Guilt by Google Doc: The Praxis Exam Scandal Explained

This week, we break down the shocking Praxis exam scandal that has rocked the SLP world. ETS canceled scores for over 180 future clinicians, citing cheating and policy violations tied to a shared Google Doc. We explain what happened, who’s being penalized, and why the response from ASHA is raising eyebrows. Dr. Jeanette Benigas and Preston Lewis, MS/SLP, bring clarity, evidence, and a call to stop fear-based culture in the field. If you're impacted or just want to understand what this means for the profession, you don’t want to miss this episode.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Jeanette Benigas, PhD/SLP

Host of Fix SLP

Host

Preston Lewis, MS/SLP

Co-host of Fix SLP

What is Fix SLP: Advocacy & Accountability in Speech-Language Pathology?

Fix SLP is an SLP Podcast by Dr. Jeanette Benigas about advocacy, autonomy, and reform in Speech-Language Pathology. This show exposes credentialing gatekeeping, dismantles CCC requirements, and helps SLPs advocate for change. Each episode equips SLPs with tools to reclaim their profession. Subscribe now and join the movement transforming speech-language pathology. Follow @fix.slp on Instagram and TikTok. Visit fixslp.com.

Jeanette Benigas 0:03
Welcome to the Fix SLP summer school series where we're schooling the system all summer long. If you're ready to challenge the status quo in speech language pathology, you're in the right place. Subscribe so you don't miss an episode, and if something fires you up, leave us a message on the minivan meltdown line at fixslp.com, grab your favorite summer beverage and let's get to work.

Preston Lewis 0:27
Hello again, everybody. We are glad to be back with you here on the Fix SLP, pod. Preston Lewis, the Public Policy Director, Dr Jeanette Benigas, with me today as we're just trying to catch up and we have our summer school series. But wow, events have really culminated today. But before we get there, Jeanette, I want to mention a really nice review that was left by Corey D exceptional and eye opening Fix SLP, is out there making a difference for SLPs, thank you for exposing the gaps in our current infrastructure with ASHA, but more of that you offer solutions that we can take action on to help in the crusade. Keep up the great work. Thank you. Corey, appreciate the very kind review there on the pod Jeanette before we get into the issues, how are you today?

Jeanette Benigas 1:16
I was up until 3:30am fixing SLP and my son's aching feet, so I'm very tired, but um, generally good. Generally good. Thank you to everybody who reached out this past week to ask how my family member was. I am the care partner of not one, but two people who currently are not able to drive. So it gets a little sketchy sometimes, but Yeah, everybody's okay. We're dealing with a known existing condition that we're just actually didn't even exist until 2018 so there was decades of misdiagnosis because this particular illness didn't exist. So we're going through the process now of right medications and all of that. So yeah, thanks. It was very kind of you all to reach out and make sure everything was okay.

Preston Lewis 2:06
We always appreciate hearing from the audience. And we heard a lot this week, and really we were talking before the pod began. The issue before us this week is really only 48 hours old, with education testing solutions, ETS, which is the administrator for the SLP practice exam, 5331, so our exam that we all take once, usually when we're out of graduate school, and they issued a myriad of letters, I think we've had at least about 16 contacts, perhaps maybe even more, as they continue to come in even today from SLPs that have been notified that their Praxis exams have been canceled, they've been offered retest dates, which are in some cases, going all the way into2027 into October, this is erupting into a huge scandal. Jeanette, what, what happened here?

Jeanette Benigas 2:58
I want to begin by saying, Fix SLP is not here to help or defend people who have cheated on our national exam. I personally take this pretty seriously. As a former professor, I would give oral finals in my class because I took cheating so seriously, there's no excuse for cheating. We all have to take this exam. We all have to pass it, whether you want the CCC or not. Every single one of us has to do this to get our state license to practice, and so we are not here to help the guilty

Preston Lewis 3:46
updates.

Jeanette Benigas 3:47
So since we recorded this episode, a lot more has come out regarding the topic. So we are going to record a little bit here, which I will plug in where relevant. All right. Preston,

Preston Lewis 4:00
yeah, this is fresh content. This is straight out of the Fix SLP churned machine.

Jeanette Benigas 4:04
We've never done this before. We've never gone back to record more, but

Speaker 1 4:09
(singing) I can tell you've never been this far before.

Jeanette Benigas 4:15
YouTube is gonna block us now because of that.

Preston Lewis 4:17
Conway, Twitty, anybody? Okay,

Jeanette Benigas 4:20
We're going to get flagged for copyrighted content.

Preston Lewis 4:24
But no, yeah, there, there were some updates. And finally, the establishment, both of ETs and ASHA, have spoken officially and communicated through channels, and it was most of the research regarding exactly what had happened is going to be covered on the pod, but it was put into a synced communique and 180 SLPs. And then that distinction is that they fall in sort of two different categories, like you had said on the pod, Jeanette. But what is, what are those two classified classifications? We'll just we'll sum it up with our update.

