Cheating

I've heard horror stories about dog-walkers. People who hired a dog walker to come in every day to walk their pup, only to find out that the person took the money daily, but never touched the dog. Or the one about the woman who returned home from work once to find that the pup waiting there for her belonged to someone else. People who hire dog-walkers trust that they will actually show up, actually take their dogs out -- and keep them out and moving for the amount of time paid for. But that doesn't always happen.

The Baltimore principals union is calling for schools CEO Andrés Alonso to pay back thousands of dollars in bonuses he received in years that schools were later found to have cheated on state tests. The request comes as a contract, released through a Public Information Act request, names three schools that have not previously been publicly linked to cheating suspicions: Sinclair Lane Elementary, Rayner Browne Elementary/Middle and William Pinderhughes Elementary. The schools join Abbottston Elementary, alleged to have cheated in 2009, in an independent investigation.

As a recently retired 37-year veteran of the Baltimore City Public Schools, I read with considerable interest your recent front page report on the cheating at George Washington Elementary School. While I in no way condone cheating in any form, it is possible responsibility for this can be attributed to both the school and the school system. The pressure to document acceptable numbers on tests has become almost an obsession. It's not far afield to compare this to college basketball and football coaches on the bubble when their teams fail to produce praiseworthy win/loss records.

My first question after reading about seven teachers in an Atlanta, Ga., public school accused of altering standardized test scores to make it appear students performed better than they actually did was: How could they!? The seven were nicknamed "the chosen" and, according to Georgia state investigator Richard Hyde, the less than magnificent seven sat in a locked room without windows, erasing wrong answers and inserting correct ones. It's one thing for a child to cheat on a test; it's quite another for teachers to do it. Compounding the cheating scandal is that the children in this elementary school are mostly poor and African-American.

When you accuse your man of cheating, what better way to do it than on TV? La La Vasquez doesn't mess around. But Melo, well, she thinks he just might be. Fans of the Baltimore-raised basketball star are all a-twitter this week after La La dropped a bit of a bomb on Monday's episode of her VH1 show, "La La's Full Court Life. " Approaching one of her husband's assistants -- a young, attractive, single one -- La La throws down a little, ""I just want to know: Are you messing with my man?

WASHINGTON - Last week, school officials in Piper, Kan., adopted an official policy on plagiarism - with punishments ranging from redoing an assignment to expulsion. Unfortunately, all that comes too late to help Christine Pelton. She used to be a teacher. Taught biology at Piper High, to be exact. Then, last fall, she assigned her students to collect 20 leaves and write a report on them. The kids knew from the classroom syllabus - a document they and their parents both signed - that cheating would not be tolerated.

Unfortunately, it appears that for some time Baltimore City school personnel have been setting an example for students that cheating is acceptable as long as you don't get caught ("Schools keep eye on testing," March 5). Here's my suggestion for eliminating this problem during the city schools' annual standardized achievement testing period: Arrangements should be made to ensure that the students being tested are the only individuals who touch the test booklets or answer cards.

A 46-year-old Columbia woman was sentenced to 10 months of home detention and four additional years of probation Friday for inflating the hours she worked as a contractor to overbill the National Security Agency by nearly $109,000, the Maryland U.S. Attorney's Office announced. Ann Warwick worked for Business Consulting Technology LLC, a subcontractor providing intelligence analyst services for the NSA, from August 2009 to July 2010, when she's accused of adding 836 hours to her time sheets, at a rate of more than $100 per hour.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution--the newspaper that single-handedly uncovered a massive cheating scandal in Atlanta's public schools last year that saw its superintendent resign in disgrace and several educators possibly facing criminal charges--took its investigation one step further this past weekend by looking at suspicious test scores in districts across the nation. Baltimore City was one of the districts highlighted in the AJC's large-scale project called "Cheating our Children: The Journey from cheating in Atlanta Schools to suspicious tests nationwide" , published this past weekend.

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.

The Baltimore Orioles are back in town for their home opener on Friday, and this is the moment when newspaper editorialists generally wax poetic about baseball in spring, fathers and sons, the uncertain state of the national pastime and hope springing eternal. There's usually a bit about how baseball is like life, how you have brief moments of action but mostly it's about planning and anticipation and how even the greatest ballplayers and teams do not succeed much of the time. Oh, we could go on. References to baseball movies like "Field of Dreams" or "The Natural" are big, too. And there's usually a few jokes about how baseball relates to the politics of the day or maybe a famous quote or two. Like how Harry Truman once presciently warned the owner of the Washington Senators to look out for Richard Nixon's curve.

