Administration of tests behind cheating

In response to Sarah Webster’s July 26 guest column in The Albany Herald on the impact of federal dollars on CRCT test scores that encourage cheating, I would like to suggest that the problem is not necessarily the dollar incentive but how the test is administered.

When test monitors were present for the DOCO testing the year after CRCT scores were found with erasures, the scores returned to more realistic levels. Unless the program is administered to prevent cheating, it is ripe for fraud and should be replaced with a well thought out program that ensures all testing is monitored so there is no possibility of cheating.

The $10 billion mentioned in the article is a large amount of money equal to, I believe, about the cost of two months in Afghanistan.