Atlanta schools Superintendent Beverly Hall announced Wednesday she will bring in outside experts to review test scores at 12 elementary schools. The move follows an analysis by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution suggesting an ongoing cheating investigation may need to be widened.
“We recognize that it is important that the public have confidence in the testing process,” Hall said in a statement. Asking for the review, she said, shows that the system is willing to go "the extra mile" to examine "test results that have been brought into question."
Test results from the past two years will be reviewed. The effort is expected to take months and has yet to get under way, as the system issues invitations to join the panel. Hall said any costs associated with the review will be paid for by the Atlanta Education Fund, a not-for-profit organization the system works with on student achievement issues.
Hall's proactive stance this week stands in contrast to her response to criticism this summer, after an audit by the Governor's Office of Student Achievement found evidence that four schools in Atlanta and three other systems turned in questionable results from state tests taken in summer 2008.
Those results were from fifth-grade math retests on the state's Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests. The audit found evidence of an abnormal number of erasures at those schools on those retests, in which the wrong answer often was replaced by the right one.
The state investigation followed an analysis by the AJC in December about improbably steep gains at some schools on tests taken first in spring and then in summer. State officials threw out the scores in July. They suspended two DeKalb County educators and are investigating eight others, including two in Atlanta.
On Sunday, the AJC published results of its second investigation that found more widespread problems. It found 19 public elementary schools statewide with extraordinary gains or drops in state test scores between spring of last year and this year.
A dozen of those schools were 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 analysis, the odds of making such a leap were less than one in a billion.
"We want to be best in class, above reproach and held to the highest standards," Hall said Wednesday of her decision to seek a review. The other schools are Benteen, Bethune, Blalock, Capitol View, Dunbar, F. L. Stanton, Perkerson, Toomer, Usher and Venetian Hills.
Kathleen Mathers, executive director of the student achievement office, said she did not know enough about how Atlanta's panel will conduct its review to comment on it. Mathers was one of the state officials who questioned Hall's response to the findings involving Deerwood over the summer. On Wednesday, she gave Hall credit for her response to this latest allegation.
"It sounds like Dr. Hall is taking it seriously and trying to find out what happened," Mathers said. Her office began an analysis several weeks ago, Mathers said, looking for anomalies in this year's test scores statewide. That preliminary step should be completed this month and could result in a more in-depth investigation that would take several more months to complete, she said.
"That analysis gets into finer levels of data than the AJC could get into," Mathers said. "We would not rush to judgment or identify any schools" before work was completed, she said.
AJC Results
On Sunday, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution published an investigation that found 19 public elementary schools statewide with extraordinary gains or drops in state test scores between spring of last year and this year. A dozen of those schools were in Atlanta, including Benteen, Bethune, Blalock, Capitol View, Dunbar, F. L. Stanton, Perkerson, Peyton Forest, Toomer, Usher, Venetian Hills and West Manor elementary schools. On Wednesday, Atlanta schools Superintendent Beverly Hall announced a review that will include analysis by outside experts of two years of test scores at those 12 schools. Hall was criticized this summer for her reaction to an audit by the Governor's Office of Student Achievement that found evidence of questionale test results at four schools, including Deerwood Academy in Atlanta.
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