Anyone who wants to know why health care costs continue to soar need look no further than the recent recommendation by the American Cancer Society that current and former heavy smokers discuss lung cancer screening with their doctors. The guidelines were based on the National Lung Screening Trial, which found that three spiral CT scans given over three years reduced lung cancer deaths by 20 percent. The New York Times called the finding "an enormous advance in cancer detection. " A 20 percent reduction in deaths sounds pretty good.

The Baltimore school system has started monitoring the administration of the High School Assessments this year, expanding on a measure that began in 2011 after a series of cheating scandals in its elementary and middle schools. City school officials said the move was not prompted by suspicions of cheating on the tests - which students have to pass to graduate - but to be proactive. "The natural extension is ensuring that we were being fair and consistent in our process," said Jennifer Bell-Ellwanger, the system's chief accountability officer.

"Cheat, cheat, never beat. " Remember that catchy, foreboding maxim drilled into us as kids? It's comforting to believe cheaters never win and winners never cheat. Unfortunately, there's ample evidence that cheating is rampant in almost every sphere of American life. And for every reported story of cheaters getting busted - be they professional athletes who use banned substances or those who illegally manipulate markets for profit - you can bet there's at least one case of somebody who escaped detection.

As a longtime fan of bicycle racing - I was on the finish line in Paris in 1986 when Greg LeMond became the first American to win the Tour de France - I followed Lance Armstrong's career with intense excitement as he took cycling from the wings to center stage in his country's sport consciousness. That said, it became clear that while his story of cancer survival was compelling and inspiring, Mr. Armstrong was not a pleasant person. He was selfish and self-centered. But so are many athletes.

Junot - and Yunior - are back. Junot Diaz is the MacArthur Fellowship-winning writer whose work reflects his Dominican roots and his Jersey youth, and who has dazzled critics and audiences with a virtuosic narrative voice that weaves tales of young men similar to the ones he grew up with. Yunior is one of Diaz's most indelible characters - brilliant, posturing, alienated, self-destructive and, for better or worse, unable to fully inhabit his own mask. Readers previously met Yunior in the 2006 short-story collection "Drown" and in the novel "The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao," which won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize.

Parents expressed outrage Thursday that someone at Baltimore's George Washington Elementary School changed thousands of answers on state standardized tests in a cheating scandal that is calling into question the school's hard-fought achievements. "It's deceiving," said Linda Thompson, a mother who was picking up her first-grader at the Southwest Baltimore school that was awarded a National Blue Ribbon School of Excellence designation in 2007. "I feel cheated." Thompson said she has always boasted about her daughter's Blue Ribbon school but said she believes the incident will bring into doubt students' recent gains.

The former principal of George Washington Elementary School denied Sunday any involvement in test tampering at the school during her tenure, even though she is being held responsible for thousands of answers being changed on student tests two years ago. Susan Burgess, whose professional license was revoked after an 18-month investigation by Baltimore City and state school officials uncovered evidence of cheating at the school, said she was "shocked"...

I stick with my original opinion of the Miami housewives -- if Elsa is in an episode, it's probably a good episode. Marysol's mother Elsa, opens the episode by threatening to hit a drag queen with her pocket book. Leah finally confronts Marysol and surprisingly apologizes to Marysol.  But Marysol doesn't accept her apology or the invitation to her gala. Adriana confronts Karent (finally) after complaining about "beating her to the tweet" for the last two episodes. Adriana tells Karent she interrupts, is a copycat and thrives on the spotlight. Alexia, a housewife from last season who chose not to be on the show this season because her son was in a very serious car accident, agrees with Adriana.

Baltimore schools CEO Andrés Alonso is right to bring in outside experts to determine whether some of the city's recent test scores were tainted by cheating. The issue of integrity in school test results is paramount in Baltimore, given the district's history of low achievement, and even more so now that teacher advancement and promotion will be tied in part to test scores. So it's somewhat curious that the union representing city school principals is criticizing a re-examination of the test scores as a waste of money; the school department reportedly is paying a leading data forensics company, Caveon Test Security, $275,000 to conduct the investigation.