Chicago Test Audits Begin

["George N. Schmidt" <Csubstance@AOL.COM>]

The following appears in today's Chicago Tribune. I thought I had posted it
to ARN, but I didn't see it last hour.

What do people here think about "cheating" as outlined here. To be more
precise about the school, this year Carpenter Elementary has 528 students, of
whom 14 are White, 144 are Black, and 364 are Hispanic. Although the
community has been undergoing gentrification, the students at the school are
still overwhelmingly low income.

Based on the tiny bit of data the Chicago school board has so far released on
this year's testing program, there are five other schools which had
miraculous gains even greater than Carptenter's, and about 70 that had gains
just slightly below Carpenter's. Without regular doses of such miracles,
Vallas' gains couldn't exist.

Last night, we were told that 17 parents were still refusing to allow their
kids to be retested. What do people think of that? A low score on the retest
would put the children into summer school as "failures".

ENTIRE 8TH GRADE CLASS FACES SKILLS EXAM RETEST
NO PUPILS INVOLVED IN ANSWER CHANGING


By Ray Quintanilla
Tribune Education Writer
June 2, 2000
Chicago School Board officials were working Thursday to unravel what is being
called the largest test cheating incident in memory as the entire 8th-grade
class of Carpenter Elementary School prepared to retake the Iowa Tests of
Basic Skills.
Officials believe that a school administrator filled in incomplete tests and
changed incorrect answers to correct ones, and that the principal and others
failed to keep the tests under lock and key, board officials said.
Although no pupils appear to be involved, all 47 of the school's 8th graders
will be required to retake the exam on Monday and Tuesday. Those who don't
risk having to attend summer school or being flunked.
Central office officials said they were tipped off after they learned
Carpenter's 8th graders scored unusually high on last month's Iowa Tests of
Basic Skills, exams that are used in Chicago to determine which pupils will
be promoted or required to attend summer school.
Each of the 8th graders scored at least a full grade level above the 7.7
promotion standard, officials said. The average score was a 9.7.
Board of Education officials called it"the single largest incident of
cheating on a standardized exam here in recent memory."
"There was cheating," schools chief Paul Vallas acknowledged. "But we give
the test to what, some 600 schools, and that's a lot of schools. It doesn't
appear, however, that any of the students were involved."
Principal Barbara J. Roberts, who taught at Carpenter for two decades before
becoming principal in 1998, declined requests for interviews and ordered
Chicago police officers stationed at the school's front door Thursday.
Privately, board officials alleged that Carpenter's staff made mistakes from
the moment pupils finished their exam. Neither the counselor nor principal
followed the procedure that required them to sign a form acknowledging they
ever had possession of the exams, officials said. No one placed the completed
tests under lock and key, leaving them unsecured for 24 to 48 hours, and the
exams were delivered to the central office two days late.
"There were serious violations of our security protocol," said Blondean
Davis, director of schools and regions. "It's hard to imagine this was just
an accident or some kind of mistake."
Davis said the cheating included erasing incorrect answers and changing them
to the right ones. In other instances, someone marked the correct answers on
exams for pupils who didn't finish the tests.
The cheating incident comes on the heels of complaints in recent days about
the board's heavy reliance on the Iowa tests to determine promotions. In
recent weeks, parent groups and reform organizations have criticized the
board for requiring several honor roll pupils to attend summer school--or
face flunking--simply because they didn't score well on the Iowa test.
Davis said Carpenter's principal phoned the central office on May 18,
informing them that her 8th-grade scores were unusually high.
Davis said there's no evidence of cheating in the lower grades or on exams
from previous school years at Carpenter, which has posted a gradual
improvement on the exam in recent years.
Julie Woestehoff, director of the group Parents United for Responsible
Education, said teachers and principals have come under intense pressure in
recent years to raise student performance on standardized tests.
"It's a lot of pressure to be under and that's why I wouldn't be surprised to
learn of more cases," said Woestehoff, who participated in a rally outside
the central office Thursday opposing use of the Iowa tests for promotions.
Renee Fox, president of the Carpenter Local School Council, said she has
called an emergency council meeting for Friday.

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