AJC cheating series: National Blue Ribbon Schools that may be red-faced at these revelations
The AJC has published the second installment in its major series on test score disparities nationwide. Today’s stories look at the improbable score patterns in some of the nation’s most highly decorated schools, National Blue Ribbon Schools.
AJC reporters included a winning school that even merited a visit from Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Highland Elementary in Maryland.
“This school, just four or five years ago, wasn’t a Blue Ribbon school,” Duncan said that morning in September 2009, according to video of thew award event. “It had the same type of children, same type of families, same type of community — but dramatically different results.” Now, he said, “this school has more students at the advanced level than any other school like it in the state. It’s absolutely remarkable.”
And remarkably unlikely, according to the AJC analysis. It is essential to verify the achievement at these heralded school as they are held up as role models.
The AJC examined Blue Ribbon winners as part of a nationwide analysis of test scores. In an article last month, the newspaper identified nearly 200 school districts where test-score changes reflected a pattern that, in Atlanta, pointed to widespread cheating by teachers and principals.
The full analysis of 69,000 public schools showed that Atlanta’s cheating was no fluke. The examination of 605 recent Blue Ribbon winners suggests that test manipulation may be even more prevalent among schools considered models for others to emulate.
Statistically improbable test scores spiked at dozens of schools in the year they applied for the award, the analysis found. In that year, suspicious gains occurred about three times more often in Blue Ribbon winners than at all schools nationwide.
Among all Blue Ribbon schools with suspicious scores, the analysis identified 27, including Highland Elementary, that had the most unlikely gains. In some grades and subjects, the odds against increases occurring without an intervention such as tampering were so high as to be virtually impossible.
No statistical analysis alone can prove that anyone cheated. But in data and documents and in interviews with school officials and testing experts, few other credible explanations surfaced for how the scores of so many students could shift so quickly to such odds-defying degrees.
“Those kinds of changes are just incomprehensible,” said Jaxk Reeves, director of the University of Georgia Statistical Consulting Center. Reeves was one of the academic experts who reviewed the AJC’s analysis.
Another researcher who advised the newspaper, James Wollack, director of testing and evaluation services at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said many schools credit their instructional strategies for overnight success. But no changes in teaching methods, he said, are enough to account for “ridiculous, nonsensical gains.”
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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116 comments Add your comment
Being Censored by @Maureen
April 29th, 2012
8:42 am
I think you should all also know that @Maureen has been censoring my comments. ON previous blog posts, it has taken nearly 24 hours for my posts to go up.
What are you afraid of? Maybe the TRUTH? I dare the AJC to make a full and complete disclosure of not only data tables but also in responding to not only the researchers, but also MNPS. Still would love to know why Nashville was removed from the original story instead of the AJC publicly acknowledging that maybe their critique was VALID? Hmmmm. Interesting.
Being Censored by @Maureen
April 29th, 2012
8:51 am
OH. And lets be clear here. The AJC IS accusing these districts of cheating. Even though they sneaked some disclaimer content in the story, their headline is “Cheating our Children.” They did this TO SELL NEWSPAPERS and didn’t care that they scared an entire system, accused numerous teachers of cheating, and threw everyone in the system under the bus.
Ends justifies the means, right @Maureen?
Chris Murphy
April 29th, 2012
8:52 am
@Beverly: I can’t speak to why the AJC didn’t follow up Donsky’s particular findings, but it wasn’t the AJC’s fault Hall, et al, were able to institute a Wonderland-type system. APS and its Board and personnel have their own sins to deal with, but the parents and citizens are also (but not equally) culpable. There was no outcry after Donsky’s article, that I remember. And Jean Dodd was not known as a stellar member of the Board; lord knows what she was like as a teacher.
Hall came in to an abysmal system: APS had a graduation rate of about 45%, and the Board was kangaroo court of comedy available on public-access TV. The system, like the City, had been losing population for decades (some of that due to families having less kids, but also to families with kids fleeing the City). The Chamber of Commerce tried to help by promising to promote “good” candidates for the Board. As Hall made sweeping changes, backed by rhetoric and statistics, all wanted to believe all was well.
Thing was, just looking at gross measures- for ex., number of freshmen in a given class vs. number of seniors left in that class, showed that any gains were incremental, at best. In 12 years, graduation rate (for the class cohort) improved from 45% to 52%; a gain, yes, but still incredibly bad. And given the amount spent per pupil, unbelievably bad. Did any Board members cry out? Heck no. Parents? No. But they did institute rules where a kid could ‘march’ in cap and gown with their class if they met attendance standards (such as they are), even if they were to get a blank piece of paper instead of a diploma.
