Good test scores only part of complete education

Critics decry "teaching to the test," but we have yet to see a system, other than a test of some sort, that can determine whether or not a student has learned the required material.

By that standard, McCook High School is doing a good job of preparing its graduates, who scored a composite 22.3 in English, math, reading and science on the ACT college entrance examination.

That bests Nebraska's average ACT score of 21.7, and a national 21.0.

McCook's scores have been climbing over the past five years, thanks to regular brainstorming meetings to identify weaknesses and set goals for improvement.

Plus, with so much tied to the text, some students are taking the ACT multiple times.

While English, math, reading and science are basic skills, achieving good scores on a test takes on a whole new tone when nuclear power plants or nuclear weapons are involved.

While some might question the idea of taking tests multiple times in the quest to achieve higher scores, there is no question outright cheating is out of the question, especially when lives -- potentially many, many lives -- are at stake.

The Navy reaffirmed that this week by kicking at least 34 sailors out of the service for their part in a cheating ring that operated undetected for at least seven years at a nuclear power training site, and 10 others are under criminal investigations, according to an Associated Press story.

After the cheating was discovered in February at the nuclear training unit in Charleston, South Carolina, 78 enlisted sailors were implicated by an investigation. Fortunately, if the investigation is correct, the cheating, which had been going on since 2007, was confined to a single unit, and the commanding officers were unaware.

And, according to the admiral in charge of naval reactors, there was never any question that the reactors were being operated safely.

It turns out the Navy scandal may have been exposed because of news stories about an earlier Air Force cheating scandal, at a Montana base which operates land-based nuclear-armed missiles.

Hearing about that scandal, one sailor alerted superiors to cheating at his base rather than surrendering to peer pressure to go along with the cheating at the Navy base.

Was it the fear of getting caught -- rather than refusal to violate personal convictions -- which caused the sailor to come clean?

Clearly, this is another example of how an education is incomplete unless it includes efforts to build personal integrity.