Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for May 28, 2006 UNUSUAL TEST SCORES - TEXAS & OREGON

If you "meet or exceed"...you must have cheated! Great motivation for trying...

In the articles below, cheating is "assumed" in Texas. Will the results in Oregon fall under suspicion?

Time will tell...

More test-cheating proof found (but nobody cares)

By Roddy Stinson, Columnist
San Antonio Express-News

An analysis of student answer sheets from the spring 2005 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills found evidence of "irregularities" (commonly known as "cheating") in 702 of the state's public school classrooms.

Not that anybody cares.

The months-long analysis was conducted by Caveon, a first-class, Utah-based firm that specializes in test security.

Not that anyone is impressed.

The expert analysts found testing irregularities in 609 of the state's 7,112 public schools.

Not that this caused any concern in Austin.

The yawning response to the findings was pretty well summed up by the low-key headline on the Associated Press report of the Caveon analysis buried on Page 5B of last Wednesday's Express-News: "Unusual results on TAKS raise suspicions; State officials dispute that the findings are evidence of cheating." In an official "Response to the Caveon Report" released by the Texas Education Agency last week, the state's highest education muck-a-mucks advised:

"Caution is warranted about how much action should be considered based on this single report."

Translation for readers who aren't familiar with the education establishment's eternal, see-no-evil response to reports of standardized-test cheating:

"We will read it, file it and hope everybody soon forgets it."

Get used to it, ladies and gents. Cheating will forever be tolerated in Texas public schools. And any official response will be accompanied by winks and nods that cheaters will easily understand as permission to continue their "irregular" ways.

(If you're curious about what falls under the heading of "irregular," the analysts made their judgments on the basis of (a) similar student test responses, (b) unusually high increases in scores, (c) multiple marks or erasures and (d) aberrant response patterns.)

The establishment's current wink-and-nod leader, Commissioner of Education Shirley J. Neeley, downplayed the latest cheating numbers and, quite incredibly, used the release of the Caveon report to pooh-pooh previous similar findings by a Dallas Morning News investigation.

Neeley:

"Last year, one newspaper accused 400 schools of having suspicious scores and essentially placing (sic) a scarlet 'C' for cheating on the schools. Ultimately, wrongdoing was found at only a handful of those schools, but the damage to their reputation was done."

What Commissioner Neeley conveniently failed to mention: The schools with "suspicious scores" were not cleared of wrongdoing by any outside, independent and objective investigators, but by officials within the "suspicious" districts who faced negative consequences if they confirmed the cheating!

Now a year later, an outside, independent and objective study by a highly qualified test-security firm has found ... not 400 schools ... not 500 schools ... but 609 schools in which cheating likely occurred. And what is Neeley's response?

She throws an evil-newspaper red herring into the analytical mix, knowing that the more confusion she creates the quicker the Caveon report will be forgotten.

And if that isn't enough to ruin your Memorial Day weekend, lambkins, put this in your taxpayer pipe and smoke it ...

From Page 19 of the Caveon report:

"Because the tests of hypotheses in the analysis of schools and classrooms are very conservative, it is possible that testing irregularities in a few schools and classrooms have not been identified in this report."

Translation: 609 schools and 702 classrooms are MINIMUM numbers.

Caveon nailed only the classrooms where flagrant cheating occurred. Subtle cheating flew under the analytical radar.

Not that any of this matters.

I saved my favorite wink-and-nod dodge for last: In their response to the Caveon report, Texas Education Agency officials said that if a school is identified as having statistical test "anomalies" and is also named in an "irregularity report" from some other source, the double black eye "might warrant further investigation."

Boy, that should scare the bejabbers out of the state's sneering, snickering cheats.

Readers turn a page

River Road school credits several strategies in test scores surge

By Anne Williams
The Register-Guard

It's as if a gigantic light bulb switched on over River Road/El Camino del Rio Elementary School.

After years of lackluster results on state reading exams, scores soared this spring, with close to 90 percent of fourth- and fifth-graders and a remarkable 94 percent of third-graders meeting benchmarks.

While the performance probably will place River Road only in the middle of the pack for Eugene's perennially above-average elementary schools, it signals an impressive turnaround for a school where one year ago just two in three students read well enough to pass the standardized test.

"It's just so amazing to see kids succeeding like this," said Principal Paco Furlan, now in his second year at River Road, which serves the highest percentage of poor and minority children of any district school.

But the about-face was hardly happenstance. All year, staff and students have immersed themselves in reading, embracing a multipronged approach aimed at reversing a stubborn trend.

No one's sure which particular strategy may have paid off the most, although a few have pet theories.

Second-grade teacher Leah Roderick, for instance, raves about the new Houghton Mifflin reading curriculum, which the school was able to adopt using extra funds the district earmarked for River Road and four other schools serving large numbers of disadvantaged children. More than 80 percent of River Road's 300-some students qualify for subsidized meals, and nearly one in three is Latino.

