CRCT cheating fallout reaches Glynn County. Is the test worth anything?
The Georgia Professional Standards Commission is expected to impose one-year suspensions this afternoon on four educators from Glynn County as the fallout escalates from the CRCT cheating scandal.
Dean Rohrer, NewsArt
The commission’s expected action is the second round in the penalty phase of the scandal.
The state Board of Education in July threw out the results from 2008 fifth-grade math retests on the state’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests for four Georgia schools — DeKalb’s Atherton Elementary, Fulton County’s Parklane Elementary, Glynn County’s Burroughs-Molette Elementary and Atlanta’s Deerwood Academy.
It did so after an audit by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement found evidence of an abnormal number of erasures on the tests, in which the wrong answer often was replaced by the right one. The state investigation followed an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in December about improbably steep gains at some schools on tests taken first in spring and then in summer.
In September, the state banned two DeKalb County officials from its public schools for as much as two years for cheating on state tests. At the time, Kelly Henson, executive secretary of the commission, which polices Georgia teaching credentials, said, “It is severe punishment.”
Further AJC investigations have raised questions about the scores at 12 other APS schools, and APS Superintendent Beverly Hall has decided to bring in an outside panel to review the scores.
In our many blog discussions about this mess, many of you have criticized the CRCT, saying that top proficiency on the state exam does not mean that a student compares well with high achievers from other states.
Today, at a panel sponsored by the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education, Fulton County Superintendent Cindy Loe called for a way for Georgia students to be compared to peers elsewhere, similar to what Atlanta is now able to do through its voluntary participation in the NAEP urban districts project.
“I believe we need that on the state level,” Loe said.
As a parent, I have looked to the performance of my older two kids on SAT, ACT and AP exams for reassurance of competency.
I don’t know what to think about the CRCT scores of my younger two and whether good scores mean much of anything.
What do you think? (By the way, Science Teacher and others, I have asked DOE to write a piece on ITBS and why we are not using it. I will post as soon as I get it.)
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23 comments Add your comment
Meme
November 12th, 2009
1:31 pm
Who is not using ITBS? We use it in addition to CRCT. I think the CRCT is given only to satisfy NCLB. It is worthless as far as I am concerned.
Maureen Downey
November 12th, 2009
1:33 pm
Meme, Why is it worthless? At the least, doesn’t the CRCT tell you how well your students are doing on the state curriculum?
Maureen
Meme
November 12th, 2009
1:36 pm
It is worthless because too many teachers are required to teach to the test. We have no time for exploring anything outside of the state curriculum. If I have students ask me questions that are not covered on the test I have to tell them to find out on their own. I think this stiffles interest in many of the kids.
majii
November 12th, 2009
1:55 pm
I think GA students are capable of mastering the material on the CRCT, but it will take a concerted effort on behalf of the school system, the principals, BOEs, students, teachers, and parents. In many instances, students are sent to school with very little support from parents, placing the burden for their education on the teachers. An example of this is in the area of homework. Students are assigned homework, but repeatedly fail to complete it. Parents show up for conferences where they say that they aren’t aware that their children have homework assignments. Sometimes the parents only show up at the school when they think the school has disciplined their child in a manner the parents don’t agree with. I’ve been in parent conferences where the parent has absolutely no control over their own child. Another example of the need for a concerted effort to increase student achievement can be seen in the policy in place at the school from which I recently retired. Although parents could access student grades online, many of them didn’t even bother to check and did not know their child was failing until the teacher contacted them by phone. When curriculum directors come to the school to meet with teachers, it is usually to complain about test scores or to organize another professional learning session. The cds get paid much more than most classroom teachers and are able to earn higher salaries for little/no work. Oftentimes the BOE sets high standards but provides few tools to attain them. At my former school, there were 12 outlets for computers in my classroom, but I had the only computer in the classroom. The BOE touted the necessity of using computers to prepare students for standardized tests but wouldn’t pay for them. There were 2 computer labs which didn’t have enough computers to handle teacher demand, and many of the computers couldn’t be used because they had problems with maintaining them. Our principal liked grandstanding to impress the BOE and parents, and did not push for the materials we needed to do our jobs. We often ended up purchasing materials for our students with our own money. Our library looked like a 1950s era library, with many books on the shelves from the 1950s and 1960s. In order for students to develop research skills, the teacher needed a field trip to a local library, which was difficult to arrange in recent years due to budget cuts. The pressure placed on teachers to improve student achievement are much greater than the average citizen knows, and it is my belief that a school system’s best chance to graduate students who are prepared for the future is for all parties to get serious and involved in each student’s education.
