Holliday Moves to Forestall Cheating Scandals

Recent revelations about the depth and scope of administrators and teachers cheating on standardized tests in Atlanta, Pennsylvania, DC, New Jersey, and other locations has rocked the education reform movement threatening to undermine public confidence in gains made by the system. And Kentucky has not been immune to this issue.This inevidable result was forecast by KSN&C way back in 2007 when we wrote about Campbells' Law.

In response to recent events, Kentucky Education Commissioner Terry Holliday listed several steps KDE is taking to prevent such an occurance in Kentucky in his “Fast 5 on Friday” (not yet posted to the KDE website):

Specific actions that Kentucky is taking in this area are:

1. Writing an RFP for a Test Security Audit to learn how to improve security. The audit will review our current test security procedures and provide us with additional ideas to improve security.
2. Building into our new test vendor contracts forensic processes to uncover inappropriate activities.
3. Continuing with the regulatory steps of having all educators trained on test procedures and having all educators read and sign a Code of Ethics document.
4. Continuing with having an investigative unit within KDE to deal with inappropriate test allegations.
5. Considering a possible legislative proposal for the 2012 session.
6. Implementing a balanced accountability model and teacher/principal effectiveness system that does NOT focus solely on test scores.

Improving test security is probably good. Forensic process built into the test design might help. Training and a code of ethics are necessary but not sufficient. An investigative unit to deal with allegations of inappropriate testing is necessary - but why must it be within KDE?  Better still - the OEA where no one benefits personally from improved test scores. Possible legislation? What legislation? At teacher or administrator can already be removed for cheating. The weakness is not within the law, per se, it is within human nature - when people are strongly motivated to produce a specific result that may be beyond their ability to produce by legitimate means.The best idea is the last one. Student achievement results should not comprise too much of a teacher's evaluation, not because the results are not important, but because we lack a fair way to assess it in most cases.

This from Dr H's Blog:

In the spring of 2009, I had the honor of standing on stage with my fellow state superintendents of the year at the annual American Association of School Administrators (AASA) conference in San Francisco. Little did I know that one day I would be working with one of the four finalists -- Stu Silberman -- in Kentucky.

This past week, I was reminded of that recognition ceremony but not in a positive way. Beverly Hall was selected as the AASA National Superintendent of the Year in 2009. Beverly was the superintendent of the Atlanta Public Schools at that time. This week, the state of Georgia released the results of an investigation concerning cheating by principals and teachers on standardized tests.

This report from Georgia comes on the heels of two major national reports on standardized testing. From the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), a recent report entitled Incentives and Test-Based Accountability in Education and from the National Center on Education and the Economy (NCEE), a report entitled Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: An American Agenda for Education Reform. I think it appropriate to highlight some of the key points from these reports.

The NAS report has two major conclusions and two major recommendations. The report concludes that test-based incentive programs have not increased student achievement enough to bring the U.S. close to the levels of the highest-achieving countries. The other conclusion is that high school exit exam programs decrease the rate of high school graduation without increasing achievement.

The recommendations from the report promote the development and evaluation of promising new models that use test-based incentives in more sophisticated ways as one aspect of a richer accountability and improvement process. Also, the report recommends that policymakers and researchers design and evaluate new test-based incentive programs in ways that provide information about alternative approaches to incentives and accountability.

From the NCEE report, the basic premise is that the U.S. should look to those practices from countries that are performing at higher levels than the U.S. on international assessments. The report discusses a focus on teacher preparation, rigorous standards, continuous improvement and support for the existing teaching force. The report highlights the fact that no country performing at higher levels than the U.S. has a singular focus on standardized testing and incentives related to performance on standardized testing.

What does the Atlanta scandal and other testing scandals in D.C. and Baltimore mean for our work in Kentucky? What implications do we draw from these recent reports? The key learning for me is balance. Standardized tests do not create scandals. People create scandals. How leaders both in the classroom and outside the classroom utilize results from standardized tests can either create a focus on improvement of teaching and learning or create negative pressure. How leaders use the results for personnel decisions and incentives can either create a focus on teaching and learning or create negative conditions for teaching and learning.

In Kentucky we are committed to a growth model for our accountability system that is balanced. We are committed to utilizing standardized test results as part of the accountability model; however, test results will not be the singular component of the model. While the state can certainly set the tone, it will always be up to individual school boards, superintendents, principals and teachers to model professional behavior for the eyes that are watching – the students.

Educators Accused Of Tampering With Students' Tests From D.C. To Pennsylvania

This from the Huffington Post:

..."The rooster is guarding the hen house," said Gregory Cizek, a University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill professor involved in analysis of Atlanta's schools. "When you're asking the state Department of Education to follow up on the state education system's potential problems, you're asking the wrong people to follow up on that. It should be some external or independent arm that does the follow up or the analyses."

The Atlanta school board met Monday to begin deciding the fate of the 138 implicated teachers.

