Acting D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson asked the city’s inspector general Tuesday to investigate potential cheating in eight schools on the city’s standardized reading and math exams. But Henderson maintained that the probe into schools — where performance jumped alongside unusual erasure patterns on the exams — is being commissioned only to underscore that no cheating took place and the results of former Chancellor Michelle Rhee’s reforms are real.
“We know our schools are improving,” Henderson said. “Our children are learning, and I want the public to share our confidence.”
In 2009, D.C. school officials asked Caveon Test Security, an independent firm, to review security concerns at schools flagged by the Office of the State Superintendent of Education following the year’s exams, called the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System. At the eight schools, an unusually high number of incorrect answers had been erased and replaced with correct answers.
Caveon’s report found no evidence of cheating, although it asked D.C. Public Schools to tighten security at Stanton Elementary School.
But a USA Today article that examined Noyes Education Campus reignited public suspicion about the testing gains.
At Noyes, “the number of [wrong-to-right] erasures in one class was so high that the odds of winning the Powerball grand prize were better than the erasures occurring by chance,” statisticians told the reporters.
The newspaper spoke with a former principal who said pressure from the administration to produce results was extremely intense.
“What do you do when your chancellor asks, ‘How many points can you guarantee this year?’ ” Aona Jefferson told the newspaper, which said D.C. officials did not allow them to visit schools or talk to current principals.
DCPS released Caveon’s reports from its investigation into the 2009 exams — mainly summaries of conversations with teachers of flagged classrooms. A majority credited the inflated scores to their staying late or skipping their lunch breaks to help students. Boy-versus-girl competitions during learning drills excited one Birney Elementary classroom, the teacher said.
As for the lucky erasures, teachers pointed toward unlimited testing time, encouragement to recheck answers, and initially misgridded answer sheets. Some said their students may have used “process of elimination” on their answer sheets instead of test booklets.
All names, as well as findings from principals and test coordinators, were redacted. “Caveon’s report absolved a number of people of wrongdoing. It’s not fair that people who’ve been cleared have the taint of an investigation over their heads,” Henderson said.
DCPS paid Caveon $100,000 to review the 2009 scores and again to check 2010’s results, in which 41 schools had at least one classroom with unusually high erasure rates.
In 2008, OSSE asked DCPS officials to investigate unusually high gains at schools, but Rhee declined, citing an audit that found the erasure levels “inconclusive.”
Local analyst Chuck Thies said he was skeptical of Caveon’s investigation method, in which investigators asked teachers and principals a set of 25 questions.
“It’s basically like asking a suspect in a criminal investigation if he was at the scene of the crime,” Thies said.