You can’t blame the AJC for that kind of apathy, and negligence.
Chris Murphy
April 29th, 2012
8:54 am
@Being: I thought you made your last post?
mountain man
April 29th, 2012
9:11 am
The cure to solving the education crisis is simple and I have touted it repeatedly – the trouble is that is is politically a non-starter. It would also take many years to implement and the gains would be slow. It would start with strict attendance requirements – and parents of truant children would face jail time (what else is ther, they cannot be fined). Schools should be year-roud, but the summer is devoted to intensive tutoring in low student-teacher ratio classes. Teachers would teach year-round and their pay would go up (there, I’ve lost another segment when I said TAXES would have to be increased). Students are tested at the end of the year by independent tester, and those not on grade level are FAILED, and must go to summer school. At the end of summer school, they are tested again and any that fail to pass are RETAINED. Special alternative classes are set up for those students who are 16 years old and in the first grade. Discipline is handled by giving the TEACHER sole authority to remove students who are problems, such student may not be placed in ANY other teacher’s class until discipline issues have been dealt with. Teachers are allowed and encouraged to make homework mandatory and give zeroes if it is not handed in on time. Same for tests missed without a proper excuse – zero. SPED students are evaluated as to their disruptive effect on other students and, if there is disruption, they are shifted to their own classroom so as not to affect the other students.
And we need to accept that we cannot force some horses to drink, and there will be the inevitable drop-outs because some students just do not want to learn. We just need to get them out of the way of those that do.
Education is not rocket science, but we have gone so far off the rails that it will take a major effort to get ourselves straight again.
Prof
April 29th, 2012
9:25 am
He/she who asserts must prove. The burden of proof that the AJC cheating story has used “flawed data” and “flawed methodology” rests upon “Being Censored” who has made the accusation, not Maureen or the AJC in their defense.
Several here have asked “Being Censored” for specifics, but the only reply is to make the same accusation over and over, while citing an op-ed column written by Eric Celeste in Creative Loafing. What is his statistical expertise exactly and how/why does it outweigh that of the University Professors of Statistics hired by the AJC for their studies?
I am wondering whether there is some private agenda in all of this repetitive attacking by “Being Censored by @Maureen.” As bloggers here have been saying so often in all contexts relating to public education: follow the money.
bootney farnsworth
April 29th, 2012
9:33 am
@ Dr. John,
you may have phrased it more gently and so I missed it, but you
seem to have left out two critical issues for educational success
1-a willingness to kiss butt
2-a willingness to to destroy anyone, be they a threat or not, for political gain
Being Censored by @Maureen
April 29th, 2012
9:33 am
Prof, you apparently haven’t been reading the posts. I will not respond to ignorance. I gave you plenty of facts – you just choose to ignore them!
You want my agenda? Well it’s not money, prof. The textbook publishers already get monopoly profits from K-12. My agenda is very simple. I want the facts, not sensationalism. As a concerned citizen, I don’t like baseless accusations and newspapers disclosing faulty research and scaring the electorate. If you think that the problem with our education system is test security, boy are you people misguided! Have you looked at the graduation rates lately? And are we really graduating qualified workers? Have you looked at how much remedial work our college professors have to do? It’s pathetic.
I think for all of you folks, the old saying “ignorance is bliss” probably sticks.
Feel free to lambast me all you like, because I won’t be monitoring this blog anymore.
Dr. John Trotter
April 29th, 2012
9:48 am
Bootney: As usual, you are right. I was being gentle by using “servile” for b-tt kissing. And, yes, the corporate school systems will try to destroy anyone who doesn’t toe the line. Then, every now and then, a crazy one like me comes on the scene and fights back. They really don’t know how to deal with someone who fights back…except try to malign or marginalize him or her with false and anonymous accusations that they never step up to the plate to defend. They don’t have the guts. Why does this remind me of Mark Elgart and SACS? Ha!
Ron F.
April 29th, 2012
9:56 am
mountain man: @8:40. You hit on a very important point. I’d love to see the data on kids from the blue ribbon schools over time. If they made a high score while in the blue ribbon school but then failed everything thereafter, I’d have to wonder. Part of the problem is that we don’t see the longitudinal data. They move, they end up scattered through several middle schools and high schools, and we never know for sure. I’d love to be able to dig in and get a sample group and see.
