Photo by Shannan Muskopf

Photo past Shannan Muskopf

California school officials in several schoolhouse districts contacted by EdSource have rejected allegations of "suspect" test scores in their districts contained in a national report past the Atlanta-Journal Constitution.

The paper said it had plant "high concentrations of suspect math or reading scores in school systems from coast to coast," including in twoscore California school districts.

Adulterous, the newspaper implied, based on a circuitous analysis of information, is the near likely cause. The paper argued that cheating is driven past the relentless pressures on schools imposed by the No Kid Left Backside law which each twelvemonth raises the test score bar for schools and students and labels increasing numbers of schools every bit failing under the law.

At the same time, the conclusions were based entirely on the newspaper'due south statistical analysis, without any actual testify that cheating has occurred in the districts it has named. Moreover, the newspapers' editors told EdSource Extra that none of the California school districts it named as having the nearly "suspect" scores — one-fifth of those identified nationwide — were actually contacted for possible explanations for the variations in test scores documented in the report. No reporting was washed in the districts themselves.

The article began with this provocative sentence: "Suspicious exam scores in roughly 200 school districts resemble those that entangled Atlanta in the biggest cheating scandal in American history."

The tertiary paragraph, nonetheless, said that the newspaper's analysis "doesn't prove cheating." But information technology  went on to say that "test scores in hundreds of cities followed a pattern that, in Atlanta, indicated cheating in multiple schools."

Information technology also said that in 196 out of the nation's 3,125 largest districts with doubtable test scores "the odds of the results occurring by take chances alone were worse than one in i,000." In 33 of the districts, it said, the odds were "worse than 1 in a 1000000."

Despite the clear thrust of the report, linking exam scores in the California districts to "the biggest cheating scandal in American history," every bit well equally the title of the series itself, "Cheating Our Children," Kevin Riley, the newspaper's editor, said in an electronic mail message:

Nosotros've not said that any schoolhouse or any person has cheated. We've said the results show doubtable scores that should be examined further. In the end, what happened is a question districts and states have to look into.

Officials in several districts interviewed past EdSource vehemently rejected any suggestion of cheating, describing the report'southward findings variously equally "outrageous," "skewed and misleading"  and "disappointing."

Prompted by a like Atlanta Periodical-Constitution investigation in 2009, an independent country committee in Georgia last year found widespread cheating at 44 Atlanta public schools, alleging that nearly 200 teachers and principals simply erased incorrect answers and substituted correct ones.

While there have been incidents of cheating in California, nothing comparable to what occurred in Atlanta has been uncovered in California to appointment.

Equally the paper explained, information technology used statistics to "identify unusual score jumps and drops on state and math reading tests by form and schools." Declines in scores in one year can indicate cheating in the previous year. (A full caption of the paper's methodology can exist found here.)

Among those named is the Los Angeles Unified School District, by far the largest in the state. Last summertime, the district shut down six charter schools after finding they had cheated on tests. Further incidents involving lease schools were reported last fall. LA Unified officials declined to comment on the Atlanta report.

Officials in other districts contacted by EdSource Extra were far less reticent.

Art Revueltas, deputy superintendent at Montebello Unified in the San Gabriel Valley, said the "methodology used … in the study led to skewed and misleading results." He said that over 50 per centum of his districts' students enter kindergarten as English learners and "when they acquire English, we expect an increase in their test performance."

The article, he said, pointed to a "culture of adulterous in the Atlanta public schools which existed with administrative and teacher support. This in fact does not occur in the Montebello Unified School District."

The paper looked at what percentage of students scored at a proficient level in one form, say in the 3d grade, and what percent that did so in the 4th grade. If there was a big jump, either upwardly or downwards, those scores were flagged  as suspect. "Districts which consistently have ten percentage or more of their classes flagged  or which have an extremely high flag rate in a detail twelvemonth certainly deserve farther examination," the article states.

Only Revueltas said that the California Standards Tests, the standardized tests taken by millions of California students, are "non vertically aligned" so that comparing grade-to-form scores is "irrelevant," he said. "Grade-to-course scores tin't be compared, " he said.