Jeanette Benigas 5:03
So 155 and you called them SLPs, but none of them are SLPs yet. Okay, perspective students and new graduates, 155 of them are in category one. They had, may have had, may being the key word is what the letter said they may have had access or an unfair advantage due to access to or potential access to content on the test. Because of that, they have to wait 90 days to retest, which is October 18, 2025, the second group, there is only 25 of and they violated ETS testing policies. That is as far as that statement goes from ETS. However, since we last recorded, I messed around with the copy that we have of this study guide, and I can get a list of people who have contributed to the document that we have. I have compared it to the people who have reached out to us. There are people who are in this 25 who are not on the list that I have, that I can see. I can even see the track changes and edits of who said, what, where. So there, there are a couple who are on the list that I can see and who have contacted us, but there are a good handful that aren't. So I just have a copy. It is not the original Google Doc, which has been taken down, but certainly ETS had access to the original. So if I was able to find that stuff through a copy on Microsoft Word, certainly they got to the metadata for those 25.

Preston Lewis 6:58
I still just it's amazing to imagine some of these people that are in that 155 category, and for most of them, it just appears that this email, this letter, and attached as an email, was the first point of contact. It wasn't a phone call to discuss this. It wasn't part of a investigation. It's just here. Here's this, see, in three months, and you know, we're going to talk, I think, on the next episode, a little bit about some of the empathy and supporting of clinicians. But that has to, that has to be really difficult for somebody who may have just gotten a email from a colleague and said, Oh, here's a, you know, study guide. And could be somebody that's already studied, and they've already done a lot of practice tests, and they simply just opened it, looked at it for a minute, and then closed it. I there's a there's a quick assumption of guilt that's out there. And I understand in the customer process with ETs innocent until proven guilty as a customer, right is not there, and I get it, there's a cold corporate embrace there. But I think as a principle of kind of respecting our fellow future clinicians that are out there. There's a lot of quick judgment. There's a lot of, you know, just kind of tough.... you know, that's that's just that... them's the breaks. But some of these people have Military Service Records. Some of them have life plans where they're going to get married, or they're, you know, signed a lease on an apartment, may have had a job already lined up, and this came down, and it's, that's a that's a jolt, that is, that is something that is, it's got to hit pretty hard right now.

Jeanette Benigas 8:56
Yeah, it's important to know these aren't all 23 year old young adults. I talked with someone last night who has multiple children, who has been a surrogate more than once. This is a second career. Like you said, I've talked to multiple people who are either actively in the military or retired from the military. Obviously, status doesn't always mean you're honorable, but I refuse to believe that this many people with these types of life activities at events have all chosen to cheat. It just doesn't make sense. Like we like to say online make it make sense, right? What's striking to me is that this letter, remember, we've seen this letter at this point that we're recording. We haven't put content out yet, and we will be so you can all see this, but this letter says that they've come to this decision through statistical analysis. They got this list, they did statistical analysis, and they used statistics to figure out who cheated or who had access and who didn't. And there has. Been from what we can see, no manual review of the list or the metadata that they have in their possession against these names and what these people have done. So that's all we're asking for. Something that really kind of rubs me is when Fix SLP, is accused of being misinformed, and I want everybody who's listening, and I know this is a very small percentage of everyone who follows us, and I suspect the people who listen to this podcast understand this, but we do want to make it more widely known. We don't talk unless we have proof, typically, of what we're talking about, we have eyes and ears everywhere. We had the letter from ETS to the CAA hours and hours before ASHA put out a statement, we chose to respect our informant, even though by us making a statement, that informant would have never been found out, but we were choosing to stay quiet, we would have eventually exposed those numbers if ASHA had not made a statement, but we were respecting the information that we were given, and we were just using that in the information we were collected, or we were using that in the information we collected. Please understand that we don't come on this podcast or go to our content without hard evidence, usually citations or something that has been handed to us that proves what we are saying. And if we make a mistake because we aren't perfect, we will correct ourselves, and we have done that in the past. If you look hard enough, on our website and in our content, we have publicly corrected ourselves more than once. We all make mistakes. So just understand that with these topics, with these... these carousels of information that we put out, we are doing this because we have something in our possession, or we have done the research to inform all of you if you want to have bad thoughts about Fix SLP, that's fine. We're not here to make friends. We're here to make change in our profession, and that starts with truth. We haven't gotten to the truth yet with this Praxis thing, there are people who are being accused of cheating, who I strongly believe, based on everything that we have looked at, didn't actually cheat

Preston Lewis 12:27
Well, and one of the things that makes it stand out is that, in some cases, we've actually had a conversation with some of these people, and that's, I guess what. There's again, with ETs. This is a private contractor, so, you know, usually when you're dealing with that line of business, there is that cold element that comes into play. There's the, you know, well, you violated our user agreement Run along now, but there's the clinician, or the, you know, prospective clinician, there's ETS, and then there's that $72 million mystery entity there, which, if someone's actually going to call and say, hey, you know, you're a prospective member here, you're somebody who's trying to get into the club. Let me talk about what happened there. You know, what, what, what did, what occurred. And who's having that conversation, who's, who's just in this to take the money and say, Thank you. You know, I'm going to stamp your hand as soon as you hand me the money. I that's, that's the part that bothers me. But I don't see the one true entity that claims to be part of the advocacy for SLPs here, seems to be the one that's, you know, very content with the cold user agreement.

