- When test scores seem too good to believe, By Greg Toppo, Denise Amos, Jack Gillum and Jodi Upton, March 6, 2011, USA Today: “Scott Mueller seemed to have an uncanny sense about what his students should study to prepare for upcoming state skills tests. By 2010, the teacher had spent his 16-year career entirely at Charles Seipelt Elementary School. Like other Seipelt teachers, Mueller regularly wrote study guides for his classes ahead of state tests. On test day last April, several fifth-graders immediately recognized some of the questions on their math tests. The questions were the same as those on the study guide Mueller had given out the day before. Some numbers on the actual tests were identical to those in the study guide and the questions were in the same order, the kids told other Seipelt teachers. The report of possible cheating quickly reached district officials, who put Mueller on paid leave. He initially denied any wrongdoing. Ultimately, investigators concluded that Mueller had looked at questions for both fifth-grade math and science tests in advance – a violation of testing rules – and then copied them, sometimes word for word, into a school computer to develop his study guides…”
- When test scores don’t add up: 32 metro Detroit schools show improvements too good to be true, By Peggy Walsh-Sarnecki, Chastity Pratt Dawsey and Kristi Tanner-White, March 6, 2011, Detroit Free Press: “Each year, millions of children in Michigan and across the nation take state standardized tests that impact everything from a school’s reputation to how teachers will be evaluated to whether schools will even survive. The pressures to perform, experts say, tempt some school administrators and teachers to cheat. The Free Press, as part of a nationwide investigation with USA TODAY and other partners, analyzed millions of test score results and found that 34 schools across Michigan — 32 of them in metro Detroit — showed test score gains over a one-year period that experts say are statistically improbable. More broadly, the analysis found 304 schools in six states and the District of Columbia that had test scores so improbable, they should be investigated. Besides Michigan, the states were Arizona, Colorado, California, Florida and Ohio…”
Tag: No Child Left Behind
No Child Left Behind and School Transfers
Student transfers from failing schools via No Child law swamp successful ones, By Michael Birnbaum, November 23, 2010, Washington Post: “In some struggling school districts around the country, students transferring from failing schools are overwhelming the few successful schools in their areas, an unintended byproduct of the No Child Left Behind law. The issue arose in Prince George’s County this year, when the parents of nearly 3,000 middle-schoolers learned just days before school started that they could switch their children to the only two non-specialized middle schools in the county that met the law’s performance goals. About 200 families accepted the offer, taking their new schools by surprise. The flurry of transfers – more than 700 in Prince George’s this year across all 12 grades – has packed classrooms while underscoring a tough aspect of the Bush administration’s landmark education initiative. It demands steadily rising achievement – all students are supposed to pass benchmark tests by 2014 – and, as a result, more schools fail every year…”
National Assessment of Educational Progress
- Reading scores lagging compared with math, By Sam Dillon, March 24, 2010, New York Times: “The nation’s schoolchildren have made little or no progress in reading proficiency in recent years, according to results released Wednesday from the largest nationwide reading test. The trend of sluggish achievement contrasts with dramatic gains made in mathematics during the same period. ‘The nation has done a really good job improving math skills,’ said Mark Schneider, a vice president at the American Institutes for Research and a former official at the Education Department, which oversees the test, known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress. ‘In contrast, we have made only marginal improvements in reading skills…'”
- Reading scores stalled despite ‘No Child Left Behind,’ report finds, By Nick Anderson and Bill Turque, March 24, 2010, Washington Post: “The nation’s students are mired at a basic level of reading in fourth and eighth grades, their achievement in recent years largely stagnant, according to a federal report Wednesday that suggests a dwindling academic payoff from the landmark No Child Left Behind law. But reading performance has climbed in D.C. elementary schools, a significant counterpoint to the national trend, even though the city’s scores remain far below average. The report from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that fourth-grade reading scores stalled after the law took effect in 2002, rose modestly in 2007, then stalled again in 2009. Eighth-grade scores showed a slight uptick since 2007 — 1 point on a scale of 500 — but no gain over the seven-year span when President George W. Bush’s program for school reform was in high gear. Only in Kentucky did reading scores rise significantly in both grades from 2007 to 2009…”
- State’s fourth-grade readers lose ground, By Amy Hetzner, March 24, 2010, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: “The latest scorecard gauging how well Wisconsin’s students read compared with their classmates in other states showed little change from previous years, but the rest of the nation’s fourth-graders have been catching up and Wisconsin’s black students now rank behind those in every other state. ‘Holding steady is not good enough,’ state schools Superintendent Tony Evers said about the results. ‘Despite increasing poverty that has a negative impact on student learning, we must do more to improve the reading achievement of all students in Wisconsin.’ Fourth-graders in Wisconsin posted an average score of 220 on the 500-point reading test administered in 2009 as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the nation’s report card. That represented a three-point drop from two years before and translated to a 33% proficiency rate…”