CHEATING ON THE TEST!!!!!! Please tell me it isn't so!!!! Well, let me tell you what I know about this latest news since there are several schools in Muscogee County which have been identified as having problems with last year's test.
First, some background. Georgia is one of the States which is applying for the Race To The Top federal money. Muscogee County is one of the systems in Georgia which hopes to receive some of that money. Part of that application is a plan to base teachers' pay on the growth of their students' academic achievement as measured by standardized tests - like the CRCT. Governor Perdue has recently introduced a bill into the General Assembly to use that same plan as described in the Race to The Top application for the whole State of Georgia. If you are going to tie teachers' pay to test scores, you better be able to validate that the tests are accurate measures of the students' performance. So . . . the Governor had the testing company to complete an evaluation of Georgia's tests. Statistically, it was determined how many erasures from the wrong answer to the right answer occurs in a "typical" classroom in Georgia. Then, those classrooms that had more than that amount of erasures were flagged - not just those with a few more erasures than typical, but those with a lot more erasures than typical. If a school had 0-5% of its classes flagged, that school was deemed to be on the CLEAR list - no problem. We had thirty of those - YEA!!!!! I wish the headline had read "MCSD HAD THIRTY SCHOOLS ON THE CLEARED LIST!" There are a whole lot of teachers in those thirty schools!!!
If a school had 6-10% of its classes flagged, that school was labeled as one of minimal concern. We had eight of those - that indicates there was a problem with three or four classrooms out of the whole school. If a school had 11-24% of its classes flagged, that school is of moderate concern - we had seven of these. If a school had more than 25% of its classes flagged, then that school is on the severe concern list - we had two of those.
Does that mean those teachers cheated? Well it could, but it is not an automatic conclusion. Sometimes students begin answering the Reading questions in the Math portion and when it is discovered, all of those answers are erased and the student begins again. Sometimes a student skips the bubble that goes with question 8 and skips to question 9. When that is discovered, the answer sheet is erased and we get the student back on track. Now, granted, that doesn't happen for twenty-five percent of the class, but that is just an example of why some erasures may have occurred. Some of the "classes" identified contain one student with a disability who was being tested independently. IF that student erased too much, then 100% of that class had too many erasures and that teacher/class was flagged. So, you see there are many variables in this issue.
THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT! Even those schools on the SEVERE list, did not have ALL of their teachers flagged!!
For every class flagged, I will conduct an investigation. The Governor's Office, I understand, is sending Superintendents a template to use in the investigation. But, if the Governor's office doesn't include the questions I want to ask, I will ask my own. The majority of our teachers work extremely hard and no matter how badly they want good test scores, they would NEVER tamper with the test. Having said that, and believing that with all of my heart, the community deserves to know what happened in those classes flagged. I intend to find out if I possibly can!
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
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The results and numbers are very missleading. Schools were classified as cleared or a cheating school based on the percent of the school's teachers that were flagged. A simple math lesson. Some schools have a much large number of teaches than smaller schools. A cleared school could have the same number of flagged teachers as a school that has been called a cheating school. But because it was based on the percent of the teachers the reasults are very missing leading. Example: say a school with 18 teachers was classified as moderate concern because it's percent of flagged teachers was 11 or higher, well 11 percent of 18 is 1.98. Now take a school with 36 teachers and they are classified as cleared because they only had 5 percent of their teachers flagged. Well 5 percent of 36 is 1.8. So they have almost the exact same number of teachers flagged, yet one is cleared and one is being called a cheating school. To be fair you need to release the number of flagged teachers at each school, not the percent.
ReplyDeleteAs stated before none of these schools is being labeled a cheating school. The investigation will look into the each classroom and determine what happened in each individual case. Please wait for the results before making judgments.
ReplyDeleteOn the days of the CRCT, why not move teachers from one school to another? This would remove almost all incentives from the proctors to change the students answers.
ReplyDeleteI like Larry's suggestion. I've a suggestion (self-serving, of course) concerning our legislative mandates for this session. If Columbus/Ft. Benning could corporately fund the National Certification incentive that Gov. Purdue removed, exemplary teachers from all around our great state would flock to MCSD to teach. All positions open through attrition could be filled with incredible teachers and our test scores/NCLB standing would reflect the financial partnership between community and schools.
ReplyDeleteThank you for allowing this avenue of input!
Any chance of lifting the property tax freeze to keep our educational programs intact?
ReplyDeleteThe lifting of the property tax freeze is a very complicated and very political issue. If you feel strongly about it, contact our legislators.
ReplyDelete