Money talks
Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.
Author: Ludwig van Beethoven
Posted on 06/05/2007 10:13:12 PM PDT by bd476
Newspaper says suspected cheating common at charter schools
AUSTIN — Suspected cheating on the state's standardized test is particularly prevalent at the state's charter schools, according to an analysis of test scores by The Dallas Morning News.
The study flagged answer sheets from classrooms that had many more answers in common than experts say would happen by chance. In the top 50 most egregious cases of likely cheating, 37 of them took place in charter schools, which make up only 2 percent of the state's campuses.
One charter school, Jesse Jackson Academy in Houston, was home to the most extreme example of likely cheating patterns in Texas, according to the investigation.
Just two of 53 sophomores who took the math portion of the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills did not show evidence of cheating.
Even with such an extreme likelihood of cheating, many of TAKS scores at the Houston school were very poor. Experts say that might be because school staff members doctored students' answer sheets but couldn't answer test questions correctly themselves. Or it's possible that even though a school official is supposed to supervise the testing, students are copying answers from one of their less-bright peers.
Also on the newspaper's top 50 list of suspected cheaters is the Theresa B. Lee Academy in Fort Worth, owned by the same family as the Houston school. Both schools have had a long series of run-ins with state officials and almost a decade of bad academic performance. Nonetheless, both charters were renewed for another decade and have received more than $11 million in taxpayer dollars so far.
"It's a very difficult process to close a charter school," said Texas Education Agency spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe. "That's why we try to get them to turn in their charter voluntarily. Otherwise, it takes thousands of hours of work and years to do it."
Both Jackson and Lee were flagged as suspicious in the analysis of 2005 TAKS scores by Caveon, the test-security firm the TEA hired to look for cheating. As a result, both schools are under investigation by state officials.
But the state investigation into the allegations is poised to clear Jackson of all charges based on a state employee's interviews with school staff, according to a copy of a preliminary report obtained by the newspaper. No student answer sheets were examined, the newspaper reported.
"This is ludicrous," said David Harpp, a Canadian cheating expert who examined the school's scores. "That's not an investigation. That's just looking around."
A TEA spokesperson said the agency would not comment on an ongoing investigation.
Superintendent Jesse Jackson at first said he was confident there was no cheating at the school he named for himself.
"That school is fine — I'd put it up against any charter in the state," he said.
But when informed of the suspected cheating patterns, he said, "I'm going to have to look into it."
On last year's 11th-grade science test, the analysis flagged 46 of Jackson's 51 juniors for cheating. Their answer sheets were either identical or remarkably similar to the others, as if all 46 students got their answers from the same source. But only two of those students actually passed the exam because the shared answers were mostly wrong.
On the school's 10th-grade social studies test, every student passed and almost all passed with a near-perfect score. Jackson's average score was the highest of any school in the state.
"I was shocked by the scale" of the answer copying at Jackson, said Robert Frary, a longtime cheating researcher and professor emeritus at Virginia Tech.
The suspected cheating at Lee was not quite as extreme as Jackson's, according to the analysis, but it was still among the worst in the state. On the 11th-grade science test in 2006, for example, 19 of Lee's 37 answer sheets were flagged. That was the second highest rate detected on that test in Texas behind only Jackson.
"Good Lord — I sure did not suspect this," Lee principal William Powell said last week, after the newspaper shared their findings. "Facts and figures don't lie."
The next day, Jackson told the newspaper that Powell had been fired for not ensuring "the test environment is secure."
Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.
Author: Ludwig van Beethoven
That is awful!
It sure is. It's a lot of awful in one place, or maybe it's just the tip of the iceberg which is found nationwide in all public schools receiving tax dollars.
but couldn’t answer test questions correctly themselves
This is probably closer to the truth than any other explanation. The dumbing down continues...
More likely fired for not disputing the results and going into CYA mode....
Gee.....who would have thought?
A legend in his own mind.
That should tell you all you need to know about the school.
“Newspaper says suspected cheating common at charter schools ‘
Wierd headline. Sort of like...
Attempted speeders stymied by traffic flow
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