Teachers Help Kids Cheat

ASSOCIATED PRESS, Dec. 7—Instead of catching cheaters, New York teachers were caught helping cheaters.

Teachers and administrators at 32 New York City schools helped students cheat on standardized tests by providing them with questions in advance and even marking test forms for them, a special investigator for city schools charged.

His report describes crude cheating schemes designed to improve elementary and middle schools' performance on city and state tests, the Associated Press reported.

“Certainly this is the largest case of its kind anywhere in the country,” Edward Stancik told the AP. Stancik's job is to investigate the city's 1,100 public schools.

In one case, third-graders reported an exam proctor told them to write their reading test answers on a piece of scrap paper before putting them on the official test, then the proctor — a school principal — allegedly came around to point out incorrect answers.

As a result, Stancik said, scores at one school improved from 29% of third-graders reading at the appropriate grade level to 51% reading at grade level.

Proctors at some schools gave answers outright or even wrote on a child's exam, the report says.

Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew said he was taking Stancik's report seriously and would perform his own review of the allegations. He said all 52 school employees named in the report have been removed from their jobs pending the results of the investigation.

Dayton Honors Elizabeth Dole

UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON, Dec. 2— Elizabeth Dole will receive the first Leadership with Virtue Award from the University of Dayton at a banquet there on Feb. 10.

The festivity is part of yearlong celebrations of the university's 150th anniversary, Brother Raymond L. Fitz, the school's president, announced in a statement.

Brother Fitz said the award would honor nationally and internationally recognized leaders who try to integrate a sense of moral commitment in their work and their lives.

“Her many contributions to the health and welfare of humanity,” he said, “confirms her dedication and, thus, the appropriateness as our first honoree.”

Attack on Menorah Denounced

ZENIT, Dec. 7—Catholic and Jewish leaders at Georgetown University have united to denounce the vandalism carried out against a menorah placed on the campus by the Jewish Students Association, ZENIT reported.

The candelabrum symbolizes the biblical liberation of the Jewish people. The vandalism, which is thought to have occurred in the early morning hours of Dec. 4, was first noticed by university security after 6 a.m. The broken glass of the electric light bulbs of the menorah was found shattered on the floor.

On Dec. 6, Cardinal Newman Society President Manuel A. Miranda joined with university chaplain Father Adam Bunnell and the president of Georgetown, Jesuit Father Leo J. O'donovan, in a meeting led by Georgetown's Jewish Students Association to react to the violence, the news service said.

“Violence done to the faith traditions of any people is a violence done to all people of faith, and to all who love American freedom,” said Miranda. “It displays the result of an increasingly secular culture hostile to public expressions of faith and ignorant of the deep meaning of such symbols as the menorah and the crucifix.”