Shar
November 12th, 2009
2:02 pm
I believe that the CRCT is indeed worthless. Like the Georgia High School Graduation Test, it has been dumbed down throughout. The standards that the test seeks to measure are shallow and rely on rote memorization instead of true skills-based learning, so critical areas which are harder to teach, notably advance math and writing skills, are not included. In her fifth grade CRCT score my daughter was graded at the “college” level. That is utterly ridiculous, and highly indicative of the low levels of expectation that the test reflects. Georgia should be held to the comparative scored of the nationally-normed tests, the ITBS and the NAEP, to judge whether our kids are being adequately educated. If the state can’t keep up with other similar states, money should be re-directed to better-functioning options within failing districts. Enough with the iron-handed monopoly of State of Georgia schools. They are very, very bad.
Katy Johnston
November 12th, 2009
2:08 pm
It’s sad that the educators felt compelled to cheat for their students, which goes against everything teachers should be trying to teach their students beyond the mere content, the values of working hard in order to achieve.
I sent my daughter to C2 Education (c2educate.com) for tutoring over in Alpharetta, after they did so good with my son for SAT prep. She passed without a problem, but her tutors made her work hard for it. Just what I wanted.
Allen
November 12th, 2009
3:18 pm
CRCT at best measures this year’s cohort vs. last year’s cohort, not how an individual cohort may be improving, nor, given the cohort variable, how well an individual teacher is doing year to year. As a parent, I’d much prefer it if my kids spent more time learning and less time testing.
RJ
November 12th, 2009
4:08 pm
Some school systems only use the ITBS for a few grade levels. Also, the test is given at the beginning of the school year. To my suprise, my child has always scored in the 90th percentile, but I find it ridiculous that it’s given in September.
As long as NCLB remains as it is, we will continue to see cheating. Administrators and teachers will simply get smarter. There won’t be erasure marks, they’ll just walk by and give the answer. Cheating has been going on for years in schools. I doubt that even this recent probe will stop it.
oldtimer
November 12th, 2009
6:22 pm
CRCT is worthless because it sets the bar far too low!
ScienceTeacher671
November 12th, 2009
7:18 pm
Thanks, Maureen! I look forward to reading what the DOE has to say about ITBS – hopefully they’ll also include any data they have about how GA students perform on the ITBS.
As a parent, I’d be very concerned if my child of normal intelligence were not scoring at or near the top of the scale on the CRCT – a child who does not “exceed expectations” is working below grade level.
As others have said, the test is worthless because the bar is set too low. One would expect that a child who “meets expectations” would be working at grade level, but this is not true. On the 8th grade CRCT, the student reading or doing math on a 4th grade level can pass. This is deceptive and unacceptable.
Further, the test is worthless because its purpose under NCLB is supposedly to determine whether or not a child should be promoted, at least in “gateway” years, and as AJC’s research has shown, children are routinely promoted whether or not they pass the CRCT.
Waste of time and money.
Curious
November 12th, 2009
10:53 pm
What is the difference between “teach to the test” and “teach to the standards”? Shouldn’t we (the State, the society, the local community, the taxpayers, etc.) expect students to learn a certain set of skills and knowledge (the standards) that we set locally, not by someone who lives in Iowa?
