The New York education department is recommending several measures to crack down on cheating on high-stakes exams that influence not only the futures of students but also the ratings of public schools and teachers’ careers.
In a report to the state board of regents, the department recommends spending more than $2 million to spot-check more exams, prohibiting most teachers from scoring their own students’ exams, retaining tests for more than one year for potential investigations, and moving to “centralized scanning” of multiple-choice questions to better spot possible cheating.
Records reviewed by the Associated Press found growing concern about teachers prompting students toward correct answers or inflating scores, especially those near the 65 percent passing mark.
However, the records also show that such cases are difficult for the state to prove. Many involve erasures on tests with correct answers, with no evidence of what motivated the changes.
