Bob Schaeffer
Schaeffer is the Public Education Director of FairTest, fair and open testing. He has been tracking cheating scandals around the nation for the past several years and has collected a huge database of information about specific cases. He said today: “Atlanta is the ‘tip of an iceberg’ in a sea of standardized test score manipulation that has swept the U.S. in response to politically mandated misuses of standardized exams.

“A new FairTest survey reports that cheating incidents been confirmed in 37 states and the District of Columbia in just the past four academic years. In addition, it lists more than 50 ways adults in public schools artificially boost test scores.

“The solution to the school test score manipulation problem is not simply stepped up enforcement. Instead, testing misuses must end because they cheat the public out of accurate data about public school quality at the same time they cheat many students out of a high-quality education.”