other abuses have plagued former Olympic Games, France has launched "Compliance 2024," a group formed to establish new laws, practices, and norms to promote transparency and accountability to govern the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris. Such a group emphasizes opportunities for international careers in the test-making business. The perfect test is yet to be developed.

(Answers to test in later post, "Help for Human Rights:" 1.C, 2.D, 3.B, 4.H, 5.A, 6.E His troops were short on amo, 7.G, 8.F) 

     

China's Domestic Economic Belt

Less well known on the world stage than China's land and sea "One Belt, One Road" and "Maritime Silk Road" is China's Domestic Economic Belt along the Yangtze River from densely-populated and heavily-polluted Shanghai, west to the lake region around Wuhan (where COVID-19 originated), and still farther southwest to Chongqing, population over 30 million, larger than Shanghai and Beijing (home to OneSpace, China's solid-fueled commercial spacecraft industry, specializing in launching small satellites) and Chengdu, where police just raided an underground church about to commemorate the June, 1989 democracy demonstration in Tiananmen Square. (This is an opportunity for students to trace the Yangtze River on a map of China.)

Attention to ecology along this Yangtze River route is a priority in China. It entails:

•  Closing polluting chemical plants
•  Restoration of lakes and wetlands 
• Sewage treatment 
• Regulating the fishing industry
• Developing clean air technology (See earlier post,"How to Meet the Clean Air Challenge.")
• Integrating non-polluting energy sources into the existing power grid'
• Building new eco-friendly communities (See earlier post, "Priority: Eliminate generating electricity from fossil fuels.")

A new project in China's far western reaches demonstrates Beijing's focus on developing non-polluting energy sources. Where the Yangtze is known as the Jinsha Jiang River, the new Lawa hydroelectric dam will generate two billion watts of power, the same energy supplied by the U.S. Hoover Dam, on the border between Sichuan and the Tibetan Plateau.

     Development along the Yangtze also indicates China's interest in technological progress.  Economic assistance is going to the Donghu New Technology Development Zone east of Wuhan. The zone houses the FiberHome Technology Group, an optic fiber communications center, and the Wuhan Xinxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation. Producing memory chips for China's semiconductor industry has become a personal priority of President Xi Jinping.

The U.S. Commerce Department's April, 2018 7-year ban on sales of chips to ZTE, the high-tech firm in China's integrated circuit and Smartphone industry, exposed dependence on exports from Qualcomm in California. Once again the consequences of cheating played a part. False statements and missing export records showed ZTE violated a 2017 settlement by illegally using U.S. chips in telecommunications equipment shipped to Iran and North Korea. Although ZTE had settled the 2017 case by paying a $1.2 billion penalty and promising disciplinary actions against 39 employees involved in illegal conduct, ZTE took no personnel measures. To restore Qualcomm's sales to ZTE, the company agreed to install a new management team and to let the U.S. staff a compliance unit that would report to the U.S. Commerce Department for the next ten years. At first the US Congress still rejected the plan, until President Trump and Chinese President Xi reached a separate agreement. 

Violations of the original ZTE technology agreement and other cases of Chinese infringement on intellectual property rights concern the U.S. about China's interest in stealing chip research, development, and manufacturing know-how, not only how work in these areas is progressing at the zone in Donghu. With nearly 350,000 Chinese students in the United States, universities are warned to lock their labs, and legal interns from China are being kept away from sensitive antitrust cases. (See the post concerning Foxconn's intended facility in Wisconsin in the later post, "Unmask Inscrutable Chinese Intentions.") 

China Beyond the Headlines

Much is made of the contrast between the corruption overlooked in Russia and the crackdown on corruption in China. But other Chinese behaviors and practices deserve examination.

     Stealing is rampant in China; the country's prohibition on tax evasion and gambling is evaded; and a form of discrimination is legal. Foreign companies expect their intellectual property rights to be ignored. Chinese companies contracted to manufacture products for foreign firms readily produce knock-offs of those same products. Even exchange students find they have to keep a sharp eye on their belongings or they will disappear. An engineering student from a U.S. Ivy League college, who planned to stay in China for a couple of months, left after a week when her caliper was stolen.

