The proportion of Georgia schools with suspicious numbers of erasures on state-mandated tests dropped at the high school level but remained constant for the lower grades, according to the latest annual review by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement.
Less than 2% of Georgia’s elementary and middle school classrooms were flagged for “unusually high” numbers of wrong-to-right erasures on the reading, English-language arts, and math portions of the 2014 Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests. The results are similar to the prior two years.
At the high school level though, a tiny proportion — just 1 percent — had a significant number of classrooms flagged. That is less than in 2013, and was “expected” due to increased use of computers to administer tests, the report said.
Despite the overall low numbers, a handful of schools in metro Atlanta had more than one in 10 of their classrooms flagged. (Check your school at gosa.georgia.gov/academic-auditing.)
A similar review in 2009 led to a state investigation that found widespread cheating in Atlanta Public Schools, where a racketeering trial of a dozen former educators is ongoing. Flagging a class doesn’t necessarily mean cheating occurred, but it does suggest further scrutiny is warranted. The state plans to send monitors to watch the next test administration in schools with the most erasures.
State officials are also reviewing new methods for monitoring tests as they shift from paper to computer screens.
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