ABSTRACT
Qualls (2001) wrote, “The days of ignoring allegations of cheating on standardized achievement tests are in the past,” (p. 9). A little over a decade later, this statement seems overly optimistic for K–12 testing even though many state education agencies (SEA) have procedures for reporting security breaches. These procedures often rely on self-reporting by schools and districts when cheating is suspected. Since a report of cheating may invalidate test scores and cause a school to miss annual yearly progress (AYP), it may not be in the schools’ or districts’ best interest to report themselves to the SEA. If a SEA does not conduct data forensics of its test data, it is likely that incidents of cheating will go unreported and undetected.
