In Worcester, Mass, test scores at the Goddard School of Science and Technology have been tossed out because  school staff “reviewed student work on the assessment, coached students to add to their responses, scribed answers or portions of answers that were not worded by students, and provided scrap paper for students to use during tests,” according to the state commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education.

School Superintendent Melissa Dillon wanted to make sure these findings weren’t misunderstood, and wanted to make certain nobody got the idea that her teachers were cheating. “The state did not use the term cheating, so I’m not using the term cheating,” she said. School Committee members agreed. “Calling it cheating I think is a little harsh,” committee member Jack L. Foley said.  He described the problem as “probably too much coaching.”

I think I can clear this up. When teachers do anything before, during or after tests to improve the answers of students, the technical term for it is…cheating.

Next!

In Atlanta’s DeKalb County schools, principals and teachers appear to have been sneaking into locked closets on weekends and late at night to get their hands on students’ answers to standardized tests….and improve them. As a result of an ongoing probe, twenty-four educators from nine schools have been removed from the classrooms, including  principals, assistant principals and teachers who are now assigned to administrative jobs. The school district has had to spend more than $490,000 for substitutes to fill the vacant school positions.

But just because teachers and principals broke into offices or classrooms on weekends, doesn’t mean they cheated, emphasized David Schutten, president of the Organization of DeKalb Educators. “We have dedicated employees that go to the buildings and work,” said Schutten, who represents almost 5,000 employees in DeKalb. “It’s all circumstantial, indirect evidence.” The fact that the students these particular teachers and principals oversee also had a strangely high percentage of erasures on their standardized tests, with correct answers replacing wrong ones? A coincidence!

The Atlanta Constitution interviewed parent Olivia Ramsey, who has a second-grader at one of the schools. She said there had been rumors about cheating by teachers. “It’s terrible when you can’t trust the students or the teachers,” she said.

Bingo. It is terrible. But incidents of this type have been increasing across the country, as teacher organizations deny, rationalize, or otherwise resist accountability, and students who aren’t learning get passed through, students who need help have their needs disguised, and America’s education system continues to rot. There is much hand-wringing over the casual acceptance of cheating as standard operating procedure by a majority of our students, but there is growing evidence that those same students are being taught by educators who themselves believe that cheating is a legitimate tool when integrity and responsibility don’t seem to result in the desired results.

Meanwhile, politicians tell the public that budget expenditures voted for by too many corrupt politicians will fix a broken educational system run by too many cheating teachers and principals, so that cheating students will actually learn something…or at least get good enough grades despite not learning to get them jobs…where they can continue cheating. Because we cannot trust the test scores used to assess how effective (or ineffective) our secondary education systems are, it is impossible to know the extent of the problem.

The fact is that cheating by teachers is infinitely worse than cheating by students, and being taught by cheating teachers greatly increases the likelihood that students will become part of a culture of dishonesty. While the teachers rationalize their cheating by claiming to care about the students, in fact it is done to allow the teachers and principals to escape accountability, while dooming under-performing students to an education process that cannot fairly or honestly assess their real needs.

I would like to have some assurances, before I see our state and national governments take more precious resources and devote them to education, that we will not be investing, to use President Obama’s term, in cheaters.