This spring, while state investigators were digging into suspicions about cheating on a 2009 statewide test at dozens of Atlanta schools, an extraordinary thing was happening at five of them.
They were registering exceptional gains on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, so exceptional that an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution found the odds of such increases range from about one in 700 to one in 21,000.
The odds that these improvements were obtained by honest means aren't as long as the AJC has found in the past, but they are still statistically unusual. Principals and parents say the improvements were due to exceptional efforts, but others say the scores deserve a closer look.
Increases of the magnitude found by the AJC in this year's test are "unusual," said Kathleen Mathers, the executive director of the Governor's Office of Student Achievement. She didn't review the newspaper's work but said such score jumps "may warrant a closer examination of the test environment."
Three of the schools accused by state investigators of cheating in 2009 -- Toomer, White and West Manor elementary schools -- were among those registering unlikely increases in their CRCT test scores this year. For instance, the third-graders at East Atlanta's Toomer notched a 75 percent increase over the rate at which the third-graders in the prior year met or exceeded the state standard in math for 2011.
The AJC went beyond percentages, using statistical analysis to review the 2011 scores. The newspaper used a process like the one that first detected statistically improbable increases in 2008. The newspaper's reporting back then led to the state investigation by the Georgia governor's office. Investigators found cheating on the CRCT at 44 Atlanta schools and initially implicated 178 educators (they subsequently removed a name from the list and added two more).
Experts working for new Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Erroll Davis, who was hired in the wake of the cheating scandal, reviewed the AJC's findings and saw the same sharp increases when they ran the numbers themselves.
Enrollment declines of a fifth or more at three of the schools -- Toomer, White and Wesley International Academy, a charter school -- could explain some of the improbable score increases. But Davis said the increases merited scrutiny and that system officials would look into it.
"Those schools are all on the radar because of the jumps, but we don't know yet whether there are plausible explanations," Davis said. "I would certainly not jump to a conclusion that cheating has occurred."
The AJC analysis used a statistical concept called standard deviation to measure how a school’s and grade’s score changes differed from the typical change at all schools and grades statewide.
Toomer third-graders and the fifth-graders at White and West Manor had increases in math scores that ranged from 3.2 to 3.9 standard deviations above the average, the analysis showed. That means the schools outpaced others to an unusually high degree.
The fifth-graders at Morningside Elementary School, third-graders at Toomer and the sixth- and eighth-graders at Wesley had increases in reading scores ranging from 3.1 to 3.5 standard deviations above the average.
The odds of a 3 standard deviation or greater increase is one in 741, and the odds of a 3.9 standard deviation or greater increase is one in 20,792.
Toomer principal Nicole Evans Jones attributed her school's gains to effective teachers, small class size, engaged parents and teaching aids.
There were two third-grade classes with 13 students apiece, she said, a happy consequence of the school's relatively small overall student population of about 230 and the maximum for third-graders per classroom set at 21.
Jones wasn't the principal at Toomer when the state alleges cheating occurred on the 2009 CRCT. The implicated employees did not teach third grade last year, she said.
Jones said her two third-grade teachers went out of their way to engage parents, handing out their cellphone numbers and staying late for parent conferences and for tutoring.
"You rarely see vested individuals like these ladies," Jones said. She said teachers in areas such as art and physical eduction reserved the last 10 minutes of their classes to drill students in math, and that it was worked into daily activities such as measuring the beds in the school's garden.
The school bought a collection of books called Treasures that give students grade-appropriate material aimed at vocabulary and comprehension, and it equipped all teachers in grades three through five with high-tech whiteboards.
Stephanie Grendzinski has no doubt the scores were authentic. As president of Toomer's Parent-Teacher Association last year and the year before, she watched parental involvement explode, with membership rising from 59 to 152. She said the two third-grade teachers were "really involved with the kids" and that parents were likewise involved with the school.
Another parent, Diana Senior-Crosby, was so eager to see the school improve that she joined the Parent-Teacher Association when her daughter was 2. That was five years ago, and Senior-Crosby said her daughter has thrived there.
Senior-Crosby was the Parent-Teacher Association's vice president last year and shared Grendzinski's enthusiasm for the teachers, including her daughter's kindergarten teacher. She said her daughter was reading at the third-grade level by first grade.
Senior-Crosby got a copy of the state investigative report but said she couldn't bring herself to read it. She expressed disbelief when a reporter told her that her daughter's kindergarten teacher was accused of cheating on the 2009 test. The teacher "admitted to prompting students by inflecting her voice to emphasize the correct answer," the state investigation said.
"I am surprised," Senior-Crosby said. "I find it hard to believe that she would cheat."
APS spokesman Keith Bromery said the innovations at Toomer are also occurring at the other schools with big score increases this year. "I can't say that 100 percent of those things that Dr. Jones has talked about are at those other schools, but portions of them are," Bromery said.
Suzanne Lane, an expert on statistics and testing, said a 3 standard deviation improvement in test scores merits further scrutiny. The professor at the University of Pittsburgh said one of two things could be driving up the scores.
"Either something profound is happening with respect to instruction," she said. "Or one might want to look a little more deeply to see if it's not due to instruction."
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