What’s Gone Wrong With Testing In Public Schools?

This question has been posed by Emily Alpert, writing at Voice Of San Diego.com. With testing scandals rocking cities like Atlanta, Alpert wants to know "why?"

One would have to be living under a rock not to have heard all about the cheating scandals in Atlanta and Pennsylvania in recent months.  Writing at VoiceOfSanDiego.com, Emily Alpert wants to know why, and takes a closer look at what the causes of problems in standardized testing may be.

The fact of the matter is that the Atlanta scandal put a bright spotlight on how schools could potentially cheat on standardized tests.  In Ms. Alpert’s home state of California, schools are supposed to report any irregularities in testing and investigate them themselves. The state no longer collects data on erasures, one of the ways that investigators detected cheating in Atlanta. Nor does it do random audits during testing.  Irregularities can range from teachers accidentally not following exact instructions on how to administer state tests to outright cheating. The state then decides if it needs to adjust school scores to discount some of the test results. California keeps the records of testing irregularities for just one year.

I last requested those records for all schools in San Diego County in April. Keep in mind, these are the school districts that followed the rules and reported irregularities, just like they are supposed to.

The bigger problem is if cheating is going unreported and uncorrected, which is what happened in Atlanta. But these records give a sense of what kinds of problems can crop up during testing.

Here is what the documents turned up:

• Chula Vista Elementary School District found that at Veterans Elementary in spring 2010, four students said their teacher had pointed to specific questions they had answered on a state English test and told them to check their answers.  Afterwards, “she came back around and either said, check it one more time or just reviewed the next answers and didn’t say anything,” the report says.

• National School District reported that a school employee alleged that the principal of Rancho de La Nacion School had been erasing and making marks in test booklets for students with disabilities. The principal said she was just erasing stray marks and darkening answers. Four students were involved.

The school district investigated the allegation in spring 2010 and enlisted the San Diego County Office of Education to investigate as well. It concluded that no adults had changed any student responses. The County Office applauded National for “the rigorous review of the incident.”

• Poway Unified reported that a student used a calculator during a math test in spring 2010 at Monterey Ridge Elementary. The student had a disability that allowed him to use a calculator during other math tests, but that still isn’t allowed on the state test, the school district and the state concluded.

You can read about more of the schools Alpert investigated right here.

The state of California wants schools to be self-reporting and on the honor system.  California has stopped collecting data on erasures and dropped random test audits.  It relies even more on school districts to report and investigate irregularities that could taint test results. In all five of these cases, the California Department of Education agreed that a violation of state law or testing regulations had occurred.