Attentive Parent
April 29th, 2012
10:00 am
I think Being Censored’s agenda is to be so painfully redundant with poor syntax that the thread is too painful to read so that little accurate and damning info results.
Maureen- I will make one point. Before your erasure stories when I pointed out problems you published a letter from the Pres of Education Trust, Kati Hancock, where she asserted that the criticisms of APS were basically a racist assertion that poor minority kids could not learn. I made the point I have made above that certain materials and practices are in fact lethal. And that those were what APS used.
On a different occasion I made a similar point and somehow Kristin Chenowith appeared posting by name as a rebuttal making a similar point to Kati’s within 15 minutes or so of my posting. I responded from my arsenal of facts and Kristin disappeared from the debate.
The AJC went out of its way for as long as possible to protect APS based on my experience.
My take on the current set of stories is that it is designed to rehab APS and advance the current Common Core implementation agenda by tainting standardized testing in general. It helps create a belief that new forms of assessment which effectively remove objective measures of knowledge are in fact better.
It takes some of the opprobrium of the City of Atlanta as it recruits business if the cheating can be attributed to urban districts generally. That way it can also be a strategy for arguing that there must be economic equity first before we try to obtain common levels of academic achievement.
It then gets back to our little Finland exchange and whether relatively equal socioeconomic levels for the Finns are behind their results on PISA.
Anonmom
April 29th, 2012
10:06 am
In partial support of “being censored” — I firmly believe that the AJC spent many years “protecting” DCSS — I firmly believe that Dr. Lewis and Others had “placed” people in position at the AJC (who probably are not there at the moment as the AJC has had some turn over and Dr. Lewis has had some misfortune befall him as well) who seemed to bury stories about the things going on at DCSS that are now the subject of the pending criminal charges… when parents brought various aspects of these stories to the attention of various journalists (at the AJC and to the others in the news) –somehow it gets (still does) turned around and the parents are the “bad guys” –the stories are not (and have not) been investigated the way I think they might have been under more “ideal” journalistic guidelines and the stories would have been busted (compare the scrutiny given to, say one of the Republican presidential nominees and to President Obama in 2008) — I think stories have been suppressed due to “connections” and education reporters had to find new jobs because of the “thoroughness” of these connections. I appreciate the fact that the AJC is finally willing to tackle these issues. I wish, however, that the forensic accounting nature of the billions of dollars that are being spent, year by year, along with “friends and family” connections and “resume qualifications” layered with the diploma mill discussions we’ve also had to fully understand the “ride” the taxpayers and children have been experiencing over the past decade (or more).
Attentive Parent
April 29th, 2012
10:08 am
Maureen-I seem to be in your filter.
John-have you ever seen the correspondence between Mark Elgart and SACS and the Wake County school board where he tells them they are not free to hire legal representation as they see fit and basically claiming the right to preapprove the lawyers?
Then he tells the board that they must meet with him without any legal representation at the meeting.
Apparently he sees school boards as SACS’ vassals instead of fiduciaries for taxpayers and students.
Good to be King I suppose.
bootney farnsworth
April 29th, 2012
10:10 am
@ Dr. John,
I may be a bit touchy on the subject, but it comes from honest and painful experience.
over my far too many years at GPC I have seen several good, honest, dedicated people try to conscienciously(sp)object to an initative or unnecessary spending and be personally and/or professionally destroyed in the process
andthen replaced by less talented, less dedicated slugs who are gladly willing to do as told in exchange for promotion, a fancy title, and (biggest here) a minor place at the political trough
Attentive Parent
April 29th, 2012
10:11 am
I guess I will try again with a slightly different lead-in. AnonMom’s recollection on DCSS has now appeared and is not inconsistent with what I saw on APS or the whole integrated math fiasco for that matter.
I think Being Censored’s agenda is to be so painfully redundant with poor syntax that the thread is too painful to read so that little accurate and damning info results.
Maureen- I will make one point. Before your erasure stories when I pointed out problems you published a letter from the Pres of Education Trust, Kati Hancock, where she asserted that the criticisms of APS were basically a racist assertion that poor minority kids could not learn. I made the point I have made above that certain materials and practices are in fact lethal. And that those were what APS used.
