Soon after one investigation discovered many teachers in the New York City public school system who, desperate to raise students' performance on standardized tests, deliberately led them to cheat on those tests, another investigation uncovered systemic attendance fraud in which students marked as present in class were often attending another school, living abroad, in jail, or even dead.

The attendance fraud was discovered only when a civil rights group sued the state, charging that minority children in New York City were being educationally shortchanged. When the state thoroughly investigated the claim, it turned out the schools were receiving more taxpayer dollars—perhaps as much as $100 million a year—than they were legally entitled to.

†