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From 1999 through the spring of 2002, state records obtained under the state Freedom of Information Law included 21 cases of proven cheating by teachers from Buffalo to Long Island.

Some teachers said cheating is more common than the records show.

Teachers have read off answers during a test, sent students back to correct wrong answers, photocopied secure tests for use in class, inflated scores and peeked at questions, then drilled those topics in class before the test, according to records obtained by the Associated Press.

"Teachers care a lot, sometimes they care too much and try to provide too much help," said Dennis Tompkins, spokesman for New York State United Teachers, the state's largest teachers union. "We moved in a complete new direction in the last seven years. The standards are higher."

He noted, however, that most teachers don't cheat. "I don't think our members are Machiavellian. I think they are just trying to help the kids do better," he said.

The records include evidence that a teacher at Huth Road Elementary School on Grand Island, while visiting his former school in Buffalo, looked at the fourth-grade English test while forms were being counted.

That teacher then shared the information with colleagues, including one who wrote a 26-page report of the ordeal that followed. She said she agonized with colleagues for days over whether to report the incident, fearing her involvement might hurt her chances to become an administrator and damage the district's integrity if parents found out.

Ultimately she passed an anonymous note to the principal. "Everyone else seemed comfortable burying their heads in the sand," she wrote.

There were no cases of teacher cheating in 1998, the year the state started to track the problem; one in 1999, seven in 2000, four in 2001 and eight in the first half of 2002, according to the records first requested in September 2000. The 21st report of cheating did not identify the year it happened.

"It hasn't kind of come to me that we're progressively getting more complaints," said State Deputy Education Commissioner James Kadamus, who said the state started monitoring teachers because it believed they would have more incentive to cheat to meet the new standards. "I would say there is no change at all."

"We may be investigating more," he said. "But I wouldn't see any major change."

Kadamus said most of the cheating is in elementary and middle schools, not the high schools where high-stakes testing can determine whether a student graduates. In the lower grades, standardized tests are used to judge the performance of schools and teachers in "school report cards."

Cheating in some New York State schools changed scores so much that it invalidated the school reports used by parents, taxpayers and the state to evaluate the performance of schools and educators.

"If students have academic weaknesses, their teachers need to strive to fix it, not cover it up and refuse to acknowledge it exists," said Andrea Rogers, research associate at the Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability. "New York should instantly revoke the license of any teacher who is found guilty of committing testing fraud," she said.

Most of the teachers quit, were suspended or fired or were subject to a state disciplinary process that could lead to dismissal.

"Teachers are role models and so we want to make sure all teachers are appropriate role models," said Diane Burman, executive director of the New York State Congress of Parents and Teachers.

The records also include evidence that:

• A teacher at Putnam County's Mahopac High School reported all his students passed the December 2000 Regents chemistry exam. An investigation found 62 of 63 of the exams were scored higher than deserved and 16 students failed.

• A teacher at the Washington-
Saratoga-Warren-Hamilton-Essex Board of Cooperative Educational Services coached students through a Regents Competency Test in global studies test in January 1999 and even wrote in correct answers. The same teacher was accused of cheating in the January 1999 math Regents Competency Test by telling a student what answers were wrong. "I've done it before and this isn't the first time people have accused me of cheating," the teacher said.

• A Furnace Woods Elementary School teacher in Montrose coached students in the May 2002 fourth-grade math standardized test, including telling them when they made an error. The teacher said she "does this all the time during tests and saw nothing wrong with it." "Teachers are under a lot of pressure to get good grades," she told administrators.

In 1999, a report by the New York City School District found similar incidents of teacher cheating, including finishing sentences in essays. After the report was released, the city's special commission of investigation was flooded with new allegations.

"We found cheating increased by 30 to 50 percent because of high-stakes testing," said Brian Jacobs of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and co-author of the teacher-cheating report "Rotten Apples."

The Harvard study published this year also found similar cases of cheating in Chicago schools fueled by teachers' need to improve standardized test scores.

"Classrooms where they have lower achieving students on average are more likely to cheat," Jacobs said of the Chicago study. "That could be some indication of a benevolent motivation on the part of the teachers, or on the other hand it could show motivation that they are trying to improve classroom test scores for themselves."

NYSUT's Tompkins said he'd advise teachers who witness cheating to alert administrators. Asked if teachers should identify offenders, Tompkins said: "What's the benefit of that?"

The May 2000 follow-up report to New York City's "Cheating the Children" concluded: "Educator cheating does not help school children, in fact, it hurts them. It must not be tolerated."