Is It Fair to Use Erasure Analysis to Expose Erasure Parties ?

One former Atlanta Area Superintendent doesn't think so 

Former Superintendent Wilson: "I have a decision to make 

based on how we finish this conversation 

and where I go from here. 

And remember, I'm the old guy. 

I have nothing to lose. 

I really want to be part of helping make this good.

But I can go wherever I need to go."

State Investigator Mathers: "What do you mean by that?"

Wilson: "I'm not going to give you any threats. 

But let me tell you, I can get there."

One can only be thankful that he didn't threaten her or use "Gestapo tactics."

This from WTSB-TV Atlanta:
James Wilson, a well-known former superintendent in Greater Atlanta's Cobb and Fulton County school systems, was caught on tape bullying and threatening a state education official during that state's investigation of wide-spread cheating on state exams.

The issue was Georgia's use of "erasure analysis" to spot cheaters (many of whom later admitted to attending "erasure parties"). It was erasure analysis that revealed test administration anomolies suggestive of misconduct in Atlanta and Dougherty County schools. Wilson had been hired to defend the county schools and was caught on tape threatening the career of the governor's lead official looking into the scandal. He suggested she would "pay dearly" if she couldn't make things right. The message sounded a lot like back off, or else.

Want to stop teachers from cheating? A history lesson from corporate America

This from Duke University behavioral economics professor Dan Ariely in the Washington Post:

...In recent years there seems to have been a surge in academic dishonesty across many high schools. No doubt this can be explained in part by increased vigilance and reporting, greater pressure on students to succeed, and the communicable nature of dishonest behavior (when people see others do something, whether it’s tweaking a resume or parking illegally, they’re more likely to do the same).

But, I also think that a fourth, significant cause in this worrisome trend has to do with the way we measure and reward teachers.


To think about the effects of these measurements, let’s first think about corporate America, where measurement of performance has a much longer history. Recently I met with one of the CEOs I most respect, and he told me a story about when he himself messed up the incentives for his employees, by over-measurement. A few years earlier he had tried to create a specific performance evaluation matrix for each of his top employees, and he asked them to focus on optimizing that particular measure; for some it was selection of algorithms, for others it was return on investment for advertising, and so on. He also changed their compensation structure so that 10 percent of their bonus depended on their performance relative to that measure.

What he quickly found was that his top employees did not focus 10 percent of their time and efforts on maximizing that measure, they gave almost all of their attention to it. This was not such good news, because they began to do anything that would improve their performance on that measure even by a tiny bit—even if they messed up other employees in the process. Ultimately they were consumed with maximizing what they knew they would be measured on, regardless of the fact that this was only part of their overall responsibility. This kind of behavior falls in line with the phrase “you are what you measure,” which is the idea that once we measure something we make it salient and motivational, and people start over-focusing on it and neglecting other aspects of their job or life.

So how does this story of mis-measurements in corporate America relate to teaching? I suspect that any teachers reading this see the parallels...

Cracking a System in Which Test Scores Were for Changing

This from the NY Times:

There had long been suspicions that cheating on state tests was widespread in the

Atlanta public schools, but the superintendent, Beverly L. Hall, was feared by teachers and principals, and few dared speak out. Last summer a supposedly Blue Ribbon Commission, headed by a businessman volunteering his time, produced yet another flimsy report, urging further investigation.

Gov. Sonny Perdue said he was fed up and determined to conduct a thorough investigation. For this, he called on three men who had spent a good part of their careers putting people in prison: Michael J. Bowers, a former state attorney general; Robert E. Wilson, a former county district attorney; and Richard L. Hyde, who could well be the most dogged investigator in Georgia.

It took them 10 months to uncover the biggest cheating scandal ever in a public school district.

They started with one school, as Mr. Wilson said, “to see if we could crack the egg.” From a list of schools with large numbers of erasures on answer sheets, Mr. Hyde chose Venetian Hills Elementary, in a neighborhood he had patrolled as a young police officer.

“You start by walking around the school, giving everyone your card,” he said. “Stir the pot.” The first time he made the rounds, nobody cracked. But then, a religious woman with a lot to get off her chest came forward. One cracked egg led to the next, and within two weeks, five teachers plus the testing coordinator, Milagros Moner, had confessed that they had changed answers to raise the school’s scores.

Mr. Hyde then outfitted Ms. Moner with a wire and videotaped her meeting with the principal, Clarietta Davis, at a McDonald’s.

Ms. Davis had been so worried about leaving fingerprints while doctoring answering sheets, Mr. Hyde recalled, that she wore gloves.

The taking of Venetian Hills became the prototype for an investigation that found cheating at nearly half the Atlanta schools...

Major Atlanta Execs Invested in Superintendent

This from the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

In February 2010, some of Atlanta’s top business leaders realized they had a problem.

For a decade, they had aligned themselves with Beverly Hall, the superintendent of Atlanta Public Schools. They willingly accepted Hall’s story line of rebirth in an urban school system. They promoted and sometimes exaggerated Hall’s achievements — for her benefit and for their own.


State officials, though, were suggesting gains by Atlanta schools resulted from widespread cheating. Suddenly, the deal between Hall and the business community took on Faustian overtones.

The way business leaders responded underscores their complicity in creating the façade of success that hid a decade of alleged wrongdoing, an examination by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows. Their reaction also hints at the role business executives might take in rebuilding the school district’s reputation amid Hall’s departure and a still-unfolding cheating scandal.

The city’s chamber of commerce and another business group took control of the district’s investigation last year into irregularities on state-mandated tests. Executives at the Metro Atlanta Chamber set the parameters of the inquiry and largely selected the people who ran it. Later, they suggested ways to “finesse” the findings past the governor.

Business leaders published opinion pieces and letters to the editor defending Hall before cheating inquiries were complete; calls for the superintendent to resign, they said, could undermine the district’s progress. And just as they had lobbied almost a decade earlier to give the superintendent more autonomy from the Board of Education, this year they sought new power for the governor to remove recalcitrant board members....

Teachers Caught Cheating

This audio (46 mins) from On Point with Tom Ashbrook from WBUR Boston:

Caught!

Teachers Cheating On Students’ Standardized Tests

The huge standardized test cheating scandal in Atlanta — and beyond. Teachers cheating to bump up student scores. Why, and what it says about the state of American education.

Shame and outrage over the Atlanta Public Schools last week, as a big state investigation laid out findings of massive, systemic cheating –- by teachers.

Teachers changing student scores on standardized tests, to make their schools look better than they were.

Not subtle cheating, but gross, flagrant, eraser-on-the-page cheating. Weekend pizza parties where teachers went through stacks of standardized tests, erasing wrong answers, filling in right ones.

And there’s evidence this hasn’t only happened in Atlanta.

This hour On Point: testing, American education, and the message in the cheating.



Tom's guests:

Alan Judd, reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Shawnna Hayes-Tavares, mother of four children, ranging from 9 to 18, all of whom have been in the Atlanta Public Schools system.


Greg Toppo, K-12 education reporter for USA Today.

Daniel Koretz, professor of education at Harvard Graduate School of Education. You can read an article based on his book Measuring Up here.

Hat tip to Dorie Z