In an age when district funding and even teacher pay raises are tied directly to student performance on state exams, it can be tempting for educators or school leaders to cheat the system, such as by giving students the answers to test questions in advance. Indeed, instances of fraud in the administration of high-stakes exams are on the rise since No Child Left Behind (NCLB) became law in 2001.

Now, in response to this trend, a growing number of states are contracting with outside firms to guard against such testing fraud.

When North Carolina recently hired security company Caveon Inc. of Utah to guard against cheating on standardized tests, it became at least the third state to outsource security services for its high-stakes testing to Caveon. South Carolina and Delaware have signed similar agreements with the company.

The security services that Caveon provides to guard against cheating on high-stakes tests are exhaustive. Some say such services are positive developments that will help ensure the fairness of high-stakes testing in the NCLB era. Others, however, believe that no amount of testing security can change a nationwide standard for testing that is itself critically flawed.

Caveon is the first company specifically to provide security services for high-stakes testing in K-12 education. Some people have made the analogy that hiring Caveon's services is like having a sign in your yard warning that your house has an alarm: The sign alone acts as a deterrent, even if the system is not in place. The argument goes that by merely hiring an outside firm to investigate test security, cheating will be curbed.

Don Sorensen, a spokesman for Caveon, said that schools usually have some kind of security system in place for high-stakes testing. "The problem you have nowadays is that the methods of test fraud have become much more intertwined with technology, and the stakes are higher because of NCLB," Sorensen said. "Whenever there are high stakes, there's a reason to cheat."

Although agreeing with his colleague, John Fremer, founder and senior director of testing security for Caveon, pointed out that educators are "really a pretty honorable crowd--you don't go into teaching because you want to make the most amount of money you can."

A primary benefit of the company's services for state and school leaders is that "they'll be able to clear things they might have had to worry about," Fremer said. Areas of testing deployment that could be a cause for concern can be investigated, and administrators' worries can be eased.

For example, "What if you go from the 35th to the 66th percentile?" Fremer asked rhetorically. "Was that because you had great educational collaboration, or is there something to worry about?"

Caveon provides security audits that examine high-stakes testing procedures to determine the security strengths and weaknesses of the educational body being examined. The company then helps design best practices for schools to improve security.