On a different occasion I made a similar point and somehow Kristin Chenowith appeared posting by name as a rebuttal making a similar point to Kati’s within 15 minutes or so of my posting. I responded from my arsenal of facts and Kristin disappeared from the debate.
The AJC went out of its way for as long as possible to protect APS based on my experience.
My take on the current set of stories is that it is designed to rehab APS and advance the current Common Core implementation agenda by tainting standardized testing in general. It helps create a belief that new forms of assessment which effectively remove objective measures of knowledge are in fact better.
It takes some of the opprobrium of the City of Atlanta as it recruits business if the cheating can be attributed to urban districts generally. That way it can also be a strategy for arguing that there must be economic equity first before we try to obtain common levels of academic achievement.
It then gets back to our little Finland exchange and whether relatively equal socioeconomic levels for the Finns are behind their results on PISA.
Attentive Parent
April 29th, 2012
10:14 am
Definitely in the filter. Second revised posting still got pulled.
Interesting.
bootney farnsworth
April 29th, 2012
10:14 am
@ attentive
he knows better, he’s just resorting to old fashioned intimidation. and I can’t blame him – it usually works.
The sad part of the story...
April 29th, 2012
10:46 am
…Dr. Totter is always right!
Dr. John Trotter
April 29th, 2012
8:13 am
mountain man
April 29th, 2012
11:02 am
Being Censored – so YOU believe that these Blue Ribbon Schools ACTUALLY did produce the dramatic results that they claimed. So what was their “magic bullet” other than firing anyone who disagreed with them (the Beverly Hall method)? I am automatically suspicious of any person who says they can overcome years of “social promotion” and bring kids to grade level with no additional resources. Let’s get those kids and re-test them, and see how they fare on an independent testing agency test. I know how I think it will turn out.
Teacher2
April 29th, 2012
11:04 am
@Being Censored by @Maureen
“Feel free to lambast me all you like, because I won’t be monitoring this blog anymore”
You have stated that you it was your LAST post several times on this blog. So follow through with your statement. Futhermore, do not change your blog name and start the last time all over again. I would offer that you are on at least your second blog name.
Dr. John Trotter
April 29th, 2012
11:07 am
Dear “sad”: I will happily take that as a complement — or is this compliment? Thank you.
Dear “attentive parent”: I have not read this correspondence between Wake County and SACS but have been loosely keeping up with the situation. I have just finished writing a fairly long article for my personal blog about SACS’s interaction in Clayton County, but I haven’t posted it yet (perhaps I will post it here). It is sickening how SACS works. S-A-C-S. Still Advocating for Cronies and Shills. SACS and Mark Elgart are, in my opinion, professional jokes and hacks and thugs.
Questioning AJC's Methods, Not Necessarily Questioning Its Overall Results
April 29th, 2012
11:07 am
@Maureen-
Whatever happened with the investigation of Morningside Elementary School’s 5th grade CRCT jumps? In July 2011, AJC wrote an article essentially accusing Morningside of cheating, based solely on an increase in CRCT scores from one year to the next. When it was pointed out to the AJC that in the year that the CRCT scores increased, a third of Morningside’s population had been redistricted to a new school (leaving Morningside with an overall higher SES population than it had had previously, and also relieving MES of potentially performance-depressing overcrowding), you (Maureen) said:
“If it’s true, obviously that could affect the scores. … We … gave the district our results well in advance of the story running and asked them if they knew of any possible explanations. They said that their own analysis produced the same results and they’re going to look into what’s behind the big jumps. So I guess we should stay tuned.”
So … what ever happened with that?
Although the possibility of cheating (or, for that matter, harmful forms of teaching to the test) should always be considered when there are strange jumps in test scores, the fact that the AJC did not even notice that there had been a huge change in population at that school (which its own quoted expert later said was an extremely relevant fact in any analysis of the cause of CRCT score jump) before it published an article essentially accusing the staff of cheating, makes me reluctant to rely on its analysis in these other articles.
I think it’s very likely that most of the APS teachers and administrators accused by GA and the AJC were guilty of serious wrongdoing. I think it’s very likely that many or most of the “miracle” results around the country (Rhee and others) are, as the AJC articles imply, faked (and that many or most of those that aren’t outright faked are the result of harmful forms of teaching to very low standards tests).