ScienceTeacher671
November 13th, 2009
6:07 am
Curious, I’d like to know the answers to your questions.
I’d also like to know which reading and math skills students are expected to know on the ITBS that we in Georgia think are unnecessary.
Larry
November 13th, 2009
7:38 am
The ITBS is norm-referenced as opposed to criterion-referenced.
Norm-referenced scores compare the performance of an individual relative to the performance of the group; they tell you nothing about the performance of the group as a whole. Concepts like a “passing grade” don’t exist in norm-referenced tests because the scoring is a purely mathematical way of comparing individuals to a specified group’s performance. These types of tests cannot be used for retention, since it would amount to failing (or promoting) a certain percent of students regardless of whether they mastered the material.
MyOpinion
November 13th, 2009
11:27 am
@Curious
As a student I was taught the test and I was taught the standard.
“Teach to the test,” means exactly what it states, a teacher teaches a test to the student. The teacher compares a few old exams to see which concepts reappear on the exam each year and the ones that appear once every few years. The concepts that appear every year are taught to the student first, followed by the concepts that appear less often, with the concepts that rarely show on the exam being taught last minute thing before the test. While this method is effective for one particular exam, if the student have to take an equivalent exam in another area this plan can backfire. The concepts covered on the second exam may have been the reverse of the first, i.e. the infrequent concept from the first exam materializes the most on the second exam, which causes the student score to drop on the second exam. The average teacher does this, whether or not they realize it. (Used as a very effective method for SAT study)
Good teachers teach the standard. In my opinion, standard equates to mastery. This means the students can take a test in GA and take the equivalent in another state and do well on both exams because they have learned the subject matter, not just specific concepts that usually materialize on one exam. The only subject that changes from state to state is the history of the state. If most teachers were teaching the standards, then it would not matter if the students were taking the CRCT, NAEP, or ITBS; most students would at least be average (75%) on all exams.
As for the standards being set locally, who do you think created the CRCT?
Meme
November 13th, 2009
12:13 pm
@MyOpinion – AMEN
Happily retired!
November 13th, 2009
3:48 pm
Certainly you cannot condone cheating by teachers to improve the standardized test scores of their students. On the other hand, what do you do when you are teaching students who simply cannot do the work, but your superindendent or a member of his staff is threatening your job if the students do not pass? This has happened in many school systems. A very small number of at-risk students in many schools determine whether or not a school makes AYP. Like UGA football fans, many individuals directly or indirectly have unrealistic expectations about the level of success that can be attained on a yearly basis. I am not totally opposed to NCLB, but I would like to see less of a punitive attitude taken toward schools with large numbers of marginal students. Just a thought.
Elizabeth
November 13th, 2009
3:53 pm
When I was in school the only standardized tests were the ITBS and the SAT. I never remember being told that we were being taught “standards” or ” the test information”. I never took a practice test. I never spent hours learning to bubble in test sheets. On my classroom tests, if we read, for example, the play Hamlet, I was NEVER given a study guide. I knew that the teacher could and would ask anything he or she deemed to be important. So I studied it all. I took notes on it all– and I NEVER had a lesson on how to take notes. I did it all on my own. Without study guides or review sessions or games. We learned the content that was in the state curriculum. We took the tests and most of us did well. The fallacy in teaching the standards or to the test is that you are getting too specific about the content, thus leaving gaps in what students know. You are eliminating a student’s ability to determine what is and is not important. You are eliminating the ability to think, to reason, to infer, and to sort out the major versus the minor details. When I began my teaching career in 1970, in Clayton County, I had a group of ninth grade students with all ability levels. That year we read Huckleberry Finn, The Old Man and the Sea, The Fellowship of the Ring, and Great Expectations. We studied poetry, short stories, grammar , writing , speaking, and listening skills. I taught this way for 11 years. I am a tough teacher and my students worked hard.Less than half of one per cent in 11 years did poorly in my class or on the standardized tests. Almost all of them came to me when they had moved to 10th grade to thank me for working them so hard. Tenth grade English, they said, was ” a breeze” because I had taught them so well.
