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EDITORIAL: When educators cheat

Add the Clark County School District to the list of systems found to have lying, cheating educators.

A two-year state investigation determined that adults at Kelly Elementary School erased students’ incorrect answers on high-stakes tests and filled in correct responses in 2012, state Superintendent Dale Erquiaga announced last week. That cheating allowed the school to report impossibly high one-year gains in reading and math proficiency, and falsely signal excellence at a failing school.

Just as troubling as the confirmation of cheating, however, is the state’s finding that the school district “unsatisfactorily” investigated Kelly’s achievement spike and did not follow state laws regarding testing irregularities. As reported last week by the Review-Journal’s Trevon Milliard, then-Associate Superintendent Andre Denson asked Kelly Principal Patricia Harris just two questions, then reported “no concerns” about cheating. That’s not unsatisfactory. That’s a whitewash.

The state investigation did not identify the party or parties responsible for the cheating, but claimed Ms. Harris and Assistant Principal Steve Niemeier lied, intimidated staff and broke testing security laws. Clark County Superintendent Pat Skorkowsky responded by suspending the two with pay, and by suspending with pay Mr. Denson, who recently was promoted to Mr. Skorkowsky’s Cabinet, then demoted for improperly influencing a hiring decision. Talk about a bad hire.

It’s sad to see Las Vegas join Atlanta, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other cities as places where teachers cheated to hide the broad struggles of their students. Although an emphasis on testing creates incentives for educational fraud, it’s stupefying that any school would try to get away with changing answers on a massive scale, given how easy it is today to identify cheating through data analysis and, ultimately, retesting. The school district has failed Kelly students twice: first through a lack of academic progress, then by falsely celebrating nonexistent achievement.

Even if the actual cheater, or cheaters, can’t be conclusively identified, Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto has enough evidence here to pursue criminal charges. Then Mr. Erquiaga, Mr. Skorkowsky and elected School Board trustees and State Board of Education members can move on to a larger, more troubling question: Did cheating take place at other Clark County schools?

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