Devoted Reader Nick sent along a followup to the story of the FCAT cheating allegations in Broward County. Don't remember that story? Neither do I, because I missed it when it first broke back in July. FCAT tampering was suspected at several schools because of unusual gains in the state-issued grades, which are dependent on FCAT performances:
Department of Education officials are looking into some results at Jackson Senior High. They have also requested more information from West Little River Elementary after the school's state-issued grade jumped from an F to an A following three years of Ds.
The problem at West Little River [Elementary school] appears most significant in the third grade, where 51 percent of the students were in the top two of five FCAT reading levels -- a highly unusual number for a school with such historically poor grades.
The large-score-gains method isn't the only one available for discovering potential cheaters. As with most high-stakes exams, the seating charts ing classrooms were saved for further analysis, so that aberrant classrooms, or clumps of high-performers all seated next to one another, could be flagged.
What's more, students took a norm-referenced test one week after the FCAT, and those scores are normally correlated. If not, that could indicate cheating on either exam - but the Florida DOE doesn't actually have the software necessary to compare performances on these two exams.
There's one elementary school in particular that has been the focus of investigation:
In Broward, the state is finishing an investigation at Park Ridge Elementary, the only case in that county in which widespread tampering is suspected. The Pompano Beach school had a D grade from 1999 to 2001, and then rocketed to an A in 2002.
The jump was so dramatic that Broward testing officials began reviewing the data, and the state quickly followed. The school's letter grade plummeted to an F this year, when the school was being watched closely. The fallout is still being felt. Grades are based in part on how much students improve, and it's hard to better a high score that wasn't truly earned in the previous year.
So, I missed this when it first happened, but thanks to Nick, I know the followup, which seems to be that no criminal charges will be filed against schools with suspicious scores, but administrators aren't yet off the hook:
No criminal charges will be filed in a case of possible FCAT cheating at Park Ridge Elementary in Pompano Beach, but teachers and administrators could still be disciplined...The Broward state attorney's office said there was statistical evidence of tampering by teachers and possibly administrators during the high-stakes test in 2002. But it was doubtful that a jury could be convinced of their guilt...
...the jump in letter grade [at Park Ridge] doesn't tell the complete story of just how improbable the accomplishment was.
In 2001, 1,528 of 1,728 schools in Florida had better FCAT scores than Park Ridge's third-graders. The next year, the Park Ridge students -- now in fourth grade -- bested all but 13 schools statewide.
''Clearly the scores were very, very high,'' [Superintendent Frank] Till said. ``Statistically they are beyond the range of real possibilities. It still doesn't mean it didn't happen. But the big disappointment is they didn't sustain themselves the next year.''
An e-mail tip to the Department of Education in the summer of 2002 prompted an investigation. This year, with the school under close watch, its grade plummeted to an F. Prosecutor Bernhard Hollar interviewed some teachers, principals, test proctors and some third-grade students.
• He found that one third-grade class had check marks next to most of the right answers on most of the test booklets.
• Some students said third-grade teachers Edward Peddell, Ealton McDuffie, Sheryol Daniels, and two teaching assistants helped them during the test.
However, Hollar wrote ''there is no conclusive supporting testimony to substantiate the claims.''
Hence the decision not to put this in front of a jury. And the check-mark thing - I know from experience that test-takers often mark their booklets as they're working. A check could mean that the test taker was sure of that answer and didn't need to come back to it. However, these are third-graders we're talking about, and the possibility that the students used it as a time-management strategy might be less likely than the possibility that teachers marked the booklets to indicate the correct answers.
The statistical evidence is, to me, damning (which may be why I rarely get chosen for jury duty). Park Ridge went from being in the bottom 200 of over 1700 schools to being in the top 14? That's an impossible jump. One administrator surmised that a combination of compassion and fear might lead teachers to help kids cheat, but teaching kids to cheat on tests is not by any means compassionate. It's immoral, and the only person who truly benefits from it is the teacher, because they will appear to have taught their students well. And fear should be an impetus to improve performance, not to sidestep indicators of performance.
Posted by kswygert at August 8, 2003 10:53 AM