DCPS Acting Chancellor Kaya Henderson. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)One could argue that the very last thing this city needs at the moment is a blockbuster education scandal — but it appears as if newly-appointed chancellor Kaya Henderson might have precisely that to deal with. In a must-read story, USA Today’s Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello report today that incredible progress at Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus — a “shining star” of the district which was named a National Blue Ribbon School by the U.S. Department of Education in 2009 — may have been bolstered by “extraordinarily high numbers of erasures on standardized tests” including a pattern where “wrong answers were erased and changed to right ones.”
In short, here’s the evidence at play:
In 2007-08, six classrooms out of the eight taking tests at Noyes were flagged by McGraw-Hill because of high wrong-to-right erasure rates. The pattern was repeated in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, when 80% of Noyes classrooms were flagged by McGraw-Hill.
On the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians consulted by USA TODAY.
Obviously, there are plenty of legitimate reasons for students to erase their answers on a scan-tron form. But given both the anecdotal evidence Gillum and Bello dug up (“A former Noyes parent, Marvin Tucker, says he suspected something was wrong in 2003, when the test scores his daughter, Marlana, brought home from school showed she was proficient in math”) and the large amount of money tied up in the success of D.C. schools — the city won $75 million in Race To The Top competition funds, not to mention the large bonuses available to teachers and staff for high performance — motives for school officials to falsify testing results is hardly in short supply. (If you find yourself questioning the various statisticians and analysts that Gillum and Bello cited, the paper released the documents they obtained as part of their investigation, so you can make up your own mind.)
Henderson told USA Today that “a high erasure rate alone is not evidence of impropriety,” while admitting that investigators enforcing the Office of the State Superintendent of Education standards [PDF] have looked into such claims of high erasure rates. “In those situations in which evidence of impropriety has been found, we have enforced clear consequences for the staff members involved, without hesitation,” said Henderson. But according to the paper, parents were not informed that their childrens’ scores were being reviewed.
DCPS officially responded to the allegations leveled in the story with the following statement:
DCPS adheres to stringent training and test administration guidelines, and begins the thoughtful process of ensuring test security long before the first tests are given. Employees on every level of DCPS assist, from school-based to central office staff. When we are informed of possible test improprieties, we work closely with OSSE, and third party partners when necessary, to carefully and promptly investigate and take appropriate next steps.
In 2009, DCPS acted swiftly to bring in Caveon Test Security, an outside firm with vast expertise in the area of test security, after OSSE flagged a handful of schools for follow up investigations based on erasure data. For the majority of schools, the firm found no evidence of wrong-doing. For the rare cases in which the firm recommended a consequence or next step for individual staff or schools, we followed the firm’s guidance diligently. We know that the vast majority of school staff and students approach the test with the highest integrity. However, for those rare incidences when staff and students fall short of this standard, we do not hesitate to act quickly to maintain or uphold the integrity of DCPS as a whole.
Out of fairness to our students and teachers, DCPS [will] not comment on schools where no violation was substantiated after a full investigation. We can share though that we are committed to ensuring that our test taking procedures adhere to the highest standards of testing.
DCPS also touted additional testing methods which were put into place this year, including stricter protocols for receiving, storing and returning test materials, the use of independent observers and unscheduled visits to observe test handling. The school district also said that their “focus is to continue to be transparent, accountable and proactive in all aspects of our work.”