     China is not exempt from tax dodgers. There is the revenue a company makes, the amount it reports for tax purposes, and the difference deposited in overseas banks or in Khorgos, an out-of-the-way Central Asian Chinese town on the Kazakhstan border. Along with film studios, media outlets, financial services, and over 14,000 other companies, Chinese movie star, Fan Bingbing, who earned $43 million in 2017, registered her company in Khorgos. Ever since China began a probe into tax evasion on June 3, 2018, Miss Bingbing has not been seen in public, and she has been fined $129 million. Her 62 million followers on social media correctly speculated she was caught in the Communist Party's anti-corruption, tax evasion campaign. She also might be a victim of President Xi Jinping's new morality crackdown on culture and behavior not in line with socialist values.

     Gambling is illegal on the Chinese mainland. Beijing stopped approving new gaming apps created by China's Tencent tech leader and  pressured Apple to remove gambling apps in its Chinese App Store. But casinos attract Chinese gamblers to Macau, a Special Administrative Region of China, and Chinese travelers freely gamble on overseas trips. "Justify," the winner of the Kentucky Derby,  Preakness, and Belmont Stakes is owned by the China Horse Club, as is "Audible," the horse that came in third in the Kentucky Derby. No doubt Chinese handicappers won plenty of cash, when "Justify" won all three legs of the Triple Crown.

     Finally, the U.S. State Department's annual report on religious freedom called attention to the million Uighur Muslims China holds in secret re-education camps. In another example of discrimination in China, members of China's poor underclass, unskilled rural transplants earning little in city jobs, find they are victims of the hukou system. They are shut out of health care, housing, and quality educations in state-run schools. They also have been shut out of watching some short-form videos on Douyin, the app Chinese authorities find shallow and addictive and monitor for illegal or morally questionable content contrary to socialist values. Young Chinese viewers say they enjoy watching good-looking amateurs tell jokes, sing, and perform imaginative stunts on Douyin; it's fun and relaxing.

(Also see the earlier posts,"China's Plan for World Domination" and "China Stretches a Napoleon-Style Belt.")

Hazards of Hard to Break Cheating Habit

Students learn the perils of cheating by playing a game where they all are international traders. Each student receives an envelope containing a blue card worth $20 million in merchandise and a green one worth $10 million.Both dealmakers assume they can make a great profit by reselling whatever merchandise they receive in the trade.  One or more sets of two students go out in the hall to negotiate a deal (or the whole class can discuss what kind of deal to make). They shake hands on the deal and turn their backs on each other while inserting the card or cards in the envelope they'll give to their customer. If, for example, they agree to trade both cards, but one student gives the customer only one card, what will happen, if these two try to make a deal in the future?

     Opportunities to cheat tempt young people inside and outside their families and school. If something breaks, one sibling blames another. Students cheat on tests, copy reports from material on the internet, steal clothes from retailers, get "free" food from friends who work at fast food restaurants. Young people lie about staying over at a friend's house, when they plan to do something else. They drive too fast, fail to wear seat belts, and text while driving. They drink alcohol,  experiment with drugs, and cheat on their boy/girl friends by dating others.

     Ask students if they would be willing to loan $155 million to a company mired in corruption. This is currently a real life case that provides a cautionary tale to students who would carry their cheating habits over into their careers.

    Related to a corruption enforcement decision, Odebrecht, an engineering company in Brazil, now owes a $2.7 billion fine to Brazil, Switzerland, and the United States for an extensive bribery scheme that stretched from South America to Central America to North America. On Wednesday, April 25, 2018, the company's construction unit needs loans to repay a $144 million bond within a 30-day grace period. By the end of the month, the company also owes an $11 million interest payment.

     A default on these payments could lead banks holding other Odebrecht loans to demand earlier payment, because they see bankruptcy looming. Odebrecht finds buyers for assets it is trying to sell know the company is desperate to free up cash and offer to pay lower prices over extended periods. Not knowing what future assets the company will have for collateral does not reassure potential new lenders. As it is, banks asked for new loans offer less than needed, and Brazil's government development bank is reluctant to guarantee these private loans. In few countries will government officials want anything to do with accepting a bid and letting a contract for a new Odebrecht project that could hint of a kickback or any sort of bribery.