On Friday, The Philadelphia Public School Notebook, a blog on Philadelphia's education system, reported that the state had provided it with a 2009 forensics investigation that flagged 60 statewide schools with suspicious results on standardized state exams.

The Notebook reported that "the odds that the wrong-to-right erasure patterns that showed up on Roosevelt's 7th grade reading response sheets occurred purely by chance were slightly less than 1 in 100 trillion."

Notebook reporter Ben Herold said that the state only produced the report once the blog had asked for it upon learning that states regularly perform forensic analyses of exams -- and may or may not release them.

"People in Philadelphia are reacting to this news in the context of what's happening elsewhere in the country," Herold added. "The district said they were never provided with this report and they would have used it in the course of internal investigations."

Herold's team analyzed the report and found that 22 of the implicated public schools and seven of the implicated charter schools were in Philadelphia. The report raises even larger questions in light of Philadelphia's nine years of test score gains.

The Notebook also asked Porter -- who produced the analysis of Atlanta schools -- to look at the report.

"I looked at their procedures and they seemed reasonable, smart, so that was good," he told HuffPost. "The frequency of worrisome patterns of results in Atlanta was greater than in Pennsylvania, but it does look like there were a number of schools in Philadelphia that were flagged one or more times. I'm sure Philadelphia is going to take those results very seriously."

Porter noted that the data itself -- without corroboration by witnesses -- doesn't prove cheating occurred.

When HuffPost asked U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan about the Pennsylvania story on Monday morning, he said he hadn't yet seen it. "I'll look at it this week," he said.

"Folks are really paying attention to this," he continued. "There's a greater awareness of the issues and trying to do things the right way. We put out guidance to states on this. You've got to take the state tests very seriously. You can't cheat children. You can't hurt children. That's exactly what you're doing."

Calls to the Pennsylvania Department of Education were not returned Monday.

"The state is having the same reaction Georgia educators had to that first report," Cizek said. "The state may not have a strong incentive to follow up real vigorously."

Also on Friday, Washington, D.C., released its latest crop of test scores, showing a general positive trend. A district official revealed the day before that the U.S. Department of Education had joined in the investigation of unlikely scoring patterns and alleged cheating incidents between 2008 and 2010. The probe began in March after USA Today investigated patterns of erasing students' incorrect answers.

The revelations come weeks after Andrés Alonso, CEO of Baltimore's schools, announced that evidence of cheating had been found at two elementary schools over the last two years, and after Arne Duncan sent a letter to all state education commissioners across the country stressing the importance of test integrity.

"Cheating under any circumstance is unacceptable," American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten told a conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday. "It does raise the bigger issue that when tests themselves, and the high-stakes nature of them, become the be-all and the end all, as opposed to teaching and learning."

Last summer, New York state had to recalibrate its testing measures after finding that students had been mistakenly told they were proficient in certain subjects. "There's going to be a lot more reticence of state level officials to spend the money to do these kinds of investigations and run the risk that they'll be embarrassed at the process," Henig said...

Officials Replaced Amid Atlanta Cheating Scandal

This from Education Week:

The fallout from the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal continued to spread as four area superintendents were replaced and a school district in Texas put the superintendent it recently hired from Georgia on paid leave.

Interim Superintendent Erroll Davis replaced the four superintendents late Monday, hours before trustees of the DeSoto Independent School District near Dallas placed Superintendent Kathy Augustine on leave as they re-examine her previous post. Augustine has denied having any knowledge of test cheating as Atlanta's deputy superintendent.

The four removed from their area superintendent jobs—Sharon Davis-Williams, Michael Pitts, Robin Hall and Tamara Cotman—were implicated in the scandal. Interim Superintendent Erroll Davis did not say whether they will stay with the school district.

Georgia investigators say 178 educators in 44 schools cheated on standardized tests used to meet federal benchmarks. Educators told state investigators they were pressured by administrators to improve test scores. The testing problems first came to light after The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that some scores were statistically improbable.

Davis also said two year-round elementary schools named in the state investigative report made public last week will get new principals before classes start Wednesday.

In Texas, trustees of the DeSoto Independent School District held a lengthy closed-door meeting that lasted late into the night before Augustine read a statement announcing she was taking the leave of absence effective Tuesday.

"Please know that I understand your need for thoughtful deliberations about my appointment," Augustine told the trustees after announcing the decision, which she said was reached after "mutual consideration."

After Augustine announced she was taking leave, the trustees took no immediate action on a proposal to terminate her employment. DeSoto schools hired Augustine in April to the $188,000-a-year job in the district, which has some 9,000 students in the Dallas area.

Visit this blog.Also Monday, Atlanta Public Schools board member Khaatim El announced he was resigning from the board.

"I just concluded in the end it just shouldn't be this hard to do the right things for kids," El said as he fought back tears. "I failed to protect thousands of children who come from homes like mine. It remains to be seen, no matter how deep this thing goes, whether the soul of Atlanta has been stirred." ...