Jeanette Benigas 13:59
And here's what I would say. We know ASHA is listening to this. This would be the thing I would invite ASHA to think about,you are making our case. You are showing the world of clinican what you do and you don't do this group of students who are about to graduate, folks who have just graduated, who are waiting on jobs are watching Fix SLP isn't a secret anymore. We've exceded 60K followers across three platforms. We have 1/3 of this profession following us. We are making a case that the CCC is not needed. There are people all over the country changing thise requirement at their jobs.If I were in this group, I would be taking a hard look at if I need this CCC. What has ASHA done for me since the moment I stepped foot into my undergraduate program? This grroup of students, new grads, were either first or second years when the pandemic started. What did ASHA do for them? CMS just blocked their ability to bill. What has ASHA done for them? Now, ETS has hit them, and yes, some of them are guilty, but for the ones that aren't, what is ASHA doing for them? You are making a case for Fix SLP that you're not doing anything for the people who pay you MILLIONS of dollars. What we kind of took on was a little mini investigation to see if there were actually innocent people, to see what happened, because we all want answers, to see if there was a way that Fix SLP could help, because this is literally one of the reasons why I wanted to start a platform like this. You can go back to my MedSLPAdvocate account and see what I posted years ago about what I intended to do this right here is it until we came along, there was no place for organized advocacy other than through ASHA or your state membership association. So we're here to help. In a nutshell, many people, from what we can tell, as early as April 15, all the way through as late as July 21 2025 have received letters saying that their Praxis scores have been canceled because of cheating. No one in any of these letters was accused of cheating, but cheating occurred, and because of that, scores have been canceled.

Preston Lewis 16:12
One of the things that we have seen, and I got my first look at today, was the Google Drive document that was updated and was accessed in some cases, and we'll talk about guilt by association, perhaps some people were just sent this document, maybe opened it, but having looked at this document, Jeanette, it is pretty disappointing. It's, it's a case of, it's strange, because we just got through talking about praxis, what in our last episode.

Jeanette Benigas 16:12
Last week! Who knew hard right here. Who knew? Right?

Preston Lewis 16:12
You know, right there, in the mix of it, and I am just flabbergasted at the lack of confidence, maybe. I mean, there's, there's an ethical collapse here as well, no doubt about it, a huge, gross one, and pox on your houses for this. But my goodness. I mean, how unconfident Are you in your own self study skills and your ability as a clinician, where you have to just micromanage this test to that degree. And Jeanette. I'm also wondering if as gross as this is, as well, wouldn't you want to communicate that in a public channel, not by the names of these individuals, but that this action has been taken, if for no other reason, to discourage people from accidentally opening a Google Drive and accepting being part of such of a process, and kind of to shame some of the people that are out there about this cheating and to draw attention from it. But so far, no public statement from ETS ASHA people were calling the Action Center a day or two ago, and we haven't heard about this, so I'll be more shocked, shocked if i What are you talking about. So as usual, Ash is doing their bang up job, and their comms team, which I think goes in day drinks every day, is out there to launch again. So they're out watching the pit. Yeah.