But it’s dangerous to sweep with a broad net as well. Especially because it sometimes seems that the AJC (whose job is, in the end, to sell papers) may not be checking the net so carefully at this point.
Prof
April 29th, 2012
11:19 am
@ Being Censored by @Maureen, April 29th, 9:33 am: “You want my agenda? Well it’s not money, prof. The textbook publishers already get monopoly profits from K-12….”
Well, I was thinking more along the lines of your being associated with one of the National Blue Ribbon Schools.
The sad part of the story...
April 29th, 2012
11:21 am
@ DR T,
It was most certainly a compliment!
Teacher2
April 29th, 2012
11:32 am
Correction- @Being Censored by @Maureen- You have stated that it was your LAST post several times on this blog. So follow through with your statement. Futhermore, do not change your blog name and start the “last time” all over again. I would offer that you are on at least your second blog name.
Ed Johnson
April 29th, 2012
11:49 am
July 17, 2001 (Yes, 2001)
Ms. Cynthia Tucker, Editor
The Atlanta Constitution
Post Office Box 4689
Atlanta, Georgia 30302
Dear Ms. Tucker:
The enclosed charts highlight the Atlanta Public Schools’ [lack of] systemic capability to impart better and better reading and math competencies to elementary and middle school children. The charts were derived from the Spring 2000 Iowa Tests of Basic Skills school grade average percentile scores published on the APS web site.
The various charts are of 1) the APS as a whole and 2) each APS district bounded by the APS as a whole. I encourage you to view the charts and share them with other parties, including readers of the AJC.
The charts make clear the almost continuous grade to grade degeneration of the APS systemic capability to impart reading and math competencies to children. The situation generally starts from first grade. Moreover, the degeneration apparently occurs no matter teachers’ best efforts, parents’ involvement, and children’s social, cultural, and economic features.
From the standpoint of systemacy, it is unwise to label any APS district “low achieving,” “high achieving,” or anything in between, as the charts portray an educational system that is itself continually driving down all students’ learning. Therefore, significant improvement must happen systemically, not locally.
Ms. Tucker, I look forward to the day you and I and others will work together to bring to the Atlanta Public Schools quality principles known to give rise to significant systemic improvement of student learning. I also look forward to opportunities to discuss any of this with you and interested parties, at any time.
Sincerely,
Ed Johnson
Enclosures
PS. The enclosures also include two scatter diagrams, which beg this question: Does extensive involvement with the APS by businesses and corporations impede the APS systemic capability to drive up student learning? If so, would not it be wise to institute for businesses and corporations “qualified involvement” with the APS? It is laudable the APS accepts outside help without qualification; however, outside help that engenders misguided noise and unnecessary waste suboptimizes the APS system. Therefore, I must ask this and other tough and potentially risky questions; it is a matter of the well being of Atlanta’s children and their families.
Attentive Parent
April 29th, 2012
11:51 am
Dr Trotter and anyone else-here’s the link to Wake correspondence.
http://www.wakeedpartnership.org/news/d/AdvancEDExchange.pdf
I think it is a mistake in general to refer just to SACS instead of AdvancEd. Most of the regional accreditation bodies are now wholly owned subs of AdvancEd. Just referring to SACS mischaracterizes the immense power Elgart now has over what goes on in colleges and universities and K-12 system all over US and to some extent the world.
I have some fascinating and troubling minutes of what he told a Dubai ed group would be necessary to obtain AdvancEd’s decal.
Plus are you aware that in December, Knowledge Alliance, the lobbying trade group for all those expensive, federally financed ed labs, elected Elgart as its Pres? Certainly its privilege but if AdvancEd’s vision for education is not in fact academic in its orientation, there’s virtually nothing right now in the way.
Cartel power for what vision?
Still in the filter on the other comments.
Dr. John Trotter
April 29th, 2012
12:08 pm
Mark Elgart is so full of it. Ha! He’s power tripping big time. I don’t understand why school systems and entire states don’t just tell him to take his power tripping and trip somewhere else.
