Cheating

Reacting to the cheating on test scores at two Baltimore schools, city schools CEO Andres Alonso states that the system's "progress has been real" ("2011 scores will be clean, Alonso vows," June 24). I say, "real ugly. " How can kids in Baltimore achieve while Mr. Alonso accepts reading and math scores so far below average? This is not the first cheating scandal he has faced as CEO of city schools, and what has he done? Nothing. The fish stinks from the head down, so why does the school board want to extend his contract?

In Camden, N.J., a principal said the pressure to pump up students' standardized test results came with a threat from a district supervisor — nice medical benefits you have for your sick daughter, sure would be a shame to lose them. In Atlanta, one school's test booklets showed such a brazen pattern of doctoring, a security expert estimated that the probability of that happening by chance was one in 10 to the 52nd power. Across the country, in city and suburban schools, in large and small districts, teachers and other staff members have been accused of sharing test questions in advance with students, watching over their shoulders as they take tests to point out wrong answers, and correcting mistakes after the fact — all to inflate scores and satisfy federal and state mandates for achievement gains.

In Baltimore, schools CEO Andrés Alonso put in place extensive measures to ensure that cheating is not possible ("Cheating, tampering found at 2 schools," June 23). He suspected cheating and referred schools to the state. Then, when there was indication that tests may have been tampered with, he announced the investigation and findings to the public and the press — no digging needed by the press, no denials. In stark and notable contrast, this week it was reported that the Atlanta superintendent first ordered her staff to edit out negative findings from a cheating investigation and later ordered the destruction of documents that detailed "systematic" cheating on standardized tests.

The only thing worse for Baltimore City's schools than cheating on standardized tests would be to ignore the possibility that it could happen, to hide evidence of cheating or to attempt to handle the consequences of it quietly. In that light, we should not take the announcement by city schools CEO Andrés Alonso that investigators have found widespread cheating at two more Baltimore schools, on top of another elementary school fingered last year, as a reason to cynically dismiss the widespread gains city students have made on standardized tests in recent years.

Widespread cheating on state assessment tests has been uncovered at two Baltimore elementary schools, state and district officials are expected to announce today. Investigators with the state Department of Education found that Maryland School Assessment scores were compromised at Abbottston Elementary in 2009 and at Fort Worthington Elementary in 2009 and 2010, according to city schools CEO Andrés Alonso. The disclosure marks the second time in little more than a year that city school officials have had to acknowledge cheating at schools recognized nationally as models of successful urban education, including one visited by the first lady and the other by the U.S. secretary of education.

After announcing that cheating had occurred at two elementary schools in the past two years, Baltimore schools CEO Andrés Alonso vowed Thursday that results of the 2011 Maryland School Assessment tests would be the most "extraordinarily transparent set of scores of any urban district in America. " In a news conference to discuss cheating probes at Abbottston and Fort Worthington elementary schools, Alonso called the incidents everything from "figuratively criminal" to an assault on the district's progress over the past three years — a time when state and national test scores rose.

Baltimore school officials ought to take a close look at a recent USA Today investigation that found more than 100 schools in the District of Columbia had extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests on which wrong answers had been erased and changed to right ones. Just because a cheating scandal happened there doesn't mean we have one here, and Baltimore officials have reacted more swiftly and decisively than their Washington counterparts did to the few instances of questionable test scores we have seen here.

Testing monitors will be placed in every Baltimore City school that is administering the Maryland School Assessments beginning this week, an unprecedented measure that comes after an investigation a year ago found test tampering at an award-winning school and a principal of another school was removed pending an investigation into plummeting test scores. City school officials said Monday that 157 testing monitors have been hired to serve in elementary and middle schools where students will begin taking state assessments in math, science and reading on Tuesday.

The Howard County Board of Education is being sued for racial discrimination by a Columbia resident who says she was banned from her son's school and thrown out of his football game after circulating a flier claiming he was mistreated over cheating allegations. Elaine Brunson of Columbia also says in the suit that she was terminated from her job at a bus company contracted by the school system because a principal requested that she be removed over the matter. Brunson, whose son attends Atholton High School, filed suit in Howard County Circuit Court on Oct. 22, but the case has been moved to U.S. District Court because of First Amendment implications.

LPGA officials are making follow-up calls into cheating allegations that burned up the Internet from last week's Canadian Women's Open, though the eventual resolution may never be fully known. Shi Hyun Ahn and Il Mi Chung were disqualified for signing incorrect scorecards after the opening round, having inadvertently played each other's ball from the 18th fairway. Just when that mistake was discovered is the question. Playing the wrong ball brings a two-stroke penalty and requires the player to go back and replay from the correct spot.