Jeanette Benigas 16:12
Anyway. I am. I just have so much to say and to put this out in an organized way is I think going to be hard for me today. Listen, we did not put out a call to action this. This began because I was rushing to the Cleveland Clinic with a family member, and my phone started blowing up. Did you see this? Did you see this? Did you see this? So when I got to the ER, I saw it, and I saw what was going on, and I did some very preliminary digging, because students and new grads were already messaging us. And so then I made a video saying, we're going to look into this. People immediately started contacting us. So I said to everyone, if you received a letter, please forward it to us with your story. You know, maybe I said that to a two and a half dozen, and I'd say a dozen and a half actually did those things, so we did not put out a widespread call to action. But I do think that these letters have repeated enough that we don't actually need to see more. So you don't need to send us, you don't need to send us anything. So early on, somebody did send us a supposed Google Doc, and I think that it was just screenshots of part of it. And I thought, Oh, this isn't that damning. This isn't that bad. This isn't any worse than people having a conversation about topics you should brush up on. And so all through yesterday, I was like, I really think there's a legal case here. I don't see how these people could be accused of cheating. Well, by the end of yesterday, somewhere in the hour of midnight or 1am I finally arrived on the actual Google Doc, 73 pages. And what I've said to people is I could not look away. I'm going to describe this document to you because I think people are interested, and it's important for everyone to understand what we're dealing with here. It's entitled July study guide. The first page is blank, and all it says is July. So maybe someone who is guilty through association saw these things. Oh, this is something else that can help by page two, there are instructions in red. Please put what you remember. Please put the questions that you remember. Here is a chart of all of the dates for this month by week. If you tested in this week, put an emoji so we know how many people are here contributing. And then it starts to get organized by date. And of course, this was the July one. So July 8, July 10, July 11, July 12, and many people were just writing topics. Look at this. Look at this. People would ask questions underneath, I don't understand this about autism or swallowing or whatever, and people would answer but then three or four pages in, by at least mid July, we started getting questions and answers. And I've gone back and forth with enough people who have contacted us that some of these people tested at home, who got these letters, some people tested in the testing center. I don't believe that these are questions straight from the test, and this is the question that keeps getting asked on our platform. How are people doing this? It's harder to take an ETS test than to get in on an airplane, which is true, right? There is no way people were capturing images of questions while testing in the testing center, I think that these questions were questions from practice tests that were either very similar to or maybe replicated from actual questions. So there are a lot of questions, and what people do is, once the question was there with the correct answer. Then, if a test taker had that question or a question very similar, they all took turns writing next to it in a different font color on it, as in it was on my test.

Preston Lewis 24:14
Yeah, I, but even that, though, sharing of a test question that you recall and you just recreate it right without image even doing that is a violation of the intellectual property of ETs. So they will be, yeah, that's, that's a very point blank. That's a cheat.

Jeanette Benigas 24:33
Yeah. And you listen guys, there's laws we have to follow right? At Fix SLP, you know, we will sometimes play music. We'll play music in these podcasts where we're singing happy birthday or whatever, and I have to be very careful about how many seconds I play of those songs, because there are laws surrounding that. And there have been once or twice where I went a millisecond over the allowable amount, and YouTube has taken it down as violation of copyright. Do I get mad? No, that's on me. You know, those are the laws. And so some people have said, well, ETS sells retired questions. Yeah, they sure do, but they're selling them. And just like you can't publish a book online that you didn't write or publish, you can't publish someone else's written material online for the use of others that you have to purchase. So that alone is a violation of the law, and on top of that, now you're cheating. You're saying this question, or the spirit of this question was on my test, and the ETS policies are clear. You can't do that. The ETS policies actually say you can't even verbally talk about it, and I've also seen the argument, but these documents have existed on Reddit for years. It doesn't matter if you're killing people for years, you don't get to keep killing people and only stop when you get caught that doesn't make it okay. So just because ETS finally caught on doesn't mean for the last five years that people have been doing this. It's okay. It's never okay to cheat on any exam, let alone your national licensing exam, because you are directly impacting the care of your mother, of your father, of your brother, your sister, your friend across the street, your grandma. You're treating somebody's child or loved one, and you owe it to them to study and know the information you owe it to the general public. We are public servants, and so by cheating, you're undercutting the care or treatment you're giving from day one. It's not okay.

Preston Lewis 26:55
I want to get to the letters that were sent out, because at first glance, when and for anybody out there that's listening when you get a new topic from Jeanette, it's always just introduced with a screen capture. There's never like, a hey, this is what's going on. So you have to do it in reverse and reverse engineer to figure out what the hell she's talking about. But I got this, and my first instinct was, is, this is a hoax, and I think that was what the Action Center was telling some folks, as well, as usual, they're doing their, you know, banging up job over there. And I, I first thought, well, is this a hoax? Because it was communicated so bizarrely, and they're very cryptic letters, there's a matter of kind of form to them, which is, you know, here's our policy. There's a confirmation of this. We have had a conversation with our stakeholders, which you have to think, that's ASHA, and what? What other stakeholder is there? Your scores have been canceled, and, you know, you are not eligible to retake the test until a certain date. Some of them are dates, which are, maybe this October, I think was some of the earliest ones I saw. And then some of them go all the way to 2027 which, that is a career death penalty, if you were coming out of school and you have been issued that, and if you were involved in the cheating, I think that that's that's fair, course, however, there is no appeals process that's laid out. But it's, it's very cryptic. It's, you know, call this, yeah, go through this phone tree, call this number. And again, I don't understand why there wasn't a public statement yet, and we're recording this on Friday. We're now in the afternoon, and still nothing from ASHA, nothing from ETS. All the more reason, I do think that there are some people that were likely just joining this and didn't know and ignorance is no defense of the rules here. But wouldn't you want to communicate that proactively now, because it's important to state to SLPs, you can't do this. But it, it brought this rush to judgment. And it, you know, there's always this. The Fanboy and fangirl thing is that there's so much sensationalism out there, online, people talking negatively. Well, you know, an absence of you actually having a message. It is left to conjecture. This is, you know, it's like, what the heck is going on out here? And our CFS out there, and our new grads are going into this maelstrom already with the CMS decision that's come down. Now there's this, and yet the stakeholders are saying nothing. And so it's left to this conversation of you know, the social media sphere and people reaching out to Fix SLP, which we're glad to hear from you. We are here sometimes as a clearinghouse for when there is that absence of public advocacy and being a information valve. But it is just bizarre to me, the way they have rolled. This out. I Jeanette, I mean, I feel like we're in a nightmare for these new grads right now, and that's just like, when, when is there going to be some good news?

