Expect to see lots more of this

by David Safier

The stakes on high stakes tests keeps rising. Teachers' salaries and jobs hang in the balance. Schools' funding, and even their existence, can be jeopardized by bad test scores.

So it's not surprising there have been a number of stories about schools cheating on standardized tests. Here's the latest.

City and state education officials have uncovered widespread cheating on state tests at a Southwest Baltimore elementary school once held up as an example of against-the-odds achievement and have recently revoked the professional license of the principal, whom they are holding responsible.

Investigators reviewed hundreds of Maryland State Assessment booklets at George Washington Elementary and found thousands of erasure marks. In nearly all instances, the answers were changed from wrong to right.

Of course, the cheaters will become more sophisticated. Erasures are easily detected by machines, and if they all seem to go from wrong to right, that's a dead giveaway.

But cheating, or legitimate enhancement of test scores through intense teaching to the test, will be with us and become more and more the rule. Because they are expected to meet nearly impossible expectations which are backed up with serious punishments and rewards, schools and school districts will find themselves becoming increasingly corrupted and pulled away from their prime mission.