SACRAMENTO, Oct. 29 (UPI) -- California education officials have stripped 22 schools of an academic ranking for allowing or promoting cheating on standardized tests.
The problems ranged from teachers failing to cover up classroom material that might help a student on a test to outright telling some children when they'd gotten an answer wrong. State officials judge whether more than 5 percent of students at a given school were exposed to improper testing procedures. If that's the case, the school loses its Academic Performance Index ranking, triggering penalties for the school and frequently, parental and community backlash, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday.
The number of schools where widespread cheating or test-coaching is documented is relatively low, the Times reported. Each year, about two dozen schools fall into the category, out of California's 10,000 public schools are stripped of their API ranking due to cheating.
