Cheating: Is NAEP Next?

Increasingly, NAEP scores are being used by big-city district leaders like former ATL head Beverly Hall as a defense against cheating allegations or other forms of gaming the accountability system.  Former NYC head Joel Klein and former DC head Michelle Rhee have also used the scores as a key statistic supporting their impact. The increasingly public use of NAEP scores raises the question whether "juking" NAEP is next.

In reality, it may already be happening.  

Cheating-related news coverage is everywhere, it seems -- though no one can really say whether there's more cheating or just more coverage (the shark-sighting problem, let's call it).  Here's a quick sample:  Officials replaced amid Atlanta cheating scandal: The fallout from the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal continued to spread as four area superintendents were replaced and a school district in Texas put the superintendent it recently hired from Georgia on paid leave... Report identified dozens of PA schools for possible cheating Philly Notebook: The odds that the wrong-to-right erasure patterns that showed up on Roosevelt's 7th grade reading response sheets occurred purely by chance were slightly less than 1 in 100 trillion... Under Immense Pressure, Educators Accused of Tampering With Tests HuffED: The rigor and scale of Georgia's independent investigation will either spur states into action when it comes to questioning rising student test scores or scare officials away from drawing attention to potential flaws at their schools.  

But it's only an AP story (here) that edges close to raising questions about NAEP, which can no longer really be considered low-stakes for big city districts where scores are reported (school-level NAEP scores are coming soon, too). Testing experts and NAEP make the claim that the test is cheat-proof, but the AP story notes that there are ways for educators to influence scores , including by "providing only a sample of their highest-performing students for the NAEP managers to pick from."  That's not the only way to make things look better than they might otherwise.  Some districts like NYC have had much higher special ed and ELL exemption rates than others, for example.  I'm not saying NAEP cheating is widespread, just that no test is invulnerable to manipulation and that reporters and policymakers should monitor TUDA results in particular. 

Comments

[Ken Bernstein]

This should not be surprising. In 2001, while interviewing people for No Child Left Behind: Views About the Potential Impact of the Bush Administration's Education Proposals. (co-authored with Suzanne Ritter and Iris Rotberg), I had a number of people worry that with the proposed additional emphasis on NAEP as a control mechanism that it would begin to become distorted. Just one more illustration of Campbell's law, The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.

[Doug]

If tests actually matter then people will cheat full stop. The way to end cheating is to end high stakes testing.

[TeachMoore]

You may be on to something here, Russo.

A middle school student who is a member of our church proudly brought us a copy of a letter given only to him and the other honor students at his school this spring telling them (and their parents) that they had been selected to take the NAEP in a couple of weeks. I thought it was odd and emailed NAEP about their selection procedures. When I taught at another school in a very poor, all black district a few years back, their students, parents, and staff got no such warning that NAEP was coming and who would be tested.

Also, note that test preparation and administration across the country on many so-called standardized tests are not standard. For example, in some states, teachers may post and leave up items with information that will almost certainly be on the test as long as they don't do it within a few weeks of the actual test. Other states, require teachers to strip and cover material on the walls. The list goes on and on..... It's time to put testing back in its place and move up to real teaching and learning.

[CarolineSF]

Yeah, but how do we know that other countries don't do the same thing? (This makes me think of the "All-Drug Olympics" in an old Saturday Night Live.)

[Sandra]

"Testing experts and NAEP make the claim that the test is cheat-proof, but the AP story notes that there are ways for educators to influence scores , including by "providing only a sample of their highest-performing students for the NAEP managers to pick from."

Of course there are ways to influence scores, but the fact is that there has not been any indications that this has happened. The problem is clearly with the high stakes assessment regimes over the 12 years. How about fixing that problem first, before worrying and imagining potential for NAEP validity. The hyper focus on testing is a national obsession and this particular obsession does not help learning and instruction.

[Kathy]

Teachers have a moral obligation to do what is right for children. I wonder what the ultimate motives are for cheating? It seems that the education of children has been put on the backburner.

[Jennifer]

Education needs to be removed from the business sector and brought back to the school, teacher, student, and parents.

[Jennifer]

Education needs to be removed from the business sector and brought back to the school, teacher, student, and parents.

[Mia]

High stakes testing unfortunately breeds unethical behavior is professionals. Remove the pressure, lend the support at home and enforce attendance policies and we will all see improved urban assessments.