Jeanette Benigas 30:00
Not to mention, a good chunk of them were first and second year college students during the pandemic. Like the hits just keep coming. I'm going to back up a little bit with these dates. So I have taken everything that has been sent to us, like a good researcher does. I have coded all of the letters. I have organized them by code. I have looked at the testing date. I have looked at the retest date that was offered. There was one line which I'll read to you here in a second. Some of these letters said, if you want to retest, you have to get approval from the Office of testing integrity. So OTI is part of ETS. It's their integrity office. So anyone who got these letters in order to retest has to have permission from OTI. OTI is also the phone number that was on the bottom of the letter, if people wanted to call so everybody, regardless of what was said in the letter, has to call. That retest date was October 18, 2025 so then there was another subset of letters where the retest date is August 1, 2027. They have to get approval from OTI and ASHA's CFCC in order to retest. Now we cannot say that ASHA knew about this prior to this happening, but the letter clearly says stakeholders were notified prior to this decision being made. ASHA pays ETS as a contractor. As a company to give our national exam. It would be wild for ETS to have said "you have to get permission from the CFCC to retest without ASHA knowing about this. Because there's so many people you can get permission from. Could have been the ASHA ethics board. But ETS likely would have had to have some direction on who should be contacted and how many of these people receiving these letters should contact that department. So for ETS to have just made this up would have been wild. So again, we can't say ASHA knew about this, but once again, it's one of those things, just like the CMS thing. ASHA probably knew about it and chose not to say a word, and is still choosing not to say a word. ASHA has millions of dollars to fight this kind of thing and to advocate for people. And if they wanted to in this situation, they could have done that behind the scenes, or they could be doing it right now. I make no money doing this, and I was up half the night last night looking at these letters. ASHA has millions to advocate for SLPs. So that led me to the question, as I was organizing all of this is, what does ETS have on these people, and how did they get it? I don't think ETS and, Preston can talk about this in a second. I don't think ETS would be taking the legal risk if they didn't have something in their hands. There have been a lot of of documents thrown out online. I am here to say I have looked at a dozen and a half identical letters, with the exception of some dates and some statements. Not everyone who received one of these letters is on Reddit. Not everyone who received one of these letters was in a GroupMe chat. Not everyone who was who got one of these letters was using a Quizlet. These letters directly link to this Google document that is 73 pages that I have seen and cannot look away from. That is the connecting link to every single letter I have seen so far.

Preston Lewis 34:25
These letters, and I got my first look at them this morning, as Jeanette had shared them with me, you can feel the heartbreak. And I realized that it's very possible that, you know, we might have heard from two, three people that were complicit. Maybe, I don't know, but we're talking about people that are from diverse backgrounds. You know, in some cases, may have military credentials, people that have worked so hard to get where they are so all the more reason I think that would be good to have a due process part where they could appeal or go on a deeper fact finding mission. But there is no appeal process that I'm able to find. You know, a lot of legal precedents exist where they don't have to prove cheating beyond a reasonable doubt. This is a contractual agreement that you have with them. That's fine. I understand how that works. Test takers, you know, they can try to challenge this cancelation, but as it stands, many will have to go to court to do so, which is an expensive and time consuming process for people who wanted to start their careers. All that said, because there is no communique from Asher ETS, it led to a lot of speculation on social media. But Jeanette, were you surprised as I was, that there was a lot of animosity out there, and there was a lot of, I would say, somewhat prejudicial statements about new grads and some of their ethics. I found it a bit chilling, and I don't know what the root of that is, did you did you pick up on any of that?

Jeanette Benigas 34:59
I did? I did. And I....

Preston Lewis 34:59
Most of it being anonymous as well, for people that were commenting back, but wow, it was some of that same fanginess that we run into.

