Washington, D.C., school officials are investigating 14 classrooms for irregularities on standardized tests this year, part of heightened scrutiny after controversy over possible cheating.
A probe of testing found a security violation at Noyes Education Campus.
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By Jack Gruber, USA TODAY
The incidents range from suspicions that teachers helped students with their answers to an instance of a student finishing the test in 20 minutes because he recognized it from another class.
School officials also tossed out the 2010 test scores in three classrooms after an investigation found a security violation in one classroom at Noyes Education Campus and irregularities in a classroom at two other public elementary schools.
The move follows a USA TODAY report that found 103 schools — more than half of D.C.'s public schools — with unusually high rates of wrong answers erased and changed to right ones on student tests from 2008 through 2010. Test scores increasingly are used by school systems to evaluate teacher performance and pay.
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The newspaper's analysis found a high jump in test scores coincided with high rates of wrong-to-right erasures at Noyes that statisticians say are suspicious and require further investigation. In 2008, six out of eight classrooms taking tests at Noyes were flagged for high wrong-to-right erasures. The pattern was repeated in the 2009 and 2010, when 80% of the school's classrooms were flagged.
D.C. State Superintendent of Education Hosanna Mahaley Johnson, whose office investigates testing violations, and a D.C. Public Schools spokeswoman would not comment about the nature of the violations that led to the test scores being thrown out in the three schools.
At Noyes, a teacher admitted to a violation, Mahaley Johnson said.
At the other schools, the teachers in question were not allowed to administer the 2011 tests, said school district spokeswoman Safiya Simmons.
In an e-mail, she said the teacher at Noyes is no longer employed by the school system. She said she was barred by law from releasing further information. "However, Chancellor Henderson has been consistently clear that DCPS is moving aggressively to take appropriate action, up to and including termination, in cases where any cheating has been confirmed," she said.
The irregularities this year were observed by test monitors. Mahaley Johnson said her office sent monitors to 80 schools in the district, double the number of the previous year.
Her office will also conduct a detailed analysis of changed answers and year-to-year changes in a school's test scores.
She said her office has tightened test-taking security, including adding seals to test booklets that may be broken only by students and reducing the amount of time tests remain in a school after they are administered.
The moves by her office, Mahaley Johnson said, show "this is serious, people are watching and you will be held accountable."
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