Duo With All the Answers Share Secrets : Education: High school Academic Decathlon champions graduate to more lucrative trade by selling practice exams for the elite competition. But some customers say that the pair didn’t do their homework.

While most college-bound high school graduates would be content to pick up a few extra tuition dollars by working as office clerks or store cashiers, two former Academic Decathlon champions have parlayed their renowned school experience into cash.

Daniel Berdichevsky and Andrew Salter, Wunderkinder of the ivory tower, have ventured into the nuts-and-bolts world of business with their own start-up company that sells practice exams to decathlon teams around the nation.

The enterprise, named DemiDec--an abbreviation derived from the words academic decathlon-- has earned $20,000 since August for the two 18-year-old alumni of Taft High School in Woodland Hills.

“Our coach at Taft was always preaching theories of economic freedom to us,” Berdichevsky said.

The Academic Decathlon is a national high school competition that tests students in subjects including math, science and fine arts.

Earlier this month, John Marshall High School in Los Feliz won the city championship over Taft and is headed for the state finals.

Berdichevsky and Salter have a sterling reputation in decathlon circles. Both were members of the mighty Taft High team that shattered city and state decathlon records on its way to the 1993 national championship. Berdichevsky was the highest individual scorer at the city, state and national competitions, followed closely each time by Salter.

Now that Berdichevsky and Salter are freshman at Harvard and Stanford, respectively, they have transformed their decathlon titles into a calling card for their fledgling business.

Last June, the two champions found themselves short of pocket change after being fined $27 each for jaywalking near Taft. In the midst of courthouse grumbling about the fines, they came up with the DemiDec idea.

They decided to seek the approval of their coach, Taft instructor Arthur Berchin.

“My first reaction when I found out they were doing this was, ‘You’re going to be selling this to all of my competitors and make things tougher for me,’ ” Berchin said. “But there was nothing I could do to stop them.”

So the two spent all summer sequestered in local libraries. The result was a thick stack of tests, study notes and a copy of the pair’s award-winning decathlon speeches. Touting the kit as a “Passport to Chicago,” site of the 1995 decathlon championships, they have sold about 200 of the $189 packages to schools.

They mailed out query letters urging decathlon coaches to buy DemiDec to help their students “focus on victory.”

Practice tests are a common part of training for decathletes, and a small number of companies, most founded by former coaches and testing professionals, have specialized in selling them to schools. Academic Decathlon officials do not endorse any company, instead offering their own set of study materials, said Judy Combs of the California Academic Decathlon.

Berdichevsky and Salter’s popularity convinced many coaches to buy the package sight unseen.

“We were happy to see them and their entrepreneurial spirit,” said George Floratos, who has led Torrance’s West High to five consecutive county championships.

But first-year jitters may have led to accuracy problems in the tests, according to many of the coaches who bought the package.

In an early snafu, Berdichevsky and Salter had to mail out revised answer keys to their science test because none of the correct answers matched the questions. “We found several errors, but we find errors in all testing materials,” Floratos said. “But I’m sure their product will get better as they age and have more time to commit.”

Others were not so generous.

“We bought their tests because they were very personable and they had the aura of Taft’s victory, but our team members were really thoroughly disgusted,” Chatsworth coach Nina Hackett said. “There were so many mistakes.”

Salter said it will be “extremely important to us to remedy those mistakes.”