{"id":11677,"date":"2012-03-29T12:02:32","date_gmt":"2012-03-29T16:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=11677"},"modified":"2012-03-29T12:02:32","modified_gmt":"2012-03-29T16:02:32","slug":"suspicious-school-test-scores-across-the-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2012\/03\/suspicious-school-test-scores-across-the-nation\/","title":{"rendered":"Suspicious school test scores across the nation"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_11678\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-11678\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenixnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/031812cheat50state_1344227c.jpg\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-11678\" title=\"031812cheat50state_1344227c\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenixnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/03\/031812cheat50state_1344227c.jpg?resize=490%2C328\" alt=\"\" width=\"490\" height=\"328\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-11678\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">St. Louis: Patrick Henry Downtown Academy\u2019s principal was placed on leave last year for falsifying attendance records. Because attendance rates are used to calculate state funding, it\u2019s possible the alleged fraud attracted state aid to the school that it didn\u2019t deserve. Even though the state has not found cheating at Henry, an AJC analysis uncovered unusual scores dating back to 2007.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong>By Heather Vogell, John Perry and Alan Judd and M.B. Pell<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\"><em>The Atlanta Journal-Constitution<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">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.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">The analysis doesn\u2019t prove cheating. But it reveals that test scores in hundreds of cities followed a pattern that, in Atlanta, indicated cheating in multiple schools.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">A tainted and largely unpoliced universe of untrustworthy test results underlies bold changes in education policy, the findings show. The tougher teacher evaluations many states are rolling out, for instance, place more weight than ever on tests.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Perhaps more important, the analysis suggests a broad betrayal of schoolchildren across the nation. As Atlanta learned after cheating was uncovered in half its elementary and middle schools last year, falsified test results deny struggling students access to extra help to which they are entitled, and erode confidence in a vital public institution.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cThese findings are concerning,\u201d U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an emailed statement after being briefed on the AJC\u2019s analysis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">He added: \u201cStates, districts, schools and testing companies should have sensible safeguards in place to ensure tests accurately reflect student learning.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">In nine districts, scores careened so unpredictably that the odds of such dramatic shifts occurring without an intervention such as tampering were worse than one in 10 billion.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">In Houston, for instance, test results for entire grades of students jumped two, three or more times the amount expected in one year, the analysis shows. When children moved to a new grade the next year, their scores plummeted \u2014 a finding that suggests the gains were not due to learning.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Overall, 196 of the nation\u2019s 3,125 largest school districts had enough suspect tests that the odds of the results occurring by chance alone were worse than one in 1,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">For 33 of those districts, the odds were worse than one in a million.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">A few of the districts already face accusations of cheating. But in most, no one has challenged the scores in a broad, public way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">The newspaper\u2019s analysis suggests that tens of thousands of children may have been harmed by inflated scores that could have precluded tutoring or more drastic administrative actions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">The analysis shows that in 2010 alone, the grade-wide reading scores of 24,618 children nationwide \u2014 enough to populate a midsized school district \u2014 swung so improbably that the odds of it happening by chance were less than one in 10,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Cheating is one of few plausible explanations for why scores would change so dramatically for so many students in a district, said James Wollack, a University of Wisconsin-Madison expert in testing and cheating who reviewed the newspaper\u2019s analysis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cI can say with some confidence,\u201d he said, \u201ccheating is something you should be looking at.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Statistical checks for extreme changes in scores are like medical tests, said Gary Phillips, a vice president and chief scientist for the large nonprofit American Institutes for Research, who advised the AJC on its methodology.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cThis is a broad screening,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you find something, you\u2019re supposed to go to the doctor and follow up with a more detailed diagnostic process.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">The findings come as government officials, reeling from recent scandals, are beginning to acknowledge that a troubling amount of score manipulation occurs. Though the federal government requires the tests, it has not mandated screening scores for anomalies or investigating those that turn up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Daria Hall, director of k-12 policy with the nonprofit The Education Trust, said education officials should take steps to ensure the validity of test results because of the critical role they play in policy and practice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cIf we are going to make important decisions based on test results \u2014 and we ought to be doing that \u2014 we have to make important decisions about how we are going to ensure their trustworthiness,\u201d she said. \u201cThat means districts and states taking ownership of the test security issue in a way that they haven\u2019t to date.