The Atlanta-Journal Constitution has written an
in-depth investigation about the Atlanta public school cheating scandal by the superintendent, principals, and teachers. The scandal stems from cheating of educators as job accountability is now determined from student scores. The AJC also uncovered some questionable testing results from other states.
Suspicious test scores in roughly 200 school districts resemble those that
entangled Atlanta in the biggest cheating scandal in American history, an
investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows.
The newspaper analyzed test results for 69,000 public schools and found high
concentrations of suspect math or reading scores in school systems from
coast to coast. The findings represent an unprecedented examination of the
integrity of school testing.
The analysis doesn’t prove cheating. But it reveals that test scores in
hundreds of cities followed a pattern that, in Atlanta, indicated cheating
in multiple schools.
Here is a link taking you to an interactive map of districts nationwide with scores resembling Atlanta's inconsistent test scores. The red circle (districts noted as "A") indicates:
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Posted: 29 Mar 2012 01:25 PM PDT
The the following was also posted on the National School Boards Assocation’s Center for Public Education blog, The Edifier.
Articles this past weekend by the Atlanta Journal Constitution ( AJC) and the Associated Press strongly suggest the answer is yes. AJC
attempted to answer this question by analyzing state standardized test
scores from all 50 states to identify districts and schools that had
statistically unusual fluctuations in their year to year test scores
which is an indicator that cheating may be taking place. Although the
unusual fluctuations do not prove there was cheating it does point to
the strong possibility that cheating is in fact taking place. As a
matter of fact, the newspaper used a similar methodology in 2009 which
helped uncovered extensive cheating in Atlanta public schools.
But is cheating as prevalent across our public schools as the articles strong imply? The answer is quite simply no. When you actually look at the data from AJC
you see that about 200 out of the nearly 15,000 school districts (which
includes charter school districts and other special districts) analyzed by AJC
had suspicious test scores like those found in Atlanta. This represents
just 1.3 percent of all school districts nationwide. Keep in mind, even
within these districts most schools showed no signs of cheating.
In fact, when AJC calculated how many individual students
were likely to be directly impacted by cheating, just a tiny fraction
(less than 1 percent) of the 13 million students examined were enrolled
in the grade level within the schools where cheating likely took place.
Of course any cheating at the school or district level is not
acceptable but the data does show that the AJC’s assertion that the
results “…suggest a broad betrayal of schoolchildren across the nation”
is not only overblown but outright wrong. In fact their data shows that
cheating is limited to a small proportion of districts and even smaller
proportion of students nationwide. So parents and the general public
should be confident that teachers and administrators in close to 99
percent of districts act in an ethical and professional manner.
Does this mean cheating shouldn’t be a concern? Of course not.
More work needs to be done by state and district leaders to ensure that
the integrity of the test results are not compromised and that
struggling students are appropriately identified so they receive the
support and resources they need to actually improve their performance.
In the case of the districts identified in the article they need to look
further into the data to determine if in fact cheating is going on in
their schools. Or whether the fluctuations are due to highly effective
instruction in high scoring grades and ineffective instruction in
following low scoring grades. Either way, districts need to know why
there are such fluctuations so they can either eliminate any cheating or
focus on improving instruction in grades where test scores drop.
While statistically large fluctuations in scores indicates a strong
possibility of cheating, as anyone who has seen the movie Stand and
Deliver, great teaching can lead to unpredictable increases in student
achievement. And those teachers should not be considered guilty until
proven innocent. But it also doesn’t mean that such indicators of
cheating should be ignored either. Either way, the actual data shows
that cheating is limited to a small number of schools nationwide
contrary to what the AJC and Associated Press articles imply.
If your district (as mine does) appears on the "A" list of
questionable scores, your school superintendent and school board should
advise the taxpayers of that district the methodology used in its
testing results and explain testing procedures in the district. If cheating is indeed limited to a small number of schools nationwide as School Board News contends, taxpayers still should require an investigation to determine if their district test scores are indeed valid.
Testing irregularities similar to the Atlanta pattern cause concerns for taxpayers and parents. If accountability for teacher and administrator jobs depend on student scores, this sort of testing irregularity may occur more frequently in the future.
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