National experts will review Atlanta schools' test scores

By Kristina Torres

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Atlanta schools Superintendent Beverly Hall said Friday that two national experts have agreed to review test scores and other issues at 12 elementary schools experiencing extraordinary changes in student achievement.

Andrew Porter, education dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, and Douglas Reeves, a nationally recognized consultant on improving student achievement in K-12 schools, will conduct the review that is expected to take several months. Neither has begun work and a spokesman for Hall said they have not set a deadline. Their report is expected early next year.

Hall announced three weeks ago that she would seek outside help after an analysis published in October by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution showed that 19 schools statewide reported extraordinary gains or drops in state test scores between spring of last year and this year. A dozen of those schools are in Atlanta, including the city's West Manor and Peyton Forest elementary schools where students went from among the bottom performers statewide to among the best over the course of one year. According to the AJC analysis, the odds of making such a leap were less than one in a billion.

On Friday, Hall said Porter would look specifically at testing data at the 12 schools. Reeves will visit classrooms and talk with teachers and administrators to determine what factors at their schools may impact student achievement.

The experts' involvement comes in the wake of an earlier test cheating scandal, in which the state investigated six Atlanta educators after a state audit found evidence of an abnormal number of erasures on their students' test answer sheets. The audit followed an earlier AJC analysis in December about improbably steep gains at some schools.