I hate the mechanics of teaching now. I have to be on the same page at the same time as everyone else. I have students who don’t care and whose parents think I am too hard on their little darlings. I spend so much time defending myself both with parents and with my administration that there is little joy in coming to work. I have more paperwork now than I had in the previous ten years of teaching. Yet I continue to teach because I love the kids and I still believe I have something to give them– something to teach them. But the testing is killing me slowly but surely. It goes against every teaching principal I ever learned to teach to a test. Teaching is a job for robots now.
Meme
November 13th, 2009
6:44 pm
Elizabeth, in the mid 1970’s my sixth graders read and tested on Jane Eyre. We have allowed our curriculum to be dumbed down.
what about the truth?
November 13th, 2009
9:01 pm
I think this whole “cheating” scandal is killing the moral of teachers and administrators who are actually implementing highly effective levels of instruction. Why does it have to be that a school, in an urban ditrict, is cheating when success is achieved? The recent schools in question, particularly, West Manor and Peyton Forest have always been high achieving schools, unlike what is printing in the AJC. The media is looking for a story, but not the truth. You can not compare the test performance of a group of students to the next year’s performance, unless you are comparing the exact same students. The comparison made in the AJC did an “elementary” analysis of data to try to write a story. The biggest question that I have is, “Why is it considered “cheating” when urban children perform well on the CRCT and “the norm” when suburban children perform well?”
what about the truth?
November 13th, 2009
10:47 pm
Sorry that I did not spell check….moral should be morale; ditrict should be district; and printing should be printed. I am just so upset with this whole situation.
Curious
November 14th, 2009
12:48 am
So, is it possible to “teach to the CRCT” (for math, at least) when the tests are relatively new and they don’t release the problems? Meme complained about teachers are forced to teach to the test, but Opinion’s definition of “teach to the test” seems to suggest that can’t really be happening for the CRCT.
As for setting the standards locally, isn’t that exactly the reason we want the CRCT, not the test whose standards were set by someone in Iowa? Although state standards may be similar by the end of the high school, exact placements of topics vary quite a bit across states. So, yes, we may want more or less the same set of knowledge and skills by the time students graduate from HS, along the line, say at 6th grade, different states may have different expectations.
EducationCEO
November 14th, 2009
12:49 pm
Teaching to the test means only covering material/problems that will likely be on the test. Teaching the standards, on the other hand, means covering all content students are supposed to master in a certain grade level. The CRCT is created by the publishing companies who have correlated their textbooks to the GA standards. The ITBS is NOT created by textbook companies and therefore, measures competencies that all students (across the country) should have mastered in a certain grade. Personally, I would rather we move to a test such as ITBS, NAEP, or MAP because more states use them and we will know, for a fact, how GA students compare to other students across the country. It would be best if, say NAEP, would create those tests and mass produce them so that they can be administered every year, as opposed to every 3-4 years. We need to see annual growth, not just hope that the 3rd grade class of 2005 was smarter than the 3rd grade class of 2009. Lastly, the kids take ITBS but no placement or curricula decisions are made based on those tests. Same with CoGAT. It is only used to either allow or deny access into the Gifted Education programs.
Curious
November 14th, 2009
10:40 pm
CEO,
The last time I checked, there is no national standards. So, what do you mean by “competencies that all students (across the country) should have mastered in a certain grade”? The expectations are different from state to state, aren’t they? Iowa happens to be just one state – and they actually didn’t have a state standard until very recently. So, how can a 2nd grade ITBS (for example) be a valid measure if what Iowa (actually the test developers) think 2nd graders should know is different from what’s in the state (GA, for example) standards? Thins may change once the common standards group come up with their standards.
Also, the CRCT is developed by A publishing company, not companies, I don’t think. So, unless you are using the particular company’s book, teachers still must teach the standards, don’t they?