Cheating

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 Susan Burgess, whose professional license was revoked after an 18-month investigation by Baltimore City and state school officials uncovered evidence of cheating at the school, said she was "shocked"...

As a former city and state superintendent and the grandfather of four Baltimore City public school students, I feel compelled to note several important points in the wake of the cheating incident at George Washington Elementary School reported by the city and state last month. Cheating is wrong — on that we all agree. But let's not overlook the potential silver lining in such incidents. Baltimore City Public Schools CEO Andrés Alonso and state Superintendent of Schools Nancy S. Grasmick denounced what happened at George Washington and let the world know that cheating will not be tolerated.

Baltimore Fire Department recruits were allowed to see confidential testing materials before an exam in June because the training staff didn't know better, according to newly public documents that detail the internal investigation into the city's Emergency Medical Services training program. "I think that the motive wasn't nefarious. … There was a lot of inexperience," Fire Chief James S. Clack said after releasing the report. "They were trying to do things right; they just didn't know what was right.

The head of Baltimore's fire academy has been reassigned, Fire Chief James S. Clack said Tuesday, a week after officials began an investigation into cheating at the academy. Chief Lloyd Carter will now head the department's recruiting efforts, Clack said. He denied that the transfer was related to the cheating investigation, which centers around allegations that an instructor handed students a scenario for a lifesaving practical exam. "It's unfortunate this is happening during the investigation, but it's more about having someone interested who can lead recruiting," said Clack.

SILVER SPRING - Montgomery County public school officials announced in May that two teachers at the Silver Spring International Middle School (SSIMS) had given copies of a standardized math test to their students before the exam, prompting a "cheating scandal" that threatens to end the careers of a math teacher and an administrator. The school's principal has been removed and other teachers have been suspended. The predictable parental reaction was outrage. But the target of the anger was the school system, not the so-called cheaters.

I hesitate to admit this in polite company, but if I didn't listen to books, I wouldn't read at all. I have a daily commute that is almost an hour in each direction and for many years have spent the rest of my time driving kids hither and yon. During that time, I bet I "read" 500 books. Books that I would not have had the time nor the inclination to read if I had had consumption or two broken legs. I used to keep a numbered list of all the titles (another thing I shouldn't be admitting)

WIMBLEDON, England -- Controversy is as much a tradition at Wimbledon as strawberries and cream.And Boris Becker is an old hand at handling it."People have accused me of all different kinds of things over the past 10 years, you know," he said yesterday. "Some had grounds, and some didn't. This is just one thing more."Three-time Wimbledon champion Becker is now accused of cheating.Becker had just rallied from a 4-2, love-30 deficit in the fifth set to beat Andrei Medvedev, 6-7 (5-7), 7-5, 7-6 (7-3)

When you cheat, they tell kids in school, you only cheat yourself, but in Baltimore, we've recently learned that's not always true. Sometimes you also cheat the students you're supposed to be teaching when you change the answers on their state standardized tests, and even worse, sometimes you cheat victims of heart attacks, strokes or traumas when you get inside information about the exam to become an emergency medical technician. School officials and the top commanders at the fire department are fretting that their respective cheating scandals will damage public trust in their institutions, and that is certainly true, but the cumulative effect casts a pall on the entire city.

FIRST there was the news from Cambridge, Mass., that 83 percent of all the undergraduates at MIT cheated at least once in their college careers. More than two-thirds confessed to plagiarism, and half admitted stealing other people's ideas.Then came word from the Navy that 133 midshipmen at the Naval Academy cheated on a 1992 examination.So I drove over to Annapolis to talk to those few who'd refrained from cheating on the exam.They were huddled off in a corner, and none of the cheaters would have anything to do with them.

As pressure grows for students, teachers and administrators to increase performance on high-stakes standardized tests, so has the temptation to cheat. It led the Maryland State Department of Education to randomly dispatch monitors to 45 schools to ensure security of the annual Maryland State Assessment tests, which end today. Officials say the testing has gone smoothly, in contrast to reports of cheating last year - including incidents in Carroll and Charles counties. School systems often use monitors to combat an escalating number of teacher-assisted cheating cases, according to Robert Schaeffer, public education director for the Cambridge, Mass.