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong>\u2018Way too much pressure\u2019<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Both critics and supporters of testing said the newspaper\u2019s findings are further evidence that in the frenzy to raise scores, the nation failed to pay enough attention to what was driving the gains.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cWe are putting way too much pressure on people to raise scores at a very large clip without holding them accountable for how they are doing it,\u201d said Daniel Koretz, a Harvard Graduate School of Education testing expert.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Test-score pressure is palpable in schools grappling with urban blight and poverty.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">These are the schools that the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act was supposed to fix.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">But at Patrick Henry Downtown Academy in St. Louis, airy red brick towers rising above the school belie a grimmer reality on the ground. Children leaving one recent afternoon passed piles of trash and a .45 caliber bullet tucked into the curb. Inside, their classrooms are beset by mold, rats, discipline problems and scandal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Last year, the former principal \u2014 once hailed as among the district\u2019s strongest \u2014 was accused by Missouri officials of falsifying attendance rolls to get more state money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">State investigators didn\u2019t publicly question Henry\u2019s test scores.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">But the AJC\u2019s analysis found suspicious scores in the school dating back to 2007. In 2010, for instance, about 42 percent of fourth-graders passed the state math test. When the class took the tests as fifth-graders the next year \u2014 with state investigators looking into cheating and other fraud allegations \u2014 just 4 percent passed math.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Experts say student learning doesn\u2019t typically jump backwards.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Henry\u2019s scores were consistently among the lowest in the state \u2014 except for the occasional sudden leap.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">After school one recent afternoon, Deborah Dodson, who sends two children to the school, said she saw a teacher provide inappropriate one-on-one assistance during a state test. And she\u2019s heard from other parents that teachers will give students answers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Some students who aren\u2019t likely to test well don\u2019t receive tests at all, she said. \u201cThey don\u2019t do anything by the book,\u201d Dodson said. \u201cThat school and how they do things is not right.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong>Rural, city schools flagged<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">The AJC used freedom of information laws to collect test scores from 50 states to look for the sort of patterns that signaled cheating in Atlanta. A Georgia investigation last year found at least 178 Atlanta educators \u2014 principals, teachers and other staff \u2014 took part in widespread test-tampering.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">In each state, the newspaper used statistics to identify unusual score jumps and drops on state math and reading tests by grade and school. Declines can signal cheating the previous year. The calculations also sought to rule out other factors that can lead to big score shifts, such as small classes and dramatic changes in class size.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Some school leaders accused of cheating have attributed steep gains to exemplary teaching. But experts said instruction isn\u2019t likely to move scores to the degree seen in the AJC\u2019s analysis.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Through teaching alone, Wollack said, \u201cit\u2019s going to be pretty tough to have that sort of an impact.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">The AJC developed a statistical method to identify school systems with far more unusual tests than expected, which could signal endemic cheating such as that which occurred in Atlanta. The newspaper\u2019s score analysis used conservative measures that highlighted extremes and were likely to miss many instances of cheating.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Big-to-medium-sized cities and rural districts harbored the highest concentrations of suspect tests. No Child Left Behind may help explain why. The law forced districts to contend with the scores of poor and minority students in an unprecedented way, judging schools by the performance of such \u201csubgroups\u201d as well as by overall achievement.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Hence, high-poverty schools faced some of the most relentless pressure of the kind critics say increases cheating.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Improbable scores were twice as likely to appear in charter schools as regular schools. Charters, which receive public money, can face intense pressure as supposed laboratories of innovation that, in theory, live or die by their academic performance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Common problems unite the big-city districts with the most prevalent suspicious scores: Many faced state takeovers if scores didn\u2019t improve quickly. Teachers\u2019 pay or even their continued employment sometimes depended on test performance. And their students \u2014 mostly poor, mostly minority \u2014 were among those needing the most help.