Here’s a little bit on how abusive SACS was in Clayton County. It is under the section of the worst and best school board members in Clayton County in the last 30 years. S-A-C-S. Still Advocating for Cronies and Shills. This is what it did in Clayton County. It came to the rescue of Chairperson Ericka Davis and Vice Chair Rod Johnson. At the time, they were getting their butts handed to them on the school board. Mark Elgart and SACS came to rescue them and wrote a worse than half-a$$ “report” that Norreese Haynes so ably and aptly called “a sham and a farce.”
http://www.georgiateachersspeakout.com
bu2
April 29th, 2012
12:43 pm
This series strikes me as the chamber of commerce trying to distract attention from the enormity of the APS scandal by saying, “Look everyone else does it.” In fact, that is NOT what this study does. The articles are very misleading. What is shows is that the changes were not by chance. i.e. they may have been due to better teaching. They are basically accusing anyone who improved by more than caused by simple random chance of cheating. That’s dishonest.
If this was a study showing drops following those gains, either in the same school or feeder schools, it would be more significant. The articles do mention drops in the same school, but that is not what the study is focusing on.
I asked a question after an earlier article why their front page talked about the Houston ISD being one of the worst in the nation (you had to read the article very carefully to see that noone was as bad as Atlanta). Their detail data showed several districts in the Houston area with more deviation than the Houston ISD, so it was not at all clear why HISD would be the one mentioned as among the worst. I was told someone would get back to me separately, but that never happened. It leads one to suspect that it was simply sloppy work. Or maybe noone had heard of the North Forest district (the worst of the Houston areas districts in their detail data), so they used the Houston ISD since it was recognizable. Or maybe its because HISD with former super Rod Paige is connected to George W. Bush and NCLB and the articles are clear efforts to try to discredit testing which is a component of NCLB.
The statistics may be perfectly sound. But the logic of going from “not random” to “must be cheating” is deeply flawed.
Attentive Parent
April 29th, 2012
1:16 pm
I see I am out of filter at 10 and 10:11 now. Thanks for the liberation.
John-I think that is what is going to happen as the extent to which the federal and state governments are giving AdvancED the government sanctioned privilege to collect money and require things that would be unconstitutional for the governments to enact in their own name. One example is the White House issued Crucible Report from January (AACU also involved) where the feds asked the accreditors to make graduate personal beliefs of certain types a basis of who would be getting a college degree in the future. Raises clear First Amendment issues to designate the accreditors to be the enforcers denying freedom of thought and expression as part of who gets a diploma. Especially once credentials are the gatekeeper for jobs.
I have others but that is the most recent I am aware of.
My real concern is an apparent belief among supers and principals that they need only satisfy Elgart’s vision and their back is covered. Any problems with the elected school boards result in a threat over losing accreditation for exceeding the limited nature of their supervising authority.
Satisfy Elgart’s vision and you get that next salary increase in the great national job switch among districts. Insist on the transmission of academic knowledge and you’ve had your last job promotion.
Brandy
April 29th, 2012
2:18 pm
@Maureen, I applaud any group’s effort to expose the antics going on at APS and any other district. I have one suggestion:
Can the AJC’s team of statisticians, researchers, et cetera, exam the score patterns for the GHSGT and the (newer) EOCTs? If cheating was as rampant as it appears to have been in APS elementary and middle schools (and I don’t doubt that is was and probably still is, to some extent), then it is ludicrous to assume the high schools were doing any better. Did/do the high schools cheat, as well? If not, what were they doing right that kept them from bowing to the pressure?
My suspicion, though, is that examining GHSGT and EOCT score patterns is unpopular because it might effect the diplomas earned by former students. It also might have more of an impact on SACs accreditation since APS’ high schools are all certified by SACs–something I believe is not true for many of the district’s elementary and middle schools.
Ladies and gents, do you honestly believe only the elementary and middle schools were cheating?
carlosgvv
April 29th, 2012
2:30 pm
After 50+ years of one social experiment after another trying to bring minority test scores up to the level of white students, nothing was found to work. So, as a last resort, it looks as though cheating was the only option left. Now that this is being exposed, I guess it’s back to the drawing board. Politicians and educators alike will try something, anything, rather than acknowledge the obvious and therefore feel the full and certain fury of the self appointed political correctness police.
Digger
April 29th, 2012
2:52 pm
The elephant in the room is about to break the walls down.
@Maureen--When is the follow up report?
April 29th, 2012
3:02 pm
@Questioning , you brought up a good question. Whatever happened with the investigation of Morningside Elementary School’s CRCT jump in scores? When can we expect the follow up report? I too am interested and waiting for the story. @Maureen can you tell us when the rest of this report will be published?
