Review aims to avert cheating on state tests
By Sharon Otterman/New York Times
New York State education officials announced Monday that they had begun to review the way they detect and prevent cheating on standardized tests, taking a step to avoid the cheating scandals that have engulfed school systems in other states. New York does not conduct statistical analyses of its high-stakes third- through eighth-grade tests to scour for suspicious results that could signal cheating, like unusual spikes in a school’s scores or predictable erasures on multiple-choice questions, officials said. Analyses in Atlanta and Philadelphia, among other cities, have produced evidence of tampering on a scale that calls into question those cities’ educational achievements. (more...)