On Wednesday, 11 former Atlanta Public Schools educators were convicted of conspiring to boost student performance on state standardized exams by changing answers on the tests. Another 21 former educators had pleaded guilty to lesser charges. Altogether, it was the largest test-cheating scandal in the nation.
Since the scandal emerged in 2008, officials of Atlanta’s school system and other schools nationwide say they’ve implemented security measures to prevent teachers and administrators from changing answers on tests.
“The Atlanta situation was a giant wake-up call into the security of standardized tests,” said University of North Carolina professor Gregory Cizek, who has served as a test development specialist and was a prosecution witness in the APS trial.
Can it happen again? Here’s a closer look:
How cheating happened
Cheating in Atlanta Public Schools ranged from the very subtle — teachers telling students to “check your answers” when they filled in an incorrect response — to the outrageously obvious: a test-erasure party held at an educator’s home. In the most egregious cases, teachers and administrators erased Criterion-Referenced Competency Test incorrect answers and changed them. Some teachers told investigators a principal or testing coordinator brought the exams and answer sheets back into classrooms to be corrected. Lower-performing students received easier versions of the writing tests.
How they’re trying to prevent it
APS officials now require exams stored in a safe room that is accessible only by the principal and testing coordinator using a key card. APS conducts an annual internal audit of the test-security plan to ensure full compliance. Internal audits are conducted at any school where achievement gains exceed set criteria. When tests are given, teachers rotate in their schools so they don’t administer the test to their own students. The state also sends monitors to schools with highly unlikely percentages of wrong-to-right erasures.
Will the safeguards work?
In 2012, the AJC surveyed the 50 state education departments and found that many states do not use basic test-security measures designed to stop cheating. Nearly half make almost no attempt to screen test results for irregularities. Cizek said many school districts now track who had test materials to know who may have tampered with them. They also use many of the methods Atlanta now uses to prevent cheating on a multiple-choice exam where students use pencils.
This year, the state is replacing the CRCT with the Georgia Milestones, which will eventually be taken by all students online. Experts say online tests could be compromised. Schools that administer exams over lengthy time frames, like four to six weeks, could be vulnerable to cheating if students and educators share answers with students who take the exam later during the testing window. Cizek said this could happen in schools that do not have enough computers and need more time to administer exams. The Governor’s Office of Student Achievement said it is working with the Georgia Milestones test vendor to develop erasure-analysis procedures for administering the tests online.
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