     Corruption gives foreign investors an opportunity to gain control of key sectors in a country, when cash-strapped companies convicted of wrongdoing cannot find funds elsewhere. Corrupt Brazilian companies offer this kind of risk to their country. Already, the jointly owned China Three Gorges (CTG) and Portugal's largest company, the EDP utility, run hydroelectric power plants in Brazil. CTG holds a 23% share in EDP and aims for total control. Both companies have assets in other countries besides China and Portugal. EDP, for example, operates in 14 countries, including the United States, Spain, France, Italy, and Poland, where China is perceived as an intelligence and corporate espionage threat.
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     News that former Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has been jailed on corruption charges for allegedly accepting bribes from Odebrecht has been noted  in Angola, one of Brazil's other former territories, as a cautionary tale.

     For an excellent overview of international efforts to eliminate corruption, consult Corruption and Misuse of Public Office, published in the UK by Oxford University Press. Cheating of any sort is risky business. There is no guarantee that governments, teachers, parents, and girlfriends/boyfriends will not find out. Trust is a terrible thing to lose.

     
   

Don't Take Any Wooden Nickels

The old saying reminding us to be cautious and know what we're buying applies in the global timber trade. Some woods are much more valuable than others. Shipping a load of Brazil's big leaf mahogany into a country labeled as $9000 worth of less expensive timber can make a huge profit even if it is relabeled correctly and sold below real market prices. The American Forest and Paper Association estimates U.S. firms that use legally harvested domestic wood lose up to $460 million a year competing with this kind of undervalued, illegally logged timber. Globally, illegal logging makes up to 30% of the $150 billion a year trade in forest products.

     There are sustainable, legal ways to harvest timber, but logging companies have taken advantage of poor oversight in some countries by just putting roads in tropical forests and harvesting and exporting endangered, heavily regulated species of wood, like West African kosso. On the world market, those involved in the illegal timber trade also smuggle endangered species, illegal drugs, weapons, and slaves. Harvests of protected rosewood and ebony in Madagascar invite captures of rare wildlife, while orangutan in Indonesia are endangered along with the country's valuable tropical forests. Like the diamond and jade trade, illegal timber sales have been known to finance armed conflicts in the form of genocide, coups, and civil wars.

     Efforts to combat the illegal timber trade and its damaging side effects include government regulations and laws and consumer awareness. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) provides regulations authorizing country customs officials to confiscate illegally harvested logs being shipped through the world's ports. In the U.S. the 1900 Lacey Act and its 2008 amendment ban trafficking in illegal wildlife and illegally harvested timber and require seizure of such products and fines. Since the Lacey Amendment also makes it illegal to sell a wood product in the U.S. that contains wood that has been illegally harvested in the country of origin, U.S. retailers and other companies that sell wood products need to be sure to buy from legal sources.

     Celso Correia, Mozambique's new minister for land, environment and rural development, is an African who has learned to play the game illegal loggers used to win by relying on weak law enforcement and corruption. As few as three years ago, a report from the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency stated 93% of timber in Mozambique was cut and exported illegally, mainly to China, the world's largest log importer. China's illegal timber imports deprived Mozambique of at least $400 million plus taxes. Mozambique now seizes more illegally cut timber exports, but the country is competing with an insatiable Chinese demand for raw timber. In The House of Unexpected Sisters, which is set in Botswana, Africa, the author writes about a store that sells furniture made from Zambezi teak and mukwa wood, "none of this Chinese rubbish."

      Mozambique and other African countries are facing long odds when they try to replace deforestation with sustainable forest conservation methods that protect woods,  such as the desirable Pau Ferro, and when they try to attract responsible Chinese companies willing to process logs into more valuable planks and furniture within Africa.


     Consumers do have a way to be sure they are buying legally sourced wood and paper products. Just as kids can help adults check for an ENERGY STAR on appliances that save money by using energy efficiently, they can look for the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) logo of a check mark and tree on wood and paper products. When items like toilet paper, bookcases, doors, and picture frames come from forests that meet environmental, social, legal, and economic standards, they carry the FSC logo. Learn more at fsc.org.

