Test case: Now the
principal's cheating BY CAROLYN KLEINER It's one of the most basic lessons kids learn, right up there with the ABCs and the three Rs: Cheating is wrong. But it seems a number of educators have yet to master that. Last week, the principal of Potomac Elementary School, a top-ranked school in one of Maryland's lushest suburbs, resigned and a teacher was placed on administrative leave amid charges that they had rigged a statewide achievement test. The whistleblowers? Fifth graders, who allege that they were prompted to modify essay responses, provided correct answers, and given extra time to finish. "I can't even imagine why anyone would do this, especially at the third-highest achieving school in the state," says Patricia O'Neill, president of the local Montgomery County Board of Education, noting Potomac Elementary's affluent, high-achieving student body. "Was it so important to be No. 1?" The latest example of high-level cheating comes in this era of high-stakes testing, where scores are increasingly tied to everything from educators' job security and salaries to students' promotion and graduation. Such reforms are part of a nationwide movement to boost quality and to hold educators accountable for student achievement. But they have also had some unexpected consequences. "The evidence is pretty clear that there has been an increase in educators cheating on standardized exams," says Walt Haney, a senior research associate at Boston College's Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation, and Educational Policy. Fallen model? This spring alone, there has been a flurry of charges in schools across the country, from California to Louisiana to Florida. A Columbus, Ohio, grade school, touted as a model by the visiting President Clinton for its skyrocketing test scores-including a fourfold jump in the percentage of students who passed the reading portion of the state exam in one year-now stands accused by a teacher and three students who insist school aides prodded fourth graders to cheat, in one case actually grabbing a boy's hand and moving his pencil to the correct multiple-choice answer. The principal denies the charges and a district investigation found no conclusive evidence of wrongdoing, but a state inquiry is pending. In New York City, even a scathing December report that fingered 52 educators at 32 schools for myriad cheating infractions failed to deter such behavior: A follow-up review, released last month, charges that teachers, paraprofessionals, and librarians in five schools tampered with recent test scores. Critics say the tests -- not teachers -- are to blame. "The major problem is the unreasonable, unfair, and inappropriate use of standardized exams," says Monty Neill, executive director of the National Center for Fair & Open Testing, and a staunch opponent of high-stakes tests. Twenty-eight states now use standard exams to determine graduation and 19 to govern student promotion; a growing number also dole out performance-based bonuses for schools that show progress and threaten intervention, even closure, for those that don't. In Maryland, schools that improve scores on the state standardized test, given in grades three, five, and eight, split #2.75 million each year. These sorts of incentives and the subsequent pressure-cooker climate can drive teachers to do anything and everything to boost scores, says Neill. "The only way to stop [cheating] is to return tests to their appropriate role, not as an absolute determinate of kids' progress but as one source of information, to be judged in conjunction with things like grades and teachers' judgments." Still, the prevailing view is that standardized exams are the best way to measure achievement -- and failure --and to help improve the nation's schools. "The cause [of cheating] is not the test, not the standards movement, but some character flaw," insists Jeanne Allen, president of Washington, D.C.'s Center for Education Reform. "These tests . . . are challenging, but they reflect what should be taught in various grades, and if educators are cheating, it means they don't have the ability to get these kids to learn, which means they shouldn't be teaching in the first place." Whatever the cause, experts agree that the ones who lose most when educators tamper with tests are students. If kids have had a teacher giving them the correct answers, or telling them when things are wrong, then it's very easy for them to justify cheating themselves," says Edward Stancik, special commissioner of investigation for the New York City public schools, who has exposed the rampant educator-assisted cheating and worries about the fallout. "It has a residual effect on the kids, who are not stupid, and who have to make up their own minds about right and wrong." |
