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Sarah Dallof reportingCould Utah students be getting extra help on tests from their teachers? That's a question a group focused on teacher ethics is increasingly having to investigate, and a Utah company has technology that makes it easier to catch.
An investigator who reports to the State Board of Education says it may be pressure to succeed, a desire to show high test scores, but new technology and new companies aim to make sure it doesn't happen.
Cheaters have new tools: cell phone detectors, tiny digital cameras and page scanners. Utah-based Caveon is very interested in who's using them. Company president Don Sorensen said, "It's one thing to know the devices exist. It's another thing to know you can find the cheaters even after they've taken a test."
Caveon analyzes test results for signs of extra help. The company's chief scientist, Dennis Maynes, creates programs that search for things like repeated missed answers, too-similar results, even eraser marks correcting wrong answers repeatedly.
"It's wrong to have a cheater take the place of a person who legitimately should go to grad school but is denied a seat because a cheater was able to get their position," Maynes says,
The company has looked for people cheating on professional licensing tests, high school competency tests, even teachers helping entire classes cheat. They haven't tested here in Utah yet, but those same things could be happening here.
Jean Hill, with the Utah Professional Practices Advisory Commission, said, "We've caught some things that suggest sloppy test administration, or something did happen but all we have are statistics. And that's not enough to go on."
Hill investigates only a few cheating accusations involving teachers per year for the entire state, but each is taken very seriously. "There's a case where a student came in to talk about something else and said, ‘I did great on this test because this teacher helped me.' So it comes to us in a variety of ways," she said.
Other instances include accusations of teachers giving students extra time to complete tests, hints and outright answers for standardized tests, including those used for "No Child Left Behind."
However, no investigation has ever resulted in a teacher losing his or her license, either because it couldn't be proven or it simply never happened. The Utah Education Association says it's not aware of any cases of a teacher helping students cheat. Leaders say teachers go through ethics training every year.