Jeanette Benigas 34:59
Yeah, and it's unfortunate. I think we're in a culture now where anyone can say anything behind a screen, and we have kind of taken the approach, especially here, that people are innocent until proven guilty. Yeah, ETS doesn't have to say what they have, but it's interesting. We know they have something. It's interesting how dates have been assigned. It's interesting how there hasn't been a refund. So you know, none of these people are getting their money back, and to retest, they'll have to pay again. It's not like wait and go ahead and schedule with us. It's no you're going to pay us again to take this and without the due process situation, which means due process, make sure that your legal rights are being protected. That's what that means. So there are no legal rights here according to ETS. I think that's difficult, so I'll give more information now. Every single person, almost I sent out some follow up emails this morning, and I'm still waiting to hear back, and we're recording on a school and work day. So I didn't expect to hear back from everyone right away, but every single person, I think so far, has either known that they were added to this document or admitted to at least opening it. I heard from one person who said a second year grad student gave it to our entire first year cohort and said it would be helpful for us to study so I've really dug into how Google Docs work. I use them a lot, but I wanted a better understanding. There are Google Docs out there where you can just pass out a link, and anyone with the link can either edit or view depending on what the settings are. It is my opinion, only based on everything I've collected so far that this Google Doc is the link between all of these people, not Reddit, not GroupMe, not Facebook, this document is the link between everyone. I think that probably ETS gained access to this document. Now, once people are inside of the document, anyone, regardless of who you are, can view the version history. So if you are someone out there listening to this podcast, you're toast. If you put something in this, Your fight is over. You don't have a fight because they have this document. They surely have the version histories. Okay, you cheated, even if you didn't know you were cheating. If you type something in this document, you're waiting. Yes, your due process has been violated. But I don't, I don't see this reversing for you. But any user can look at all previous versions of the document. Any user once inside can see who made each change. So they can see names and emails attached to who made those changes.Any user can see timestamps of when edits were made. Anybody can restore to a previous version. It's open access. Once you let somebody in, it is open access. So this is my theory, and my theory only, but ETS was tipped off, or if they're smart, they have people scraping the web looking for this stuff. Somehow they found it, or they were tipped off to it or given it. They got inside with a fake email address or a fake request, and they started harvesting data as they should, because people were cheating. I just want to be clear, we're not here to defend the people who wrote in this document. They deserve to be held accountable, but I think this is what happened. ETS collected all of the information from the people who made changes, because that is easy to collect once inside of the document. The next question is, how do they know the people who only viewed it? Because I believe innocent until proven guilty. There are enough people who have said I didn't know what it was. Somebody shared it with me. I opened it because it said study guide, and I thought it would be helpful. And as soon as I saw what it was, I closed it. I believe that given the name of the document, given the first page, that that could have happened. And once you are added to a Google Doc, the only person to my knowledge who can remove you from said Google Doc is the administrator that i i admin Google Docs all the time. I can go in and remove emails. An administrator of the Google doc could see all of the emails that have been added. My theory, again, this is just mine, is that ETS, through all of these restored versions, all the way back to April, was able to see the one or two or five people who were admin in this doc, because they were in there every day. They were viewing every day, and they got to them, and probably, again, my opinion, probably threatened legal action if, if they didn't start handing out names and to avoid jail time or whatever, to the fullest extent, handed admin over to ETS, where ETS just went through and harvested the name and email of every single person who was ever added to this document. And I think that because we have two groups of people, people who have to wait until October to retest, I believe that those are the people who opened the document once, didn't contribute, opened, didn't type, didn't return, saw what it was, closed it whatever. Because there is that one group of people, and that is also the group that only has to get permission from oti to retest. Then we have a second group. The second group is the group of people who have to get permission from OTI, have to get permission from CFCC, and then all of their letters had this statement, additional violations will result in further restrictions or legal actions. Please note OTI may contact you regarding this matter. That tells me this is probably someone who either contributed to the document or potentially opened it more than one time. And I'm saying that because there had to have been a way to flesh out the people who were guilty by association. And I think that's group number one. And maybe they did look at it, maybe they took screenshots of it. Maybe they still cheated. But you can't prove it, but there is a handful of people, like the whole cohort, who got added by somebody without knowing what they were getting. How do you make it okay for them? It's so hard to prove who cheated, but there's proof your emails in there, so something has to happen. There's a third group whose emails were identical to the August 1 27 retesters, their email was exactly the same with the additional violation threat of legal action, but their retest date was July 18, 2027. Not sure how the decision was made to let some people retest in July and some in August. So I think probably that's just my educated guess. Again. I'm not placing blame on anyone in group two by any means, but my guess is ETS got their hands on the admin role of this Google Doc, that's how they got all of your names. That's how they got all of the emails. And had to make some way to give harsher punishments to those who contributed or appeared to be cheating and those who maybe were guilty by association.

