Teachers in Cheating Probe Face Discipline

A dozen teachers at Banning High School in Wilmington will be disciplined after school officials determined that they showed copies of the Stanford 9 exam to their students before last spring’s testing.

Another teacher resigned after being confronted with evidence of the cheating on the standardized basic skills exam, said Shel Erlich, a spokesman for the Los Angeles Unified School District.

“It is most unfortunate that innocent students were made a party to a scheme that reflected badly on teachers,” said interim Supt. Ramon C. Cortines. “We are dismayed that this cuts to the very core of integrity and honesty that should be at the heart of the school system.”

Testing experts have long warned that cheating can be an outgrowth of the pressure educators feel when standardized test scores are used to make important decisions about students and schools. California is embarking on a statewide school accountability program that will, for at least a couple of years, have scores on the Stanford 9 exam as its sole measure.

The cheating came to light last October in an anonymous tip to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, the state agency responsible for issuing and revoking teaching licenses. The commission notified officials at the 3,100-student school, and they launched an investigation.

They determined that 13 teachers were involved in the May scheme. It was instigated by one teacher who secretly copied the science and study skills section of the test and shared it with others, who used the questions to prepare their ninth- and 10th-grade students.

The students’ scores on that portion of the standardized test will be invalidated, but the district emphasized that students will feel no repercussions when they take the exam this May.

Erlich said that one teacher will be dismissed and that the others will face “appropriate disciplinary action.”