Mary Lin Elementary on the Cheating List
April 29th, 2012
3:29 pm
Mary Lin Elementary made the “concerns” list this year. 10% of the classes were flagged with cheating. What is found to be very concerning is the explanation in the principal’s blog. He said that students “got off track” and that caused all the wrong answers, then the student got back on track again and then made the right answers. I find that rationale suspect.
What I also find concerning is the method they are going to use to “ensure” there is no cheating. They are going to swap the teachers so that no teacher is administering the test to their own students. I find that full of holes and not at all a way to ensure no cheating.
Teachers who admitted to cheating gathered together in their homes and had erasure parties. They colluded. They planned it together.
If this school is serious about protecting its image and ensuring there is no cheating, they need to have someone else in those classrooms witnessing the administration of the test and walking with the tests all the way until they are delivered to the state.
Many assistant principals were involved in the cheating in the past and they are responsible for the tests. Assistant principals were erasing answers.
There is an easy to ensure no cheating by erasures: cameras in the classroom and all the way to the delivery of the tests to the state.
If I was the head of that school who consistenty brags about zero test cheating in the past, I’d do anything I could to ensure cheating never happens. Just switching teachers around is a lame and impotent response.
This school needs to get serious about ensuring the tests are valid. There should be no excuse for cheating at this relatively affluent school. If a cheating scandal is found at this school, parents won’t move into that neighborhood and they’ll move if they are already in.
Mary Lin Elementary could become another Parks Middle (a big cheating school) and the leadership of that school needs to take his or her role more seriously.
GwinnettParentz
April 29th, 2012
3:59 pm
Another romp into the testing debate … attracting all the same tired rants and excuses from the teachers’ union apologist(s).
Yes, achievement testing is the sorriest way imaginable to measure student learning—EXCEPT for all the other alternatives!
Northern School Parents
April 29th, 2012
4:08 pm
Brandy has one of the best questions ever presented on this blog “Ladies and gents, do you honestly believe only the elementary and middle schools were cheating?”
No, I don’t believe for a minute that APS high schools are immune to cheating. The corruption in APS is so deep it is in the bone marrow.
Northern School Parents
April 29th, 2012
4:27 pm
I read all the AJC stories about the erasure analysis and cheating scandal this weekend. What I learned is something that is never talked out in this blog — the motivation.
I encourage everyone to read it.
The motivation for cheating is to win the Blue Ribbon of Excellence. When schools with challenges (poverty, illegal aliens) make dramatic changes in test scores, the government awards the blue ribbon of excellence, which is described as the academy awards of education.
The winning schools are treated like movie stars and go to an extravagant banquet and awards ceremony. Promotions for teachers and principals are guaranteed for those who win the award.
The whole reason blue ribbons were awarded in the first place is that a scandal was about to be created when a report titled “A Nation in Crisis” was about to be unveiled which describes how awful America’s public schools are.
The gov’t wanted to cover up and hid the report by creating the blue ribbons of excellence awards.
Which brings me to the point:
Greed caused the cheating scandal. Pride caused the cheating scandal.
Pride and greed go before a fall.
bootney farnsworth
April 29th, 2012
4:52 pm
@ Northern
sadly, you’re not pointing out anything we don’t already know.
except in education, pride and greed, combined with a willingness to do whatever you can get away with no matter how sleazy
win. usually big time
Drew on moderate concern list?
April 29th, 2012
6:21 pm
Am I reading the 2011 CRCT erasure report correctly? Is Drew on the “moderate” concern list with 12.5% of classrooms flagged? Gosh I hope not.
Ed Johnson
April 29th, 2012
6:34 pm
Hmm. NBC’s Education Nation coming to Atlanta, with Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed and Atlanta business community involvement.
http://www.atlantaga.gov/index.aspx?recordid=981&page=672
catlady
April 29th, 2012
9:13 pm
Dr. T: Why does it seem that SACS/Mark/AdvancED want to stifle all discussion/debate/disagreement among school board members? Our school board apparently meets privately with the supt and comes up with their decision (ie what he proposes to do) and then has their meeting and asks virtually NO questions (as you would expect if there was not a foregone conclusion), and votes in lockstep with NO desentions (slam, bam, thank you, ma’m). Why is SACS et al promoting this? Power? Why are our school boards so terrified? Why don’t they tell him to go to h3ll?
They are coming to see us soon for reaccred. and I am the only one screaming, “Hey, this is crazy! What a waste of money! And time! And what about free speech that we used to hold so dear?