The program has been found to be one of the most effective on the market, and River Road is using it with all students - the first time the curriculum has been consistent across all grade levels.

"This program is making my classroom so literature-rich," Roderick said. "There's a lot of fun language arts games ... . We use the language all day long. They're not just sitting and doing workbook pages."

The curriculum, she said, is easy to integrate with art, science and writing projects, and is helping make her students "strong, intelligent readers and thoughtful people."

The staff believes that a switch to computerized assessment testing also has played a role in boosting scores. Joining a growing number of Oregon schools, River Road used Technology Enhanced Student Assessment for all students this spring. Many educators believe that it has big advantages over the pencil-and-paper method. Students get immediate results, so they know whether they have passed - and if they haven't, they're able to work with teachers to strengthen skills and take the test up to two more times.

Also new at River Road this year is DIBELS testing, which monitors progress and identifies students who need extra help. Developed at the University of Oregon, the Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills test takes just a few minutes, but gives teachers crucial information by gauging a student's oral reading fluency. All students were tested three times this year, and those reading below grade level got a condensed version.

Students had their last DIBELS tests this week, taking turns in the computer lab. Instructional assistant Julaine Wildish, one of four adults administering tests, was all smiles, especially after a kindergarten boy hollered, "I'm really cookin' today!"

"That's why I do what I do," Wildish said. "People say, when are you going to retire, and I say I don't want to. I love what I do."

Furlan tested first-grader Tallyn Thomas, who had gone from reading aloud 16 words per minute in January to 88 this week, more than twice the grade-level target.

"I practice reading my books in my room at home, and my mom teaches me and my teacher teaches me," said Tallyn, who favors Golden Books stories. "I'm always in read world."

Students who test below norms on DIBELS are flagged for "double doses" - one-on-one reading sessions given either during the after-school program or, if necessary, during music, physical education or library time.

Staff members say they don't like to see students missing out on those subjects, and they try to keep it to a minimum. But sometimes it's the only way to close the gap.

"It's kind of something where we don't really have a choice," said Carissa Boyce, the school's student achievement coordinator.

Oddly enough, few children have complained, teachers said.

"They get this incredible, one-on-one really positive instruction from one of our instructional assistants, and a lot of kids don't mind," Roderick said. "And they see they're making progress, and they start to feel really proud of themselves."

Third-grade teacher Sharon Blackwell said she and other teachers strive to strike a balance between reading and math and other subjects, such as science, social studies, art and music.

One way River Road tried to diversify the school day this year was to devote the last 40 minutes every Wednesday to elective classes, a move that's been a hit with students and staff alike, Furlan said. Children choose from a variety of enrichment classes, such as rock-climbing, knitting, cooking, gardening and other topics in which staff members may have some particular expertise.

But there's no question that the focus on reading sometimes means other subjects take a back seat. On average, students get 2 1/2 hours of reading instruction each day, compared to an hour last year, and the after-school program was revamped to focus more heavily on academics.

To Blackwell, the trade-off is worth it. She taught at Whiteaker Elementary before it closed in 2001, and followed its students - most of them poor, many of them Latino and some of them very hard to teach - to River Road. That last year, fewer than 40 percent of Whiteaker students passed the reading test.

"This is the first year for me, personally that I feel - what's the word? - affirmed for all the hard work we've done," she said, explaining that some students were so far behind the curve that they never caught up, even if they made big gains. "It's pretty exciting stuff. We are really a different school."

Parent Katherine Sanders said she's delighted to see her children blossoming as readers at River Road. When they started in the fall, they tested below grade level. She'd home-schooled them previously, and said that, while she read to them often and instilled a love of language, she hadn't pushed reading.

"Now they are both getting more towards the top level," she said of 10-year-old Aurora and 7-year-old Phineas. "My daughter is now on her fourth Harry Potter book having barely been able to get through a chapter book before. ... On the home-front, I can see there's major improvement."

Nonetheless, Sanders said she has some misgivings about the school's focus on academics - in fact, she said no to the "double doses" her children's teachers recommended, confident they'd catch up without them. She believes it's critical to keep strong arts programs in the school, and she's not a fan of standardized tests.

So far, she said, the school hasn't tipped too far to that side - thanks in part to the talents of its staff.

Furlan said he hasn't finished analyzing math scores but believes that they were about the same as last year, "maybe a little higher." In 2005, nearly three in four third- and fifth-graders passed the math test.

Nor has he finished breaking out the data to gauge how well various groups of students, such as low-income, Latino, special education and English Language Learners, fared compared to the overall group. That information will be included when the state formally releases test scores for all schools in the fall.

He said it's clear that there's still an achievement gap, but it's narrowing: "We've definitely seen more kids passing than ever before with all those groups."