Texas cheating stories

["Monty Neill" <monty@fairtest.org>]

This is an enormously detailed set of news articles on cheating in TX schools. The focus was on statistical outliers in patterns of student scores. While any one school with statistically unlikely patterns may be just that, there are a great number of such schools in TX. Also, the paper had a second expert do a separate form of statistical checking on some schools, and a third expert study the results. Charter schools, Dallas and Houston are far more likely than the average district to have a sizeable proportion of schools with patterns indicating cheating. Even then, the percentage of flagged schools remains low (I did not find exact numbers in the stories, but article said was a low percentage).

ASCD SmartBrief sent this around - I hope the links work. Note also some of the sidebar stories you can link on, esp. some links from the first of the 3 stories.

Monty

Report uncovers cheating on Texas high-stakes tests
More than 50,000 Texas students may have cheated on 2005 and 2006 high-stakes standardized tests, including the state's exit exam, according to a three-part Dallas Morning News report and data analysis. Despite the Texas Education Agency's stance that cheating is extraordinarily rare and tests are well policed, at more than 100 high schools at least one in 10 juniors' TAKS graduation tests were flagged for having extremely suspicious answer patterns. Cheating was almost four times as common in charter schools, with more than 80% of tests flagged at one school. The Dallas Morning News (6/3), The Dallas Morning News (6/4), The Dallas Morning News (6/5), The Dallas Morning News (6/3), The Dallas Morning News (6/3), Houston Chronicle (5/31)   
Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Co-Executive Director
FairTest
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monty@fairtest.org
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