13.11.2011, 10:13, By: Rob Sachs, Jessica Jordan, In California, the number of teachers who have been accused of cheating, lesser misconduct or mistakes on standardized achievement tests has raised alarms about the pressure to improve scores. The New York Special Commissioner of Investigation recently substantiated at least 14 incidents of city public school teachers helping students cheat on standardized tests since 2002. Criminal investigators in Georgia spent nearly a year uncovering the biggest public school cheating scandal ever. A report released last month showed systematic cheating in nearly half of Atlanta's public schools. It named 178 principals and teachers, including 82 who confessed that they changed test answers. Among other states with instances of cheating are New Jersey, Texas and Ohio. Even in the slow season between rounds of testing and scoring, errors such as one in Illinois, continue to surface. Some say the ever-expanding list of test cheating cases demonstrates the high stakes testing regimes of No Child Left Behind and state-mandated exams are pushing teachers into unethical behavior. Keith Bromery, Director of Media Relations for Atlanta public schools, and Bob Schaeffer, Public Education Director for FairTest, the national center for fair and open testing, talk about the cases and why they're happening. Source: Voice of Russia.
