Cheating AR Teachers Receive Reprimand, Slap on Wrist

Cheating is a serious offense in Arkansas classrooms. Students caught can fail a class, get suspended, or even expelled.

But teachers cheat, too.

Every month the State Board of Education gets a report of teacher misconduct, but this last one was unusual because it included at least five cases of cheating by Arkansas teachers.

According to the Arkansas Professional Licensure Standards Board:

• A teacher in the Jasper School District gave students "grades higher than those earned."

• In the North Little Rock District, a teacher told students to erase incorrect answers on tests.

• A Bergman teacher posted the writing topic for the state Benchmark exam on a Facebook page.

Linda Remele, deputy superintendent in the Pulaski County Special School District, says teachers get what amounts to a graduate course from the state on how to give tests.

"The teachers understand this is very important and they follow the rules," Remele said. "(The state) gives them PowerPoints, they give them presentations, they tell them exactly what steps have to be done on every single piece of the testing."

But when anything is done incorrectly, it must be reported directly to the Board of Education.

"We had a student's cell phone go off," Remele said. "Students aren't allowed to have phones in school, let alone in the middle of class!"

But for an incident to justify a state standards board investigation, it has to be really bad.

"Something that's fairly intentional," Remele said.

Incredibly, in all of the cheating cases, the most serious penalty handed down to a teacher was a one-year probation and a $75 fine