For cheaters, iPods are playing their song

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Thursday, Sept. 6, 2007 | 7:20 a.m.

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRIS MORRIS

Move over, cell phones and calculators. There's a new device joining the list of banned items for Nevada's test-taking students - the iPod.

The usual suspects - cell phones, passed notes and the good ol' peek over the shoulder - still lead the list of cheating techniques.

But the state education department's annual report on testing improprieties for the first time includes incidents of students sneaking iPods into exams. In some cases teachers allowed the devices to be used, apparently unaware they could help student s cheat.

"Kids are getting clever, aren't they?" said Sue Daellenbach, testing director for the Clark County School District.

Keith Rheault, Nevada's superintendent of instruction, said iPods may not seem like an obvious choice for cheaters. But "you can put anything on those things," Rheault said, including audio recordings of class lectures, recitations of mathematical formulas or other content that could help a student answer questions on an exam.

The report itemizes all testing mishaps and cheating reported by schools on the high school proficiency exams and standardized tests given in grades three through eight. The tests are used in part to measure student progress under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Students must pass the high school proficiency exam to graduate.

For the 2006-07 academic year, more than 300,000 students were tested at more than 600 locations. There were 130 reported irregularities, such as missing answer sheets, a 10 percent drop from the prior year.

The total includes 47 incidents of students cheating, a slight increase over the prior academic year but more than double the 23 incidents reported in 2004-05. Educators say the cheating figures for the past two years can be considered a trend, even though the raw numbers are low in the context of the number of tests taken.

Rheault said he wants schools to tackle the largest source s of problems - cheating with electronic devices, and teachers misunderstanding what kinds of extra help they are allowed to give students with special needs.

"We're still getting a lot of teachers who either didn't provide accommodations when they could have, or provided them when they shouldn't have," Rheault said.

Part of the problem is that Clark County, which accounts for about 70 percent of the state's K-12 students, has to train more than 2,000 new teachers annually in proper testing procedures and policy.

"There's a constant learning curve," Daellenbach said. "Even with the best training , there are going to be schools that have someone doing something for the first time, and there are going to be human errors."

Among the reported incidents: