If you spend a little time this weekend with your Sunday newspaper, then you know The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has produced a remarkable investigation into the integrity of school-testing results from around the country.
School tests have been a big story for years now, as national policy has required tests measuring the learning of students in each state.
In Atlanta, the testing story was even bigger, as our reporters revealed questionable results in Atlanta Public Schools that prompted the country’s biggest cheating scandal.
Now we know Atlanta is the tip of the iceberg.
Our nationwide analysis shows that our country has an ugly problem undercutting educational policy:
● In 196 of the nation’s 3,125 largest school districts, the investigation reveals highly improbable swings in test scores, a finding that strongly points to tampering.
● For 33 of those districts, the odds of getting such results without intervention are less than one in a million.
● In at least one district, the results for entire grades of students jumped two, three or more times the amount expected in one year. The next year, when children moved to a new grade, their scores plummeted.
● Some of those questionable scores come from districts lauded as top places for reforms, as Atlanta had been.
And so now leaders in districts across the country must confront the numbers — as leaders in Atlanta, at first, struggled to do.
Based on history, the reactions in these places may not be what we’d hope: seeking the truth and placing the interests of children at the forefront.
Expect at least some hostility and denials, and possibly an attack of your newspaper. Blaming the media, of course, can be a first line of defense.
Recall what initial reaction was like in Atlanta when we revealed these kinds of findings.
Superintendent Beverly Hall repeatedly raised doubts about the newspaper’s findings, and her supporters said we were undermining the success of the district. “The culture in the Atlanta schools is one of teaching and learning, not of cheating,” she wrote in an opinion piece for this newspaper.
State investigators 17 months later said the exact opposite: “A culture of fear and a conspiracy of silence infected this school system, and kept many teachers from speaking freely about misconduct.”
It is, of course, important to remember that our analysis doesn’t provide direct evidence of cheating. Nor does it rule out cheating, which is why further investigation is needed.
We’ve done an exhaustive study that looks at groups of students as they pass from grade to grade. Then we looked at the probability of improvements in test scores. Too many times, the changes just weren’t possible, experts said. There had to be some kind of intervention beyond just good teaching.
To do this story, we requested data from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. We analyzed test scores in more than 14,000 school districts. Our work has been reviewed by four independent experts.
Keep in mind that these test results in each state are a matter of public record. Anyone, including the individual schools or states or even parents, could’ve done the same kind of analysis. But only your newspaper put the time and money into actually doing it.
Testing is a cornerstone of national education policy. But if the tests are widely manipulated, what kind of policy is that?
What’s happened here is a matter for the country to understand and to demand a better course.
But first, it’s worth noting that this story will be difficult to accept in these towns. And their leaders will face choices.
Let’s hope they have friends or business associates in Atlanta. Maybe they’ll make a call and ask for advice.
Because what they’ll need is the inspiration to do what Atlanta and Georgia finally did.
Let’s hope they have a governor with the courage to appoint investigators to get to the bottom of what happened, as Georgia did.
Let’s hope that they have some teachers with the courage to come forward and show what happened, as Atlanta did.
Let’s hope they have some veteran educational administrators waiting in the wings to steer school districts on a course to reform, as we have here.
And let’s hope the discussion quickly turns from one of hollow and bureaucratic defensiveness to a plan for how we can fix this for the thousands of kids who are the real victims.
Because that’s what we should be talking about.
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