Do statistically improbable gains in standardized testing scores indicate that a school is cheating in some way?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution turned the spotlight on Wheaton’s this weekend in a story about National Blue Ribbon Schools, “Cheating our children: Suspect scores put award’s integrity in question.”
Highland Elementary School was named a National Blue Ribbon School in 2009, the government’s highest educational honor. But just four years earlier, the state of Maryland had threatened to take away county control of the school because of poor scores. Although the Atlanta Journal-Constitution article never directly accused Highland of tampering with results, it cast doubt on whether the school honestly earned the award.
"There's no evidence of cheating that we've seen," Maryland State Department of Education spokesperson Bill Reinhard told Patch.
Montgomery County Public Schools Superintendent Joshua Starr called the article “irresponsible” in a statement released Monday morning. He defended the school’s dramatic improvements:
Let me be clear: The turnaround that occurred at Highland Elementary School was the result of having a great school leader and a motivated staff that had the training, support and resources it needed to serve its students. There has never been an allegation of cheating at Highland Elementary School since the school’s turnaround began and the school continues to get tremendous results even as its resources have been cut significantly over the past four years.
In his response, Starr focused on what he says the AJC reporter left out of the story:
The article suggests that the fact that Highland didn’t make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in 2011 is a further indication of questionable results in the past. Yet, the authors fail to mention that in 2011, Highland missed AYP by four students in just one subgroup—special education—in mathematics during a year that the Academic Measurable Objective increased. This data tells us nothing about Highland, but rather speaks to the absurdity of the AYP formula.
Read Starr’s full statement on the MCPS website, and the full news story on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website.
Superintendent Starr's Press Release doesn't explain why Highland scores jumped up and then fell right back down. Funding at school actually went up per pupil in later year when scores were down.
Mrs. Rivera
Second, other than insinuations, there are no facts to support the article's hypothesis that Highland cheated. What I do know is that when things hit bottom, the County gave the school funds, and the teacher-student ration became incredible, especially for k-2. The ration was below 10:1 for kindergartners, and the teachers were excellent. We sent our child to one of the foreign language public schools but we visited Highland and would have been very happy sending our child there. And Theresa, please read between the lines--there is no explicit accusation of cheating, but it is clearly implied throughout the article. Just because there was rampant cheating in Atlanata does not make it so at Highland. And, yes, if they had to cut reading, language, and other specialists, it will make a difference in an area where most students do not speak English at home. If there is any evidence of wrongdoing, please point it out, but simply implying that teachers and educators cheated--as happened in Atlanta--unfairly damages the reputation of the school and its students.
I wouldn't want Highland to continue its downward trend, but right now the numbers are still very good.