Anonmom
April 29th, 2012
9:17 pm
I think it’s time that AdvancEd and Elgart stopped being allowed to be Judge, Prosecutor and Jury…. the state needs to take back accreditng districts. The thought that billions and billions of taxpayer money can be poured into “accredited” school systems and that no one is really looking into whether that means kids are actually learning anything is appalling. Yet another sign of the rampant corruption in education and another reason for vouchers and free market (although I’ll admit that the college discussion has pointed up a negative for vouchers for me….– I’m looking for clear checks and balances not an open checkbook — right now I see the public system as an open check book. To me the student loan program has become an open checkbook for colleges… There must be some “happy medium.”).
Anonmom
April 29th, 2012
9:20 pm
If we must continue with a system whereby kids are measuered by annual tests, then I don’t understand why the kids don’t take the tests on computers wherein they answer the question and hit “submit” (akin to how we vote) — then there can be no oppotunity for there to be erasures. That won’t stop the looking over shoulers kind of cheating or the teachers reading things out loud cheating but the questions could be in a different order per computer or it could be given by mixed grade levels to make it more difficult. Then if you add cameras to the room — technology could make it much more difficult to cheat. But then, I really think we should just be looking for improvement and not “fixed” “end” results.
Attentive Parent
April 29th, 2012
9:34 pm
Catlady-I have a copy of the current accred standards that AdvancEd is using.
It essentially requires the districts to stop the transmission of knowledge as it has been traditionally understood for a millenia. The focus instead to be on the students’ physical, emotional, and social needs.
We have supers who believe they are not really answerable to anyone because Elgart has their back. Yet the standards blow up the whole mystique of accreditation.
You read the new Quality Standards and the decal will mean “so you’ve agreed to gut academics?”
I had been suspicious of SACS from the behavior with APS and then warning Cobb when its majority shifted. Then at a parent forum I asked some well-informed but respectful questions on directions and concerns of a new Super. When I went up after to introduce myself he wouldn’t shake my hand and just glared at me with the dark menacing look every lawyer associates with someone who is running a con and has been caught out.
The look left AdvancED as the only explanation so I started researching.
Oh MY. At least it turned out to be a fruitful menacing look. Luckily I did not melt.
N. GA Teacher
April 29th, 2012
9:46 pm
Enter your comments here
First, standardized tests such as CRCT, EOCT, need to go. They basically just reinforce research that says that socioeconomic conditions correlate higher with scores than do other factors. Also, those of us over 40 never took these and did just fine!! Why in heaven’s name did this situation ever come about? But the fact of the matter is that tests ARE here, so: Why aren’t all standardized tests such as the CRCT now given on computer? The answers go immediately to be electronically scored. No erasures, no “fill in the blank” weekends in the principal’s office or at some frightened flunky’s home. Testing should have an adult moderator from the state or an eyewitness from the press to make sure the administrator or teacher does not hint at the answers. Because everything is electronic, scores can be returned almost immediately!! A benefit of this would be that the schools who are commanded to “remediate” CRCT failures will know who needs it so there is not a need for “blanket remediation” which is currently done in districts that cannot afford summer school.
Attentive Parent
April 29th, 2012
9:47 pm
Maureen,
Am I in time out again?
Help. It is a nasty rumor that I moonlight as the Kracken.
ScienceTeacher671
April 29th, 2012
10:00 pm
Apparently this is the poster who is currently posting as “Being Censored @ Maureen”
http://www.reinventedsolutions.com/about-me/
And I still can’t figure out what sorts of data analysis credentials Eric Celeste is supposed to have. Creative Loafing isn’t what I’d regard as a reputed or peer-reviewed academic journal, or even a credible source on much besides nightlife.
Atlanta Mom
April 29th, 2012
10:17 pm
Anonmom, you said “I don’t understand why the kids don’t take the tests on computers wherein they answer the question and hit “submit” (akin to how we vote)”
Does your school have that many working computers??? I don’t know of a single school that has computers for every student let alone working computers for every student.
Let’s for grins say that you do have a school with a computer for every child. What do you do when one/two/a hundred fail on test day? Because, you know, they will.
ScienceTeacher671
April 30th, 2012
6:32 am
Our computer labs don’t even have enough working computers for every student in some of our larger classes, so if those classes use the computer lab for instruction, students have to share.
And we don’t have enough computer labs for every class to go at the same time…