- Why solid test-score data matters so much
- Dozens of D.C. nonprofits serving children lose funding during government shutdown [DC Scholars PCS mentioned]
- Meridian Public Charter School shrugs off D.C. investigation into test tampering [Meridian PCS mentioned]
- Fixing negative press for charters [Arts and Technology Academy, Community Academy, Imagine Hope Community, Meridian and Options PCS mentioned]
Why solid test-score data matters so much
The Washington Post
By David Catania
October 4, 2013
This week, the administration of D.C. Mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) re-released the results of the 2013 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System test as scored by the standards recommended by educators. I am pleased that our parents and teachers finally have access to these results, and I am proud of the D.C. Council’s Committee on Education’s role in bringing them to light.
The mayor and others have argued that the last-minute decision to release the 2013 results based on outdated scoring standards was reasonable. But what some argue is reasonable for adults is not necessarily what is best for children.
The D.C.-CAS is administered to students each April. But this year’s test fundamentally differed from those of years past. Both the math and reading portions were changed to reflect the Common Core State Standards, a curriculum that the District began implementing in 2011. In fact, the District’s test administrator advised city officials that the new version was so different that they would need to update scoring standards to accurately measure student proficiency.
Thus, beginning in the summer of 2012, the District began updating those standards. With the assistance of more than 120 educators and testing professionals, appropriate definitions of proficiency at each grade level were developed and new “cut scores” were set. Cut scores pinpoint the score that a student must achieve to be designated as proficient. The entire process cost taxpayers approximately $2 million. It culminated on June 17, when the professionals formally recommended updated cut scores to D.C. school officials. These were tailored to the proficiency definitions developed for the Common Core-based exam.
On that same day, school officials learned that applying the updated standards would result in a much less impressive increase in student proficiency — 0.5 percentage points compared with the 4-percentage-point gain ultimately announced. Within hours of learning this, the officials began changing course. Three days later, without any public notification or discussion, they quietly instructed the District’s test administrator to abandon the cut scores and instead judge student proficiency based on the outdated standards.
Soon thereafter, the mayor held a news conference to announce “historic gains” in student proficiency in both math and reading. The Post’s editorial board highlighted Gray’s “fist-pump-punctuated ‘Yes!’ ” before issuing a “warning to those who would interfere” with his policies.
Neither the mayor nor any member of his administration informed the public that these gains did not accurately measure proficiency on the tougher Common Core-based test. Instead, it took the Committee on Education six weeks of thorough examination to uncover the truth. In response to the committee’s work, administration officials have engaged in a series of after-the-fact explanations to justify their scoring decision.
First, they argued that they are obligated to report results that are comparable to years past before acknowledging at a committee hearing that, in fact, no such requirement exists. Then they cited the potential effect on teacher evaluation systems before conceding that, in the District, evaluations are based on student progress, not the percentage of students classified as proficient. Finally, they claimed that they did not want to shock the testing system. But when pressed, they admitted that other states, such as New York and Kentucky, had the courage to accurately report their students’ results on the more difficult Common Core test.
Why does all this matter? Because cheating students and teachers out of their proper test results deprives them of the opportunity to understand where they did well and where improvement is needed. As such, it makes it harder for educators to design the instruction and interventions our students need to succeed.
I am proud of the recent improvements in our public education system in the District. This progress is not at issue. What is at stake here is the integrity of our academic assessments and the accuracy of the results they produce. To continue our progress and build lasting confidence in our public schools, these items must be above reproach.
The writer, an independent, is an at-large member of the D.C. Council and chairman of the council’s Committee on Education.
Dozens of D.C. nonprofits serving children lose funding during government shutdown [DC Scholars PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Emma Brown
October 5, 2013
Dozens of D.C. community organizations that serve needy children are feeling the government-shutdown squeeze.
The community organizations, which provide after-school programs for children, were supposed to receive millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grant payments Oct. 1. But the payments can’t be made as long as Congress remains deadlocked.
The delay is squeezing small nonprofit groups that serve some of the neediest students in the city, said Rene Wallis, executive director of People, Animals, Love (PAL), which runs after-school programs for more than 300 children at two schools east of the Anacostia River: Stanton Elementary and D.C. Scholars Public Charter School.
“It’s a big problem,” Wallis said. “This is definitely going to slow down after-school for kids in a major way.”
PAL is one of 37 organizations that were supposed to receive a total of $2.25 million in grants from the nonprofit D.C. Children and Youth Investment Trust Corp., which funnels District funding to groups that serve city children and their parents. The organizations serve more than 2,400 children and about 80 adults.
Ed Davies, the trust’s executive director, said that while the city government has continued to operate, all of the District’s fiscal 2014 appropriations are on hold until the shutdown ends.
“I deeply regret the need to delay grant awards and payments, however this is a situation beyond our control,” Davies wrote in an e-mail to grantees Friday. “Like everyone else, I cannot predict when this issue will be resolved, but I assure you, we will move quickly to finalize grant agreements and expedite payments as soon as we are allowed to do so.”
Wallis said that early fall is always a lean time for D.C. organizations such as PAL, which is awaiting city reimbursement for programs it offered children over the summer. “I’m going to have to sit down and look at cash flow and see what I can swing,” she said.
Wallis said the $76,000 grant PAL had expected to receive Oct. 1 makes up 12 percent of the organization’s entire budget and is meant to fund its efforts to intensify help for children reading below grade level.
