“The answer here is very simple, you just have a culture of integrity and you have better security measures in place,” said Secretary Arne Duncan in response to the Atlanta cheating scandal. Other testing proponents offered similar suggestions. “A culture of integrity” is not easy because of the corruptive power of test-driven accountability as I have discussed in previous posts and “better security measures” will only incur more costs to tax payers without stop cheating.
In response to increased cheating reports, many states have stepped up their test security measures. For example, Texas Education Agency (TEA) introduced a 14-point Test Security Plan in 2007.
The plan includes a very broad range of measures to ensure the integrity of the state tests. According to the revised recommendations for implementation of the Plan released by TEA in 2010, tightened test security measures include analyzing scrambled blocks of test questions to detect answer copying, assigning independent test monitors, requiring districts to implement seating charts during tests, using statistical
