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Friday, June 8, 2007
Cheating: Put To The Test
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’ve been trying to catch up on some education news since I returned from vacation, and I just finished reading the first article in this timely series about widespread cheating on state exams in Texas, where I used to work.
Using statistical analysis, The Dallas Morning News found more than 50,000 cases of possible cheating during the past two years at public schools across Texas. That total represented only a fraction of all student tests, but the reporters found that fully one-third of all campuses showed evidence of cheating.
Some of the cases were so egregious that test experts told The News that there was no other possible explanation for the results than cheating — either by students copying off each other’s work or teachers and administrators colluding to improve scores.
Of course, this made me wonder how prevalent cheating is on Georgia’s state exams, which overall continue to show that the majority of kids are passing at relatively high rates. My colleague Paul Donsky, who used to cover Atlanta Public Schools for the AJC, tackled the topic a couple years ago.
“In Georgia, teachers have resorted to various tricks and schemes to boost scores,” he wrote in May 2005. “They’ve given extra time on tests, changed answers after exams were turned in, and prepped students with material taken directly from the test.”
Paul found that allegations of cheating accounted for only about 5 percent of all complaints received during state testing that year. Obviously, all the cases aren’t reported or caught.
So, is cheating as out of control in Georgia as it appears to be in Texas or not?
