Reaction swift to state test report

By Kristina Torres

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Reaction came swiftly as state officials' announced Wednesday that 10 percent of Georgia's public elementary and middle schools -- should be investigated for suspicious scores on state tests.

"I was concerned, surprised, saddened to a degree," Gov. Sonny Perdue said, even as state school officials cautioned that they were not yet accusing anyone of wrongdoing.

State school board members sat grim-faced as Kathleen Mathers, executive director of the Governor's Office of Student Achievement, presented the numbers during a committee meeting. Mathers took pains to say that while the state found what she called "unusual" changes on student answer sheets,"we are not saying in any way that teachers in those buildings changed the answers." The answer sheets were for the state's Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, given last spring to students in first through eighth grade. The tests' subject matter included reading, language arts and math.

With state board approval today, local districts will be asked to start investigations to find out why or how changes were made -- including if students innocently made the changes themselves. The systems, she said, "know these schools far better than we do."

During a question and answer session with the board afterward, board member Brad Bryant jumped in, having pulled up a news article on ajc.com about the state report. "We don't see this as you accusing them of tampering," he said. "What I fear is, the media may be sending a message out that this [report] is undercutting all this hard work by schools to make up incredible ground."

"We don't want to rush to judgment," Mathers responded. "I would not at all call this a systemic problem."

Still, as word spread, parents and community members alike wondered what happens next.

Patricia Lewis is founder and CEO of Lewis Academy, a charter school in Clayton County. It is labeled in the report as a "severe concern."  According to the state, more than half of the school's classrooms -- almost 57 percent -- had unusual erasure marks on student answer sheets.

Lewis was at the state school board meeting appealing a decision about her charter school when she learned it was under investigation for standardized testing irregularities.

“I welcome any challenges,” Lewis said of her school of 635 students. “Our students have performed consistently year after year. Our tests are guarded very, very securely. Our children are outstanding. This past week we had over 300 students on the A-B honor roll.”

Stephen Dolinger, president of the Georgia Partnership for Education Excellence, led an educational bus tour last year that included Atlanta's Parks Middle School. The school, located south of downtown, has been hailed in recent years for its drastic turnaround in test scores. But it got the worst mark Wednesday in the state's report -- nearly 90 percent of its classes were flagged with wrong-to-right answer changes.

That led Dolinger, a former Fulton County schools superintendent, to call the school’s inclusion on the list “disheartening” and “unfortunate.”

“It’s too bad to have a school that got praise for its work now in the spotlight for irregularities,” Dolinger said.

Staff writers Laura Diamond and D. Aileen Dodd contributed to this report