Preston Lewis 35:49
Cracking open of a even a group like that, getting subpoenas and everything from a big tech company, that's a slow moving thing. So I do subscribe to your theory there, Jeanette, that somebody that was on the inside was threatened and they surrendered their access, which, you know, I completely understand. I mean, that was a terrible, terrible document, once you get into it. And I guess, you know, we have students that listen to this podcast, and I would continue to encourage them have confidence in yourself. Yes, go out and buy a legitimate study guide, do the official practice tests that are offered, that are out there and are legitimate. Those are all good things or things that we did in our day. And I understand test anxiety is real for some people, but this is next level technology, and there's even, you know, there were wild allegations out there that there could be an AI component to this as well. It's, it's all the more reason we need more outreach from ASHA, and we just fallen into a bad state, and just to blame it on technology alone, I think is a abdication of responsibility. It's an avowal of failure, because, yes, there were terrible ethical decisions that had been made, but I think this process and our system has led to a place where our environment is rich for this now, and that is that is a sad implication for our for our field. So our advice to the students out there is, steer away from this, use this as a learning lesson, and have some confidence in yourself. Jeanette, you know you I really thought it was a great Jeanette loves to self incriminate last week when we talked about the test and you said I didn't pass it the first time. And yes, there is an investment in cost there and some time, but it's okay if you just, you know, go on your training that you have go on your own individual study, put your best foot forward. And as I said last week, the test has about an 89.5% passage rate.The fear out there, in our in our community and with SLPs, whether it's fear of the rehab companies, fear of ASHA, fear of you know, everything, it is so pervasive Jeanette. And I think this is another sign of it.

Jeanette Benigas 47:59
Somebody asked that yesterday. What would drive someone to do this? And that was my exact answer, fear. We as a community of speech language pathologists have put so much fear into our profession. It's out of control, and we as a Fix SLP team, see this with every single topic we talk about, there is so much fear. The number one thing people fear is ASHA. Number One, people are afraid of ASHA. The number two thing based on what the kind of feedback we get, the number two thing people fear is the Praxis test. With, you know, 89 plus percent of us passing this thing the first time around. I'm not in that group. I am on that lower end. But, uh, you know, people are passing it. We have to stop this culture of fear. We are smart individuals with master's degrees. Not everybody can earn a master's degree. Not everybody gets that. You got it. If you're here in this conversation, you got it, or you're about to get it, or you're working on it, you are capable of doing this test, buckling down and studying. The fear has to go. We have to stop scaring each other and be more supportive, a supportive community of clinicians who are helping each other succeed, which ultimately helps us help our students, our clients, our patients, the people we're serving when we're instilling fear in each other or. Treating each other like crap with this culture of how we treat our students in CFS, we're not doing anyone any favors. We're not the enemy of each other. We have to understand that we are all here to serve people, and we're all working towards the same thing and our biggest divide, it appears right now, just like in society in general, but also within speech pathology, our biggest divide is each other. We're attacking each other. We have to stop fear. What just happened is the result of fear. It's not the result of low integrity. It's not the result of ASHA. It's not the result of universities who didn't prepare their students. It is the result of people being so afraid that they had to come to this point.

Preston Lewis 50:58
I just really think also you mentioned this fear of ASHA, you know, this is, I had this image in my mind of, you know, ASHA's like Daddy Warbucks and Annie.

Annie, 1982 Soundtrack (Finale: I Don't Need Anything but You) 51:33
(music) I'm poor as a mouse. I'm richer than Midas. But nothing on earth could ever divide us. And if tomorrow I'm an apple seller too... I don't need anything, anything anything. I don't need anything but... I

Preston Lewis 51:38
God, except instead of adopting her, they just roll by with their $70 million and pass the orphanage and say nothing. I am just aghast at this week. We've had the CMS issue that blew up several weeks ago, and we've had now this and there's probably a couple other things we've missed from this year, and it's, it's a just crippling silence, because that's what you do. If you don't do it, what is your job? And you're right there. There's a lot of internal sniping within our profession, but I think what we're doing is not necessarily to snipe at ASHA here. It's to say, do your jobs? Earn your keep, because if institutions don't exist to educate, to set a standard and to communicate proactively, we are a communication profession, and indeed, there I expect, I mean, I think there will be something that's coming. But it is amazing to me how slow this is. And it doesn't have to be specific at this point. It can be very generalized that there has been an event that has occurred, and there are actions being taken and additional steps will be out there. But to caution students that are out there, and what? What are we paying for? Why? Why are you there, other than to just self boast about who you are and just throw advocacy into every other sentence I I just see it as yet another sign of the failure that's there, and it stands out to me that we receive such feedback and so many people that reached out to us, and we're glad to hear from them, even if some people that maybe don't have clean hands in this, it's good that we're just having conversations. It's good that you know, you feel like there's a place you can go, because for those people that called the Action Center and just, you know, basically they said, I don't know what you're talking about. Call ETS I, I just, I don't know. It's, it's another sign of, I'm really glad I set that card on fire last year.

Jeanette Benigas 53:53
You did great. Preston

Preston Lewis 53:54
Yeah. I mean, I don't... you know... I don't know. I paid several thousand dollars over the years. What am I paying for? I feel kind of dirty now,

Jeanette Benigas 54:03
The cool kids club

Preston Lewis 54:05
Yeah. Well, I was never, I was never an accepted member. I was just, I was a mark.