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">The analysis, for instance, flagged more than one in six tests in St. Louis some years. In Detroit, it was one in seven.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Dozens of school systems in mid-sized cities \u2014 such as Gary, Ind., East St. Louis, Ill., and Mobile, Ala. \u2014 exhibited high concentrations of suspicious tests, too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Though high-poverty city schools were more likely to have suspicious tests, improbable scores also showed up in an exclusive public school for the gifted on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And they appeared in a rural district roughly 70 miles south of Chicago with one school, dirt roads and a women\u2019s prison.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">The findings call into question the approach that dominated federal education policy over the past decade: Set a continuously rising bar and leave schools and districts essentially alone to figure out how to surmount it \u2014 or face penalties.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cIf you want to keep your job, keep your school out of the news, keep winning awards and advance in your career, you need to make your school look better,\u201d said Joseph Hawkins, a former testing official with the Montgomery County, Md., school system.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Koretz, the Harvard expert, said cheating is one extreme on a continuum that, at its other end, includes gaming the test in legal ways \u2014 such as through test-prep drills \u2014 that don\u2019t significantly increase students\u2019 overall knowledge or skills.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Even as state test scores have soared, students\u2019 performance on national and international exams has been more mediocre. Cheating and gaming may help explain why.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cThe big picture is: Are we seeing apparent gains in student achievement that are bogus?\u201d Koretz asked.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong>Decade of tumult<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Test scores show that instead of progressing steadily in their academics, districts have endured a decade of tumult.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">In some of the nation\u2019s biggest cities, dynamic district leaders preached \u201cdata-driven\u201d decision-making and even linked test scores to bonuses or principal hiring and firing decisions. Many boasted of taking a corporate approach to education, focusing on student test achievement as the single most important measure of success.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Some of the most persistently suspicious test scores nationwide, however, occurred in districts renowned for cutting-edge reforms.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">In Atlanta, for instance, former Superintendent Beverly Hall won national recognition as Superintendent of the Year in 2009. State investigators later confirmed scores that year were widely manipulated by educators who assisted students improperly and outright changed tens of thousands of their answers on state tests.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">In some Atlanta schools, cheating was an open secret for years. After students turned in their tests, teachers and administrators erased and corrected their mistakes \u2014 even holding a \u201cchanging party\u201d at a teacher\u2019s home. In another school, staff opened plastic wrap securing test booklets with a razor, then melted the wrap shut again after making forbidden copies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">State investigators accused a total of 38 principals with participating in test-tampering. One allegedly wore gloves while erasing to avoid leaving fingerprints.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Ultimately, the cheating supported a massive effort to bolster the Atlanta superintendent\u2019s image as a tough reformer who had turned around a struggling system.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">In 2002, Houston was the first winner of the Broad Prize, which has become the most coveted award in urban education. The Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation praised Houston\u2019s intense focus on test results. More recently, Houston has been among the leaders in tying teacher pay to student test scores.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">But twice in the past seven years, the AJC found, Houston exhibited fluctuations with virtually no chance of occurring except through tampering.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">In 2005, scores fell precipitously in five dozen classes in 38 schools after a statistical analysis by the Dallas Morning News suggested test-tampering in Houston. The district fired teachers and principals and improved test security.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">In 2011, however, as three-fourths of Houston teachers earned performance-based bonuses, scores rose improbably in a similar number of classes in the same number of schools. In the same year, Houston confirmed nine cheating allegations and fired or took other action against 21 employees.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Through Jason Spencer, a spokesman for the district, Houston officials questioned whether cheating caused all of the unusual score changes the AJC found. He said the district doesn\u2019t think its pay-for-performance plan has made cheating more likely.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cWe feel like we put a lot of safeguards in place,\u201d he said, but added: \u201cWe know it happens. We would never pretend it\u2019s not an issue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Teachers and other school staff in Atlanta were eligible for mostly small bonuses if scores hit district targets. Perhaps more worrisome for principals were the penalties: Former Superintendent Hall boasted of replacing about 90 percent of principals and told new hires they had three years to deliver high scores. Her mantra: \u201cno exceptions, no excuses.