Teachers are accustomed to casting an eagle eye over their classrooms to make sure students aren't swapping test answers or consulting crib notes on their palms. But who's making sure teachers aren't cheating?

	Online Graphic: Testing security See a graphic describing state rules for administering student tests.

In Pennsylvania school districts, the answer often is: no one.

Last week, the first of two weeks devoted to statewide testing, Uniontown Area School District officials began investigating an eighth-grade teacher after hearing that some students received answers to the PSSA reading test.

Uniontown Superintendent Charles Machesky drove to Harrisburg yesterday to pick up paperwork he'll need if he decides to file a state complaint against the teacher, according to department spokesman Brian Christopher. The state can remove the teacher's license if the allegations are found to be true.

But other than revoking a license, the state places no sanctions on school districts involved in cheating. State officials don't monitor district testing and don't require schools to have monitors.

"It's up to the districts to implement test security," said Rich Maraschiello, special assistant to state Education Secretary Vicki Phillips. "The state has no capacity to monitor schools."

In other words, the schools do their own policing -- and most allow teachers to administer their own tests with no real checks and balances.

With teachers under sometimes intense pressure to raise test scores, that could be a fox-watching-the-henhouse scenario.

Under the federal No Child Left Behind Act, schools have to make progress on state tests or face consequences that could include allowing students to move to other schools. With the higher stakes, the pressure is on for students and schools to perform.

"Anytime you have so much pressure, you're going to have those kinds of things happen," acknowledged Al Fondy, president of both the Pittsburgh Federation of Teachers and the Pennsylvania Federation of Teachers.

Fondy applauded the decision this year by Pittsburgh city school administrators to place outside monitors in each school during the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment tests.

During 2002 testing, some city teachers erroneously allowed ninth-graders to use dictionaries and thesauruses to help answer PSSA writing test questions.

This year's monitoring is "the right thing to do," said Fondy. "It's the right kind of monitoring. This makes sure you follow the rules."

Still, city school administrators are looking into disciplinary actions against teachers in two elementary schools who gave some tests the week before the official starting date -- and before test monitors showed up.

Schools receive boxes of tests about a month before the testing date, Maraschiello said yesterday. Under state guidelines, school officials must keep the tests "secure," but precisely how that should be accomplished is not specified.

Teachers are given the tests they're supposed to administer to their students up to 48 hours in advance, "in order to check student I.D. labels for accuracy and to affix the labels to the test books," according to the state testing manual.

Philadelphia schools also have used outside PSSA monitors, said Maraschiello. But most suburban districts in the Pittsburgh area don't. Not only do they lack the resources of larger districts, it isn't necessary, said East Allegheny Superintendent Thomas A. Knight.

"That's one of the responsibilities we have in the school district," said Knight. "It wouldn't make sense to go out and incur costs to monitor tests."

Knight said that the teachers who give the tests are considered "proctors," although he added that occasionally teachers will rotate classrooms so they're not giving the tests to their own students.

In Uniontown schools, substitute teachers are hired at each grade level to help classroom teachers administer the PSSA tests. However, during his meeting in Harrisburg yesterday to discuss the reported cheating incident, Machesky told officials that the classroom teacher "sent the substitute to sit in the office" and gave the test by herself.

"It's an embarrassing situation and I'm hoping [the state] will be able to help us correct it," said Machesky.

Guidelines for test security are included in each test booklet -- mainly common-sense rules such as: "Students should not be exposed to test questions before the actual testing" and "Discourage talking or sharing of answers."

While school officials at one time had to sign a "security affidavit," that's no longer required, said Christopher.

And despite some testing irregularities, state officials don't intend to create any more rules.

"We just need to keep reinforcing the procedures we have in place, and we need to make sure more and more people in the [school] building know what they are," said Maraschiello.

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