(Also see the earlier post, "Uncover the Economic Value of Wood.")
   

   

Corruption Has Consequences

Countries with a reputation for being free of corruption from abuse of power, bribes and kickbacks, and secret deals are attractive tourist destinations and prospects for business investment. Unfortunately, based on a study of 168 countries by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), no country is totally free of corruption.

     In 2015, using a scale of 0-100, the OECD's corruption index showed 68% of the ranked countries scored below 50, indicating a serious corruption problem that took protesters to the streets in some countries. Even Denmark, which scored 91, has room for a bit of improvement. The United States and Austria, with scores of 76, did not make the top ten list of least corrupt countries, which included: Finland, Sweden, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Singapore, Canada, and Germany. Corruption caused Kim Jong-un's North Korea and Somalia to tie for last place in both 2014 and 2015.

     Brazil, now embroiled in a corruption scandal (See the earlier post, "Warning to Students: Don't Cheat."), dropped 5 points since 2014, and was in 76th place in 2015. Not a good prospect for countries sending teams to this summer's Olympics in Rio.

     The OEDC cautions that its corruption index is based on surveys of conditions institutions make within a country's borders. Countries might have a higher or lower score, if their corruption activities in foreign countries were measured. Indeed, half of OECD countries have been found to violate agreements to stop companies from paying bribes when they do business in countries outside their borders.

     The earlier post, "Cheating is Easy, but...," provides some anti-corruption strategies for doing business around the world.

   

   

Cheating is Easy, but...

When my daughter was using a game to teach a concept, the student who won suddenly jumped up and said, "Yes!" Whether a student is learning a new concept in a dirt floor classroom in Sudan, in an air conditioned one in Saudi Arabia, or in a slum in Chicago, the joy of understanding can't be underestimated. As Pope Frances observed last week during his trip to Nairobi, Africa, a country riddled with bribery and government graft, corruption is easy, but it robs a person of peace and joy. Conversely, mastering a concept gives joy.

     I have been very interested to read in Elmira Bayrasli's book, From the Other Side of the World, 
how entrepreneurs in unlikely places are countering what India calls chai paani, "a little bit of extra," the tradition of taking a bribe before correcting an erroneous and costly customs classification, performing a medical test, issuing a telephone number, or awarding a construction contract.

     When I taught international marketing, I used to dread teaching the chapter that discussed the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits US businesses from paying bribes openly or using middlemen as conduits for a bribe, when the middleman is known to use part of the payment for a bribe. I felt naive teaching that US corporations would resist the temptation to maneuver around the law when multi-million dollar contracts were at stake. I remembered the story of the overseas diplomat who took a visitor from the US to see two new office towers. "There were supposed to be three," he said, "but, after paying kickbacks, there was only money left for two."

     With this background in mind, I was surprised and delighted to read how the ability to obtain licenses, register property, and obtain other government services online has eliminated contact with officials who have discretionary power to do their jobs only after they collect a bribe, the little bit of extra.

     Although there are still many instances where bribes and kickbacks could help a business handle government paperback faster, companies like the "Dial 1298" private ambulance firm in India and high tech Infosys and Wipro in Pakistan refuse to engage in corruption. They decided to create a new corporate culture built on well defined and uncompromising values and standards that employees are expected to internalize. Moreover, organizations like Transparency International and Ipaidabribe.com, have sprung up to monitor corruption and to invite reports of bribes required and paid in India, Pakistan, Kenya, and Russia. Narenda Modi, India's current prime minister, considered it a winning message to campaign on a promise to end corruption.

      Bayrasli observed that the middle class expects functioning public services and reliable governance. As globalization expands the middle class throughout the world, wise parents and teachers may need not only to punish cheating but to reward the value and joy of learning.

     (Also see the earlier posts, "Warning to Students: Don't Cheat" and "Learning Can Be Fun.")

   

Warning to Students: Don't Cheat

Children who are motivated to cheat by copying another student's work, paying someone to write their papers, or hiring another student to take a standardized test for them could learn a few lessons from those who have avoided corruption or engaged in it around the world.