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Three studies of merit-pay programs did not show they consistently produce higher test scores, either legitimately or through cheating, said Matthew Springer, director of the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Yet, he added that \u201cit\u2019s incredibly important that we systematically monitor these programs for opportunistic gaming of the system.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong>Pushback from officials<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Some school districts and states have taken an apathetic, if not defiant, stance in the face of cheating accusations in recent years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">The AJC sent detailed findings to districts with some of the most suspicious clusters of scores. For those not already publicly looking at cheating, the responses were similar: Officials said they were unaware of most anomalies, but protested characterizing the score changes as cheating.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Several local and state school officials objected to conducting the analysis at all, saying it doesn\u2019t consider enough variables.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Some districts simply denied any problems exist. Detroit, for instance, claimed its scores were not \u201cunusual or out of line in any way\u201d and that Michigan officials had not identified irregularities \u201cwith respect to an erasure analysis, suspected cheating, or any other issue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">In fact, Michigan\u2019s education agency identified six Detroit schools as having statistically unlikely gains on a state test in 2009. At one school, the state determined, sixth-graders averaged 7.4 wrong-to-right erasures. Their peers statewide averaged fewer than one such change.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Analyzing Detroit\u2019s scores from 2008 and 2009, the AJC found suspicious swings in 14 percent of classes. The statistical probability: zero.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Regardless, Detroit officials offered an explanation that experts have said is among the least likely: better teaching.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Steven Wasko, an assistant superintendent in Detroit, said the district has offered before- and after-school programs, expanded summer school, and added extra reading and math instruction. \u201cIncreases in student performance,\u201d Wasko said in an email, \u201ccould be attributed in part to these factors.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">In a statement, St. Louis school district officials acknowledged the strangeness of score changes, but disagreed that cheating was to blame. They said neither the district nor state education officials have any \u201ccredible evidence that testing improprieties have occurred at the schools in question.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Officials acknowledged, however, that the district has a cheating investigation open at one school. The state said that since 2010 it has received allegations of cheating at two other St. Louis schools identified as suspicious by the AJC analysis. Accusations of cheating persist.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">State officials say they do not screen test scores for possible cheating and do not consider unusually high gains to be a sign of test-tampering \u2014 if schools provide an explanation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cWe hope to see great gains in our proficiency levels,\u201d said Michele Clark, a spokeswoman for the Missouri education department.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Dallas officials said that when irregularities surfaced several years ago, they instituted new test security measures and started screening for anomalies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Few big-city districts have attacked cheating as aggressively as Baltimore.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">After he became the district\u2019s chief executive in 2007, Andr\u00e9s Alonso heard a whistle-blower complain at a PTA meeting about the district\u2019s lax investigation into cheating allegations at her school.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">With accused educators sitting nearby, Alonso recalled recently, the room became \u201ca deafening vacuum.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Alonso ordered a new investigation, which spread into 15 other schools. The district posted independent monitors in each school during tests. In the suspected schools, scores fell dramatically. In other schools, scores continued to rise.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Alonso asked state officials to check test papers for illicit erasures and changes. Their analysis confirmed his suspicions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">At Fort Worthington Elementary, for instance, as many as 20 mistakes were corrected on some students\u2019 tests, often in a lighter shade of pencil.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">All of Fort Worthington\u2019s classes posted improbable gains in 2008, the AJC\u2019s analysis shows. The performance level held for two more years, when the school faced the threat of state takeover. After the cheating was detected, statistically unlikely score drops multiplied, occurring in three-quarters of the school\u2019s classes. Similar patterns show up across the district.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Sitting outside the school in her aging station wagon one late winter day, Vernetta Jones-Marshall said Fort Worthington is doing the best it can.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cI don\u2019t even know if it was really a true statement,\u201d Jones-Marshall, 57, said of the cheating allegations as she waited to pick up her son, a fifth-grader. \u201cWe didn\u2019t make a big deal about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Cheating is a big deal to Alonso, however.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Most educators act with integrity, he said, but others \u201cfeel a sense of impunity\u201d because school officials haven\u2019t always held cheaters accountable.