The organization can dip into its savings for now but still faces the possibility of having to lay off some of its 42 part-time workers, she said. And not all organizations have enough financial padding to get them through a prolonged shutdown.
Meridian Public Charter School shrugs off D.C. investigation into test tampering [Meridian PCS mentioned]
The Washington Post
By Jay Mathews
October 6, 2013
Six months ago, a consulting firm working for the D.C. schools superintendent reported that staffers at the Meridian Public Charter School had tampered with their students’ annual city tests, raising scores significantly above what they would have been. The school promised to take action, but last week Meridian’s board chairman, Christopher Siddall, told me the school’s subsequent investigation “found no evidence of test tampering.”
He declined to give details about what he called the school’s “extensive investigation.” He did not say what he found wrong with the D.C. report, the closest look ever at a D.C. charter school’s test security. He said security has been tightened, but it is hard to see how that can be if he can’t say what caused the obvious signs of tampering in the first place.
Parents still don’t know which staff members might have erased wrong answers and filled in right ones on the tests used to measure all D.C. public schools. It’s possible that people who changed test scores might still be teaching their children.
Widespread changes of wrong answers to right ones have been detected by test company officials in dozens of D.C. schools since 2008. D.C. officials have not only failed to fully explain it to parents, but they have acted in most instances as if it didn’t happen, as Meridian has done.
The investigation of Meridian’s apparent tampering with the 2012 D.C. Comprehensive Assessment System exams was the first time that a probe of any D.C. school’s test security accepted the view of many scholars and veteran teachers that, when the number of wrong-to-right erasures per child is many times greater than the norm, some adults at the school likely have been cheating.
On April 12, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) released a report by the consulting firm Alvarez and Marsal revealing that 11 city schools, including Meridian, had such egregious test security violations in 2012 that many scores were thrown out. In the other schools, Alvarez and Marsal cited teachers and proctors who defined words and pointed out the right answers to students during exams. But at Meridian, the investigators said the sheer number of wrong-to-right erasures showed “strong circumstantial evidence” that the erasures “occurred at the school level and not at the classroom level.”
The school had about eight wrong-to-right erasures per child, while the average at other D.C. schools was less than one. It was the first time an official D.C. report said the erasures themselves violated the city’s rules.
It looked like OSSE, responsible for testing in the District, was finally going to let parents know who was responsible for tampering, at least in one case. Four Meridian administrators were questioned extensively. None offered any explanations, the report said. They said they stood behind their students’ scores and denied any wrongdoing. The school hired a law firm to determine who was responsible for the erasures, but they apparently didn’t find anyone responsible.
Most of the D.C. parents at schools with strong evidence of test tampering lack the means to hire their own lawyers and investigators. The same goes for Meridian parents, 87 percent of whom are low-income. They don’t know the identities of the four administrators who had no explanation for tampering going on right under their noses. They don’t know if any of those people still work at the school.
Meridian showed very high wrong-to-right erasure rates in 2009, 2010 and 2011, not just in 2012. Parents have been told nothing at all about erasure rates in 2013. Has failure to explain such deceptions become standard operating procedure? I hope not, but what has happened so far is not encouraging.
Fixing negative press for charters [Arts and Technology Academy, Community Academy, Imagine Hope Community, Meridian and Options PCS mentioned]
The Examiner
By Mark Lerner
October 7, 2013
As D.C.'s charter movement rolls on full steam ahead, a couple of negative news stories are threatening to derail a wheel or two.
The first involved accusations of cheating regarding the annual DC CAS examinations. As you may remember four charter schools were found to have critical violations in the way the test was administered. This top category of infraction, as explained by the D.C. Public Charter School Board's executive director Scott Pearson, "includes test tampering or academic fraud." The charters involved included Arts and Technology Academy, Community Academy Amos 1 campus, Imagine Hope Community Lamond campus, and Meridian.
For the first three schools only one classroom was involved. But for Meridian the problem was much deeper.
At Meridian PCS the issue was broader. Five classrooms in grades four, five, and six were implicated that instruct over 40 percent of all students in the school. Last June, the PCSB accepted a 10 part action plan to correct the problem at Meridian, which included terminating the principal.
In today's Washington Post Jay Matthews says that this may have not have been enough. He wants to know whether teachers who were involved in cheating are still there. The school is refusing to provide this information.
Then last week, Options PCS executives and its board chair were accused of diverting over $3 million in public funds to private companies that they control. The school received a positive review of its finances by three government offices just last July.
One way to prevent future instances of these anomalies in the operation of charters to is link standardized testing and financial performance to the Performance Management Framework.
Going forward any school that is found to have critical violations regarding administration of the DC CAS should be reduced by one Tier level. For example, a Tier 2 school identified as cheating on the standardized test would be reduced to Tier 3. Charters that fall into Tier 3 for three of the last five years are subject to closure. I am confident this policy would get the attention of school leaders and their boards.
The PMF was originally supposed to include a financial and governance component. As difficult as this may be to develop we need to include fiscal evaluation into the tool. Charters could be graded on the percentage of their salaries paid to top administrators and whether their major outside contracts are in line with what other charters are paying, among other things. These are two indicators that may have tipped regulators off to problems at Options.
Fortunately for our local charter school movement issues regarding testing and finances are exceedingly rare. Let's take advantage of the PMF to keep them that way.