As noted by the paper, the biggest gains and drops were recorded by big to medium sized cities and rural districts. The reporters say that it is districts like these that cheating is likely to be well-nigh owned.

That'due south because these districts have multiple subgroups including poor students, and those of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, whose performance on land tests determine whether a school is deemed to have made "annual yearly progress" as divers past the No Kid Left Behind police.

At San Rafael City Elementary Schools northward of San Francisco, deputy superintendent Rebecca Rosales said that she was "enlightened of the allegations" in the Atlanta written report and described them equally "outrageous." The Atlanta analysis constitute that fourteen per centum of classes in her district showed suspect results, the 5th highest figure in the land.

"Our districts — and probably many others — are doing exactly what we are expected do to. Nosotros're getting our students to a skillful and advanced level, and we're doing information technology the right way.

"Districts like ours are showing signs of improvement for all significant subgroups of students. When we testify academic gains, and so face the allegation that cheating is involved, [that] is fundamentally unacceptable."

"Nosotros follow all the rules," she said. "We've passed all our audits with the country. Information technology is discouraging for an out-of-state group running these statistical analyses to say we are cheating."

At the San Ysidro Unified School District close to the U.S.-Mexico edge, some 20 percent of classes were flagged in the paper analysis, the third highest rate of doubtable scores this year in the state.

Gloria Madera, the districts's assistant superintendent for educational services, said that the district has been in "program comeback" nether the No Child Left Behind police force afterwards failing to make Adequate Yearly Progress for ii years in a row.

The district has been working with a District Help and Intervention Team (DAIT) as well as the San Diego Canton of Education to bring upwardly its scores. Students who take scored "far below bones," and "below basic" have been targeted. "When you bring those students up, you lot get additional points," she said.  "The tendency has been that the commune has made significant gains in the by 5 years."

She said that San Ysidro students are now at the same level as students in neighboring districts with the aforementioned demographics.  "We just caught up," she said.

Nosotros have worked very, very hard equally a team — students, parents teachers, administrators and back up staff. Our focus has been light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation like to comeback achievement. To cast a shadow on that, to say that there is anything inappropriate, it saddens me.  It negates the difficult work that everyone has done.

The Atlanta commodity cites James Wollack, an adept on test security and cheating at the Academy of Wisconsin at Madison, asserting that cheating is "i of the few plausible explanations for why scores would change then dramatically for and then many students in a commune."

The article then goes on to state that its analysis "suggests a broad expose of school children across the nation" because "falsified test results deny struggling students access to actress help to which they are entitled and erode confidence in vital public institutions."

The paper essentially ruled out steep examination score gains in its assay every bit being the issue of "exemplary pedagogy."

Since publication of the story last Sun, Gary Miron, a testing adept at Western Michigan University, has leveled major criticisms against the Atlanta study. In a post published in the Washington Post he said the fluctuations in test scores are much more than likely to exist the event of educatee mobility than cheating. "The resulting news story appears to be intended to be alarmist, implying that cheating is rampant in our schools," Miron wrote. "The irregularities (in examination scores) likely arose simply because there was a large change in the actual students taking the test from year to year."

But a data analyst from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution responded that there is loftier mobility in most urban school districts. "If it were truthful that our methodology just flagged mobility instead of potential cheating, then you would look all urban districts with loftier mobility to be flagged," he said. That, he said, was not the example.

The dueling arguments underscore the limits of basing conclusions solely on data — and the need to examine what the data means in the context of what is happening in districts themselves.

What is also clear is that after California ended its practice in 2009 of flagging schools for excessive erasures of student responses on tests, there is no systematic oversight mechanism to detect possible adulterous.  An earlier practise of randomly auditing between 150 to 200 school districts per year has also fallen past the wayside due to budget constraints.

A 2004 report by the Los Angeles Times found that over a v year period, some 200 teachers in schoolhouse districts across the state had been investigated for possible cheating, and of those 75 cases of cheating "had been proved," according the written report. The cases it documented did not indicate anything resembling a commune-wide exercise such as the i uncovered in Atlanta.  At the same time, pressures on school districts to meet ever college federal "accountability" standards take increased considerably since then.

NOTE: This is anupdated version of a post start published on March 30, 2012.

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