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cI was doing this before the Atlanta story broke,\u201d he said. \u201cThis was me feeling that nothing mattered more than the integrity of the school system.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong>Call for vigilance<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Leaders need to maintain that tough stance even after cheating disappears from the headlines, experts say.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">In Dallas, for instance, the score analysis shows the number of suspicious gains dropped after cheating allegations surfaced in late 2004 \u2014 but then began inching up again a few years later.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">For years, Los Angeles\u2019 scores were among the least suspicious for big-city districts. But when California stopped conducting routine erasure analysis in 2008 for budget reasons, the number of improbable score changes in L.A. climbed steeply.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">States and districts find little advice when they do decide to conduct erasure or statistical screenings of test scores.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Federal education officials and testing experts have begun working on new recommendations for detecting and investigating test-score anomalies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Wollack, the Wisconsin testing expert, said there is room to improve. \u201cSome of the investigations that have taken place in the past have been less than thorough, have been less exhaustive than they should have been,\u201d he said. \u201cCheating went undetected as a result.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Districts don\u2019t have a big incentive to unearth ugly truths about their own testing programs. What\u2019s more, most screening methods miss instances of cheating by setting high thresholds in an effort not to falsely identify innocent schools.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cIt\u2019s clear there are schools, there are districts, that are under that threshold that are still engaged in some level of misconduct,\u201d Wollack said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Critics of testing have complained for years that increased pressure brought on by accountability measures leads to more testing abuses.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Education historian and New York University Professor Diane Ravitch said the incessant focus on testing has eroded the quality of instruction.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cAll of this is predictable,\u201d said Ravitch, a former top U.S. Department of Education official who in recent years reversed her support for testing and tough accountability measures. \u201cWe\u2019re warping the education system in order to meet artificial targets.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Through programs such as Race to the Top, federal education officials have pushed states to adopt more aggressive teacher evaluation systems that, typically, consider test scores.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cWhatever the stakes were under No Child Left Behind,\u201d Ravitch said, \u201cthey are going to be much higher, now that teachers are being told your scores are going to be public and you\u2019re going to be fired if they don\u2019t go up X number of years in a row.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">But Daria Hall, of the Education Trust, said most educators don\u2019t cheat, and testing data is essential for determining if students have basic skills \u2014 such as the ability to read.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cWhat parent doesn\u2019t want to know how their child is doing in reading and in math? What teacher doesn\u2019t want to know how their student is doing?\u201d she said. \u201cYou can\u2019t take away the source of the information. We have to make the information better.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\"><strong>Crisis of confidence<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">For parents, questions of academic integrity can lead to a crisis of confidence.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">The chronically low-performing Nashville district illustrates the conundrum. Test scores in some of the district\u2019s schools have alternately soared and swooped to improbable degrees.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Nashville school officials said the data raises concerns about their effectiveness as educators, but not cheating. They echoed other districts\u2019 objections to the analysis, including their relatively high percentage of students learning English and the number of students changing schools from one year to the next.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">In Hermitage, a working-class section east of downtown Nashville, Megan McGowan said she was torn about whether to send her son to Dupont Tyler Middle School.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">Tests carry too much weight, she said, and teachers face tremendous pressure to produce results. Still, she said, cheating is inexcusable. If it happened at Dupont Tyler, she said, she\u2019d think twice about sending her son there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#000000\">\u201cI expect teachers to be ethical,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color:#0000ff\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ajc.com\/news\/cheating-our-children-suspicious-1397022.html\"><span style=\"color:#0000ff\">Fuente<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Heather Vogell, John Perry and Alan Judd and M.B. Pell The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Suspicious test scores in roughly 200 school districts resemble those that..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[149,152,166,181,43,97],"tags":[229,347],"class_list":["post-11677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discrimination","category-economy","category-government","category-labor","category-media-culture","category-us-news","tag-economic-exploitation","tag-workers-struggle"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/031812cheat50state_1344227c_11677_ffee2.jpg?fit=607%2C407&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}