By KRWG News
New Mexico – The state is checking for possible cheating by teachers who may be changing student test scores.
Public Education Department Secretary-designate Hanna Skandera confirmed to the Santa Fe New Mexican (http://bit.ly/qgwUCw ) the department plans to spend about $70,000 on an erasure-analysis program to check for suspiciously high numbers of erasures on standardized tests.
The check could indicate that teachers are changing students' answers from wrong to right to raise their school's scores.
Skandera says it's a small price to pay to make sure the state has accurate data on students' testing.
A similar analysis led to the disclosure of widespread cheating in schools in Atlanta, where some 180 teachers and principals were reported to have participated in a scheme to erase wrong answers and pencil in the right ones.
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Information from: The Santa Fe New Mexican, http://www.sfnewmexican.com
Copyright 2011 The Associated Press.