The release of standardized test scores that remained relatively flat over last year for D.C. Public Schools, and promised growth for the city’s charter schools, is being clouded by a widening probe into possible cheating on the exams. The percentage of D.C. Public Schools students demonstrating proficiency on the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System dropped slightly for the second year in a row on both the reading and math exams — something that alarmed Mayor Vincent Gray last year, but something that he was eager to smooth over at a briefing on Friday.
In a mixed bag of results, the school system’s middle-school students made tremendous gains on the math exam — an 8 percentage point jump for eighth-graders — while secondary school students generally showed improvement over 2010.
SOURCE: D.C. PUBLIC SCHOOLS
| Students in the third through eighth grades, as well as the 10th grade, take the D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams, on which they can score “below basic,” “basic,” “proficient” or “advanced.” Here are the percentages of students who have scored at least “proficient” on the tests. | ||||||
| Elementary | ||||||
| 2007 | 2010 | 2011 | ||||
| DCPS | Reading 37.5% | Reading 44.4% | Reading 43% | |||
| Math 29.3% | Math 43.4% | Math 42.3% | ||||
| Charters | Reading 41.1% | Reading 44.4% | 46.1% | |||
| Math 35.2% | Math 42.7% | Math 45.5% | ||||
| Together | Reading 38.8% | Reading 44.4% | Reading 43.9% | |||
| Math 30.5% | Math 43.2% | Math 43.3% | ||||
| Secondary | ||||||
| 2007 | 2010 | 2011 | ||||
| DCPS | Reading 29.8% | Reading 43.3% | Math 44.2% | |||
| Math 27.1% | Math 43.7% | Math 46.4% | ||||
| Charters | Reading 44.2% | Reading 52.4% | 54.2% | |||
| Math 43.9% | Math 57.5% | Math 62% | ||||
| Together | Reading 34.8% | Reading 47.1% | Reading 48.2% | |||
| Math 32.9% | Math 49.5% | Math 52.8% | ||||
Charter schools, which serve nearly 40 percent of the city’s public school students, made larger leaps this year than D.C. Public Schools, including a 4.5-point jump in the percentage of middle- and high school students who passed muster on the math exam.
“You would be hard-pressed to find any other major urban districts with results like this,” said State Superintendent Hosanna Mahaley, who oversees testing for both D.C. Public Schools and the city’s public charter schools.
But at a briefing on Friday, Mahaley and schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson couldn’t escape the cloud that a federal investigation has put on the District’s test scores.
Henderson told The Washington Examiner that one teacher was fired for a “confirmed testing impropriety” during 2011 testing. School officials began investigating 14 security breaches on the 2011 tests, on the heels of ordering an investigation into 18 classrooms with a suspicious number of incorrect answers erased and corrected in the 2010 testing.
At Henderson’s request, the D.C. inspector general is reviewing these strange erasure marks — that many perceive as cheating — on the 2009 exams. Henderson confirmed Friday that the U.S. Department of Education’s inspector general has become involved in the investigation.
Henderson said that a widespread cheating scandal that rocked Atlanta Public Schools last week was not comparable to the cheating probe at D.C. schools. She said charges of a pattern of cheating in D.C. are “conjecture.”
“I can’t fire people or yank licenses on conjecture,” she said. “I won’t do that to my teachers.”
D.C. City Council Chairman Kwame Brown weighed in to celebrate the achievements of eighth-grade and 10th-grade students, calling middle school “the bridge to high school and postsecondary education.”
Ward 8 Councilman Marion Barry was less than pleased, reminding Gray that proficiency rates in the 40s meant that the city was still failing more than half its children — and Barry was certain the scores were even lower east of the river.
“I am very supportive of Mayor Gray and Chancellor Henderson,” Barry said, “but you cannot be supportive of the dismal test scores we receive, year after year, that clearly reflect that thousands of African-American boys and girls are being shortchanged and sentenced to a life of poverty, jail, and death.”
Results for individual schools will be released next month, the mayor’s office said.