Jeanette Benigas 54:10
Yeah. So where do we go from here? What do we do? What is Fix SLP going to do? What should you do? If you were wrapped up in this? We are actively speaking with our lawyers. This is why we're here. So you don't have to go out and hire a lawyer tonight. You might have to, eventually, depending on what situation you're in, but at this very moment, today, Friday, July 25 you don't have to do that quite yet. Let us get this information over to our legal team, because truly, some people did cheat, but truly some people didn't, and we need to support and rally for those folks. So that's thing number one, sit tight. We definitely will be putting information out as as we have more to say. Thing Number two, you. For the second group of 2027 testers, we are not accusing you of doing anything. I would write down everything that you know and remember with your interaction with this Google Doc, keep it if you know that you wrote on that document, it's probably game over. They have proof. They certainly have proof, and really reevaluate how the decision that you made is impacting your future career and the future people that you're supposed to be serving and just do better. Right?

Preston Lewis 55:41
Yeah. Take it as a teachable lesson. Yeah, I mean, and do your penance on that definitely still pursue your career. I I'm a firm believer in second chances. But yes, I think for those folks, that is a that is an understandable punishment.

Jeanette Benigas 55:56
Now, the outstanding question is this 2027, group, July and August. You have to get permission from the CFCC. We might not even know what that looks like until July of 2027. We might be hearing again from this group. So that's why, writing everything down now, documenting everything, even if you did contribute, document everything that has happened to this point, because come 2027, when you have to get permission, it's hard to remember back. Those are a lot of days and a lot of hours. As a memory specialist, might be hard to recall your memory, but writing it down and signing it and dating it and keeping good documentation for yourself will go a long way in two years. So that's where we're at. We're going to be having more conversations with our attorney. For those of you who did not contribute to this document, anything else we want to say about it Preston?

Preston Lewis 56:56
No other than let's let's learn from it. Let's move forward in a positive way that's not based in fear. Let's support each other as a profession for people to know what they should and shouldn't do. And I think for some of these folks, they knew that they were in the wrong. And then some people just, you know, there was a there was an ignorance of the rules. But sometimes that carries a price as well. So I do hope for those that really were innocent, they, you know, pursue their rights vigorously, but yeah, and we'll, we'll keep everyone informed as to if there is an institutional response, I expect there will be, but I'm still shocked that there hasn't been. So this has been a good conversation. Jeanette, it's a dark topic. It was one that we wanted to try to shed some light on, for those who are just now hearing about it for the first time, but it's a sad one too. So I hope there are some positive lessons to be learned in the long haul.

Jeanette Benigas 57:57
And as always, our podcasts don't stand alone. So we'll have some content out this week, I imagine we'll share some parts of these letters de identified. One thing that we have done, and we promise to do, when you contact us, we do not make your identity known, so don't be afraid to reach out. We're not splashing your information all over the internet. People have been posting their letters. There's enough of this information online that we can post some screenshots of de identified letters, just so people can see for themselves. So if that's all you have. Preston,

Preston Lewis 58:27
Yeah, should we do one of those disclaimers that everything provided here is not legal advice?

Jeanette Benigas 58:31
Yes.

Preston Lewis 58:32
It is not yet. It's simply, it is simply two people in this profession that have navigated the road of testing and simply want to uplift this profession. So, yeah, that's all I've got.

Jeanette Benigas 58:47
Well, before we go, we have a weekly winner, because we are on our way to 100k

Preston Lewis 58:53
Hey!

Jeanette Benigas 58:54
So I'm going to pause here. This week we were asking you to share screenshots of yourself listening to the podcast, and so I'm going to pause.... Random #4 came up on my spreadsheet. Random #4 is Elizabeth. And Elizabeth, I posted yesterday. She posted a selfie of herself in the gym. I'm so excited that you won, Elizabeth. It was legit for real. I put the comment, Elizabeth understood the assignment. Elizabeth on Instagram, make sure you reach out to me, [e-mail] or via Instagram, where we've already connected. When I told you you were entered, you have until the next podcast drops next week to claim your prize. We will hook you up with with whatever you want to choose. Thanks for helping us get closer to 100k by the way, if you're doing the bingo card, you don't have to do these things the week that they're listed. You can do them at any time. Just if you keep up, you're gonna get entered in the weekly drawing. And then it'll help you towards the bingo card. Week #3 contest has dropped. Thanks to everybody who's sharing and listening and engaging and participating and supporting. We see you all. We appreciate you all. We couldn't do some of the things that we're doing right now for this group of new clinicians without you. So we'll see y'all next week. Guys, thanks for fixing it!

Jeanette Benigas 1:00:18
Thanks for listening to the Fix SLP podcast. If this episode help you feel more informed or empowered, take a second to leave a five star rating and review. It helps more SLPs find us. Fix SLP runs on $5 sustaining partnership donations that small monthly support pays for everything behind the scenes, including our website, legal fees and advocacy work. Want to be a part of it. Join us at fixslp.com enjoy the sunshine. Stay scrappy and we'll see you next time!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai