PROBLEM SCHOOLS Page 21A Here are some of the Texas schools with the strongest evidence of substantial TAKS cheating, according to a Dallas Morning News analysis: Forest Brook HS, North Forest ISD Forest Brook High is in the long-troubled North Forest district, where eight of its 11 campuses have state ratings of unacceptable and state […]
Read More… from Faking the Grade: Day 1 sidebars and graphics
By Holly K. Hacker and Joshua Benton Staff Writers Page 21A The Dallas Morning News wanted to check whether cheating occurs on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. So it turned to an expert in the field: George Wesolowsky, a professor of management science at McMaster University in Canada. Nearly a decade ago, Dr. […]
By Joshua Benton and Holly K. Hacker Staff Writers Page 21A The News’ analysis found more than 50,000 students whose answer sheets on the TAKS in 2005 and 2006 appear to have been involved in cheating. But there are several reasons to believe that underestimates the problem – perhaps severely. The News’ data did not […]
Page 20A Can you really detect cheating through statistics? The science of detecting too-similar answer sheets is decades old and well accepted among psychometricians – the people who design standardized tests. It has been the subject of dozens of academic papers in respected journals. Statistical methods similar to The News’ are used to detect cheating […]
Read More… from Faking the Grade: Common questions about the analysis
By Joshua Benton and Holly K. Hacker Staff Writers Page 1A First of three parts Tens of thousands of students cheat on the TAKS test every year, including thousands on the high-stakes graduation test, according to an in-depth data analysis by The Dallas Morning News. The analysis – among the first of its kind on […]
When the state employee in charge of the TAKS test resigned last month, the official word was that she would be missed.
Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley called Lisa Chandler “a tremendous asset to the field” and said her exit was “a great loss for the agency.” A Texas Education Agency representative said that Ms. Chandler’s departure was of her own volition and that the agency was happy with her performance.
But documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News tell a different tale. They show that her departure was engineered by Dr. Neeley herself. At least as far back as November, top agency officials were planning to remove Ms. Chandler because of complaints from school districts, other TEA officials and her own staff.
The documents include typed and handwritten notes by Tom Shindell, an agency human resources official, from meetings both before and after Ms. Chandler was pushed out. They provide a unique window into TEA’s efforts to remove her from her post.
“Was I a scapegoat?” Ms. Chandler asks at one point, after she’s been told to leave. Then later: “Where was the due process?”
Ms. Chandler has since found new work – with Pearson, the company that produces the TAKS test and whose $279 million contract with TEA Ms. Chandler managed. Pearson officials have said her work with the company will not involve the Texas contract. […]
The state official in charge of the TAKS test has a new employer: the company that produces the test.
Lisa Chandler, the Texas Education Agency’s director of assessment, will join the testing giant Pearson on March 5. She resigned from her state position Dec. 29, saying only that she was considering several job offers in the private sector.
TEA’s contract with Pearson – a five-year, $279 million deal signed in 2005 – puts limits on any agency employees who move to the company. The contract bans them from working on Texas-related matters for 12 months after the switch. A separate state ethics rule would prevent Ms. Chandler from working on the TEA contract until it is up for renewal in 2010.
Ms. Chandler could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Ms. Chandler has been Pearson’s main contact at the agency since she became assessment director in 2003. She has worked at the agency in a variety of roles since 1986. Her search for private employment had been the subject of rumors at the agency for some time. […]
The state’s chief regulator of teachers is increasing the priority it places on policing cheating on the TAKS test.
A new set of rules, approved by the State Board for Educator Certification this month, will devote more resources to investigating teachers suspected of doctoring student answers. The rules would also make it easier for school districts to know whether someone applying for a job is suspected of cheating in another district.
“There’s no point in giving a TAKS test if we can’t know the results of that test are the true reflection of a child’s knowledge,” said Bonnie Cain, the superintendent of Pearland schools and the state board’s acting president. “There’s no good in having a test if it doesn’t have integrity.”
The changes come after a Dallas Morning News story in October that found problems with the way schools were informed of the findings of a state investigation into cheating in the now-defunct Wilmer-Hutchins district.
That investigation identified 22 educators who it said “were involved in testing irregularities,” like giving students answer keys or doctoring test documents.
At least 10 of those educators quickly found jobs in other districts, many of which had no knowledge of the findings until informed by The News. […]
Unhappy with the way an outside company did the job, the Texas Education Agency appears ready to take on the hunt for cheaters itself.
An agency task force has recommended that TEA build its own system for analyzing scores on the TAKS test to look for suspicious patterns.
But it could be another year or more before the system is ready.
Until then, it appears likely that testing data will go unscrutinized.
“Investigating these anomalies a year or two later is very difficult,” said Michael Donley, the agency’s inspector general. “I have a feeling that old data will be skipped.”
The recommendation is one of 10 made by the state’s test-security task force, which was formed last fall.
An agency spokesperson said Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley was broadly supportive of the recommendations, although details about implementation remain to be worked out.
The task force’s conclusions come as it finishes an unusual investigation into 700 schools whose scores on the 2005 test were flagged as suspicious by the Utah test-security firm Caveon. Nearly 600 of those schools were recently cleared by TEA – most of them solely on the basis of a questionnaire sent to school officials about their testing practices. […]
State investigators are having some success finding evidence of TAKS cheating in their first wave of on-site investigations. But it may be another two months before those investigations – of less than 1 percent of schools flagged as suspicious – are completed.
The Texas Education Agency is reacting to findings by Caveon, a Utah test-security firm it hired last year to look for signs of cheating on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills.
Caveon flagged 699 Texas schools for a variety of reasons, such as unexplained leaps in scores, high numbers of erased answers, or groups of students with identical or nearly identical answer sheets.
This summer, TEA appointed a task force to examine the findings. Agency staffers began on-site investigations at five schools whose scores seemed particularly suspicious. The names of those schools haven’t been made public.
TEA spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe said the investigative interviews were helpful in determining which of Caveon’s methods for detecting cheating can be supported through other evidence.
The task force, meeting Thursday in Austin, recommended a few changes to the methods investigators use. That includes interviewing a wider range of staff members on each campus under scrutiny. […]