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Editorial: Cheaters sometimes win

The Army’s response to public revelations of widespread cheating on NCO promotions has been underwhelming.

A tip to a Web site called Shamschool.com revealed that soldiers can get answers to correspondence-course tests. Passing those courses can earn soldiers points on their promotion-point worksheets.

The Fort Campbell soldier behind the Web site was not punished. He was given a letter of counseling and ordered to remove the test answers, with threats of punishment if he failed to do so; he complied.

the case, first reported by the Boston Globe, publicly reveals what is an open secret in the Army: The system for promoting soldiers to sergeant and staff sergeant is wide open to cheating.

Shamschool.com claimed 10,000 members, and even after the answers were removed, a visitor could easily find instances of soldiers seeking help with correspondence courses. There are numerous other Web sites that also offer Army correspondence courses and test answers. Soldiers told Army Times that cheating is rampant — and all but institutionalized.

Yet the Army is doing little as an institution to stop it. The effort, by all accounts, is piecemeal, with officials addressing individual cases as they pop up — and with a surprisingly soft touch.

They concede they have been hard-pressed to stay ahead of the problem as the rapid expansion and popularity of the Internet has created a new universe of opportunity for cheaters, one in which the wrongdoers can operate remotely and anonymously.

The Army is looking at everything from randomizing test questions to administering proctored exams, but has yet to develop a comprehensive plan to kill the open opportunity to cheat through the correspondence-course section. Meanwhile, soldiers who played by the rules get outscored by those who cheated.

That’s unacceptable, and Army leadership is complicit until it takes meaningful steps to end it. The Marine Corps faced a similar problem last year and attacked it by instituting changes demanded by the top down.

It’s time for the Army to take similar action.