Even if the current business culture in a country sanctions corruption, the honesty espoused by Bulent Celebi's AirTies firm in Turkey offers a promising example. When Celebi established his WiFi company, which does not rely on phone lines or fiber optic cables to transmit data, he had six founding values. Besides customer satisfaction and engaged employees, he stated AirTies would be ethical. Therefore, he did not rely on bribes but, according to Elmira Bayrasli's book, From the Other Side of the World, he launched his business by working through the laborious process of dealing with Turkey's bureaucracy and paperwork. Shortcuts, he felt, would start AirTies off in the wrong direction.

     While on a visit to Nairobi, Kenya, in November, 2015, Pope Francis told a cheering crowd that corruption was easy and sweet but in the end it makes politics, even in the Vatican, and a country sick. He urged the crowd to keep corruption out of its lives, because corruption takes away joy and robs people of peace in their lives.

     Major European auto and truck maker, VW, will pay at least $15 billion for developing a cheating way to pass emissions tests.

     As a result of bribing doctors and hospitals by giving them kickbacks, the Japanese-based manufacturer, Olympus, paid a $646 million fine.

     By pretending subprime mortgages were sound, Goldman Sachs, one of the US firms that helped bring on the 2008 recession, is expected to pay about $5 billion to resolve state and federal investigations.

     In Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff and House Speaker Eduardo Cunha have been implicated in a corruption scandal involving construction firms that paid bribes to Petrobras, the state energy firm. Marcelo Odebrecht, former head of Brazil's giant construction company, designed the scheme that paid kickbacks to win contracts from senior Petrobras officials and that funded political campaigns. In March, 2016, Odebrecht was sentenced to 19 years in prison. Although Rousseff thus far has been found blameless in the Petrobras scandal, the charge of her involvement has led to a call for her impeachment and hurt the country's economy by stopping building and energy projects. Petrobras has had to stop paying dividends, and the company has cut $32 billion from its 5-year $130 billion investment plan. Now that the Federal Accounts Court has ruled that Rousseff's administration used illegal accounting practices, the prospect of impeachment is even greater. Eventually, Rousseff was out, but in June, 2017, new President Michel Temer was charged with taking $11.5 million in bribes for helping a meatpacker who had tax and loan problems.

     Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, Iceland's Prime Minister, was the first victim of a leak of papers from the Panamanian law firm, Mossack Fonseca. In April, 2016, he stepped down, when it was disclosed that he and his wife owned an undeclared off shore account where he concealed millions of dollars from taxes. The papers reveal Mossack Fonseca also has formed off shore shell companies to help other clients launder money, dodge sanctions, and evade taxes.

     Nigerian authorities fined the South African-based MTN multinational mobile telecommunications company $5.2 billion, later reduced to $3.4 billion. Of MTN's 62 million subscribers, the company failed to disconnect 5.1 million unregistered, and therefore unidentified, Sim card accounts. Kidnappers had used an unregistered Sim card from MTN to demand a ransom for Nigeria's former finance minister, Chief Olu Falae.

     A November, 2015 report from the World Anti Doping Agency alleging State-sponsored doping of Russia's Olympic athletes could result in banning the country from competing in 2016's Summer Olympics. And the head of the agency that selects the countries that hold World Cup soccer matches had to resign, when winning host countries were found to have bribed their way into the honor.

     In Indonesia, the government's failure to keep an up-to-date land registry results in an inability to assign blame for the devastating forest fires on the islands of Sumatra and Borneo that also have spread a thick haze of smoke to Malaysia, Singapore, and southern Thailand. All together, the smoke has caused an estimated 500,000 respiratory tract infections, and 100,000 premature deaths are a possibility. Fires are set by cheap slash and burn methods used to clear for new planting by both small scale farmers and corporate palm oil, timber (used for paper), and other agricultural corporations. Standards for the hiring and working conditions of migrant labor in the palm oil industry have failed to remedy abuses. When an investigation by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil found the Malaysian palm oil company, IOI, failed to correct deforestation violations in its concessions, Unilever and 9 other major companies cancelled their contracts with IOI.

     You can read about charges of corruption Russia faces in the earlier blog post, "Hearing Voices." And Communist Party officials throughout China have been severely punished as reported in the earlier blog post, "China's Corruption Crackdown, New Bank Backing, and Release of PR Activists."