Cheating attracts a significant amount of attention in conversations about assessment, and with good reason: if students cheat, we cannot be sure they have met the learning outcomes of their course. In this conceptual article we question the attention given to cheating as a concept and argue that the broader concept of validity is a more important…

What do students learn in school? In the 21 century, this question has become a political dilemma for countries around the globe. It is a deceptively simple question, but there has never been an easy answer. The problem of measuring student learning appears to express an educational problem: What and how much do students learn? Most student…

Academic corruption in its different forms is not a new phenomenon. The Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA) has been active in addressing this area for a number of years. In cooperation with UNESCO, it issued an "Advisory Statement on Discouraging Degree Mills" (see ED603204). The document was prepared for the 2009 UNESCO…

The consideration of the impact of the dissertation services industry on the academy is a welcome piece by Jeffry L. White. White raises interesting questions and calls on educators and researchers to think deeply about the role they play in encouraging or combating the use of this industry by graduate students. In this piece, I respond to White's…

Notable interest was generated when Dave Tomar's book, "The Shadow Scholar: How I Made a Living Helping College Kids Cheat," was first published. While ghostwriters and paper mills have long been part of the academic landscape, a far more ominous enterprise has appeared that targets master's and doctoral students seeking assistance with…

This case describes the implementation of a fraud and corruption control policy initiative within the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (the Department) in Australia. The policy initiative was administered and carried out by a small team of fraud control officials, including the author of this article, in the…

The author reports on a state investigation into Atlanta's impressive gains on state tests which finds that test-tampering was rampant in the much-praised school system. The report unveiled by the Georgia governor's office states that Atlanta teachers and principals for years methodically altered answer sheets for students taking state tests,…

The expansion and transformation of Malaysian universities have generated major changes in the nature of academic employment and the structure of academic promotion in higher education institutions. These changes have considerable implications, in particular for the policy and practice of academic promotion in the public universities. We argue…

Since the passage of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the education system has seen immense shifts in its approach to schooling. Previously, students were taught using an extant curriculum with the instructional methods of the teachers at the school; there was little systematic modification to curriculum and methods; and the variable underlying…

High-stakes accountability policies have brought about significant change in schools, but have also triggered instances of cheating and gaming at school and district levels. This undisguised case study involves the El Paso Independent School District, one of its high schools, and a popular principal accused of cheating. This context provides the…

The use of value-added modeling (VAM) in school accountability is expanding, but deciding how to embrace VAM is difficult. Various experts say it's too unreliable, causes more harm than good, and has a big margin for error. Others assert VAM is imperfect but useful, and provides valuable feedback. A closer look at the models, and their use,…

Last July, the Atlanta Public Schools became the poster district for teachers and principals behaving badly. State investigators found that, in 44 schools across the city, 178 teachers and administrators had systematically cheated on the state standardized tests taken by their students in 2009. The largest cheating scandal by far has cast a pall…

The cheating scandal that has rocked the 48,000-student Atlanta school system was an egregious, but not entirely unexpected, byproduct of accountability pressures, many testing experts say. The reason: As long as test scores are used in any field to make decisions on rewards or punishments, including for schools or educators, a small percentage of…

Business professionals often use standard templates when composing documents, and teachers of business writing direct students to textbook examples to use as sample formats. Good instructors do want to provide their students with informative examples of what is expected, especially in an online course environment where students cannot raise their…

Upset because the University of California at Davis did not support her charges of misconduct among scientists, Melinda M. Zaragoza left her career in microbiology to run a general store in Kentucky. Although no wrongdoing was found on the Davis campus, Ms. Zaragoza's whistle-blowing now is being joined by a powerful chorus. Officials of the…