Georgia Schools Inquiry Finds Signs of Cheating

[alp227]

Source: Shaila Dewan, The New York Times

ATLANTA — Georgia education officials ordered investigations on Thursday at 191 schools across the state where they had found evidence of tampering on answer sheets for the state’s standardized achievement test.

The order came after an inquiry on cheating by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement raised red flags regarding one in five of Georgia’s 1,857 public elementary and middle schools. A large proportion of the schools were in Atlanta.

The inquiry flagged any school that had an abnormal number of erasures on answer sheets where the answers were changed from wrong to right, suggesting deliberate interference by teachers, principals or other administrators.

Experts said it could become one of the largest cheating scandals in the era of widespread standardized testing.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/education/12georgia.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

[demosincebirth]

1. Cheating in school? Come on, you gotta be kiddin'

[No Elephants]

6. Isn't it the school kids who usually do the cheating, though?

[demosincebirth]

9. I forgot the

:sarcasm:

[Archae]

2. So that's how Georgia's republicans were able to graduate.

[Liquorice]

5. These schools are definitely not in republican areas. nt

[tonysam]

3. I recommend reading the AJC report

Atlanta Journal-Constitution


School districts are under such pressure to make AYP that it doesn't surprise me at all there is widespread cheating.

[tonysam]

4. Another article

This is about the superintendent of Atlanta's schools, Dr. Beverly Hall:

In an hour-long conference call with the AJC today, Atlanta Superintendent Beverly Hall said she is anxious to authorize an independent review by outside experts of questionable CRCT test sheets because the reputations of “58 principals, 444 teachers and hundreds of students are at stake.”

Dr. Beverly Hall promises a vigorous investigation of CRCT answer sheets and asks the public to reserve judgment.

“Clearly, we have already been tried in the court of public opinion,” said Hall. “But I really look at the data. You are looking at the summary data. On first blush, it indicates a major problem. But I know enough about data analysis to know that is not certain. We are going to have to look class by class.

“If any teacher, any principal, any administrator cheated, no one will have to ask me to take care of it. I will take care of it. That person will not and should not work for APS or any other system,” she said.

Hall plans to meet with her principals when she returns from a conference in Arizona and a weekend meeting with the Gates Foundation and remind them to continue leading their schools and focusing on achievement. “This is America. You are still innocent until proven guilty, I think,” she said.

Unless, of course, you are a teacher. Then it's the other way around.

More

[rucky]

7. There's more incentive for schools to cheat than to not cheat.

What do you think will happen if we invoke "merit-based" pay?

[1monster]

8. Way to much rests on the results of one test. I've watched the last eight years as

FCATs in Florida went from a test to being the reason school exist. Education is no longer the goal of schools; passing the FCAT and the school getting an A is the only goal.

Students are being short-changed in the biggest way. The whole curriculum is based on the FCAT... Even the text books are written to teach the FCAT.

I can understand the motivation for cheating because these standardized tests are cheating all of our children of a solid education.

But just remember if you get caught cheating, those people making a fortune on the testing business have gotten the state legislatures to enact serious penalties for anyone convicted of cheating.