America’s Most Outrageous Teacher Cheating Scandals

As we reported last week, many states have failed to implement simple and effective checks [1] for teacher cheating. Scandals involving cheating by teachers and schools to pump up ever-more-important student test scores swept the country this summer. But they've also been happening for years, and oversight is only now beginning to catch up.

Here's an overview of some of the most shocking instances of teacher cheating, plus a few episodes that may have been overblown.

The 'Lake Wobegon' Effect (1987-89)

One of the earliest investigations of teacher cheating was spearheaded by John Jacob Cannell, a family physician from West Virginia who was shocked to hear that his poverty-stricken home state, with high rates of illiteracy, was performing above the national average [2] on standardized tests. Cannell latched on to the issue and discovered that students in 48 states were supposedly performing above the national average — in part because they were being judged using out-of-date comparisons.

This phenomenon was christened the "Lake Wobegon Effect," after Garrison Keillor's legendary town where "every child is above average." Cannell's reports argued that score inflation resulted from infrequent test updates and too much "teaching to the test," as well as outright teacher cheating [3]. While his findings were hotly debated, a Department of Education-sponsored study confirmed most of them [4].

Columbus, Ohio: After President Clinton Lauds School, Students Claim Cheating (2000)

Just weeks after President Clinton visited a Columbus school to laud its astronomical gains on test scores [5] and argue that Clinton-Gore strategies were working [5], the school was enveloped in a cheating scandal [6]. Three students told a teacher that they had received assistance on the previous year's exam [7]. District investigators found no evidence to support the claims, but some parents found the accusation credible, and the veteran teacher who passed along the students' claims said she had been forced to go on disability leave after retaliations from the principal [7].

New York City: Early Cheating Scandal May Have Been Overblown (1999-2001)

Aggressive schools investigator Edward Stancik [8] uncovered a wide range of cheating in New York City schools, including a seventh-grade teacher who had placed the answers to a test by a pencil sharpener, encouraged his students to sharpen their pencils, and left the room. But Stancik's most explosive findings, which implicated 32 schools and 52 educators [9], did not hold up to scrutiny. A New York Times investigation into his methods found that some of his accusations seemed dubious, and that innocent teachers may have suffered as a result [10].

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