THE TEACHERS WHO CHEAT

Some teachers may be failing to educate children sufficiently to bring up their standardized test scores, but they are evidently teaching children that it's acceptable to "cook the books" in order to achieve the desired results.

Posted Sunday in the San Francisco Chronicle is a story called
THE TEACHERS WHO CHEAT / Some help students during standards test -- or fix answers later -- and California's safeguards may leave more breaches unreported.

Teachers have helped students cheat on California's high-stakes achievement tests -- or blundered badly enough to compromise their validity -- in at least 123 public schools since 2004, a Chronicle review of documents shows.

Schools admitted outright cheating in about two-thirds of the cases. And while the number reporting problems represents a small fraction of the state's 9,468 public schools, some experts think the practice of cooking the test results is more widespread.

That's because the California Department of Education relies on schools to come forward voluntarily, and to investigate themselves when a potential problem is flagged.

Still, the desired results seem beyond reach.