Richard Phelps was in charge of assessment in the last year of the reign of Michelle Rhee as superintendent of the District of Columbia Public Schools. In this post, he describes how difficult and time-consuming it is to identify test cheating and how little the D.C. leadership cared about making the effort. Phelps was supposed to monitor test security and expand testing.
He writes:
The recurring test cheating scandals of the Rhee-Henderson years may seem extraordinary but, in fairness, DCPS was more likely than the average US school district to be caught because it received a much higher degree of scrutiny. Given how tests are typically administered in this country, the incidence of cheating is likely far greater than news accounts suggest, for several reasons:
· in most cases, those who administer tests—schoolteachers and administrators—have an interest in their results;
· test security protocols are numerous and complicated yet, nonetheless, the responsibility of non-expert ordinary school personnel, guaranteeing their inconsistent application across schools and over time;
· after-the-fact statistical analyses are not legal proof—the odds of a certain amount of wrong-to-right erasures in a single classroom on a paper-and-pencil test being coincidental may be a thousand to one, but one-in-a-thousand is still legally plausible; and
· after-the-fact investigations based on interviews are time-consuming, scattershot, and uneven.
Still, there were measures that the Rhee-Henderson administrations could have adopted to substantially reduce the incidence of cheating, but they chose none that might have been effective. Rather, they dug in their heels, insisted that only a few schools had issues, which they thoroughly resolved, and repeatedly denied any systematic problem.
He punctures Rhee’s claim that the test security agency Caveon never found evidence of “systematic cheating.”
He writes:
Caveon, however, had not looked for “systematic” cheating. All they did was interview a few people at several schools where the statistical anomalies were more extraordinary than at others. As none of those individuals would admit to knowingly cheating, Caveon branded all their excuses as “plausible” explanations. That’s it; that is all that Caveon did. But, Caveon’s statement that they found no evidence of “widespread” cheating—despite not having looked for it—would be frequently invoked by DCPS leaders over the next several years.
You wonder why the echo chamber nature of ed reform doesn’t get more attention. The author here refers to it over and over- “the club”, how all his ideas and suggestions were rejected out of hand because they didn’t align with the Broad-Gates-Walton agenda.
Just look at the backgrounds of the various players in elite ed reform circles- they all come up exactly the same way. Elite colleges or university, the obligatory TFA stint, then a series of trainings in the same ed reform orgs- Walton, Gates or Broad.
I don’t think one can get a job in DC education policy without signing on to the agenda- they all sound identical because they all come out of the same narrow “talent” pipeline.
Cheating. Loaded word, that one. How would you respond to ludicrous expectations? Good people confronted with the Nazi death camps falsified baptismal certificates for Jews they knew. Cheaters. No one would look at these people as anything but heroes. Justifiably so. OK, extreme example. What about a farmer who wants to hide the one good year he has in ten so he can make it through the bad years? Tax cheater? Family farms are almost gone.
The fact is, testing is more morally degenerative to a society than cheating on the tests. That said, I have given tests in school, in accordance with standard practice. I have watched as a student, outclassed on the assessment, drew a wistful mermaid on the test paper, expressing the sentiment I felt. I have felt dirty in this process.
Should I have been subversive enough to cheat?
Cheating is the expected outcome when one puts so much pressure on tests.
Glen Campbell’s law in action.
I am a Testman for the county
And I drive the main road
Searching in the data for another cheating code
When tests are weaponized as a means to weed out students, and close public schools, then cheating becomes the bastardized mechanism for “improvement”. I spent months examining data on a Gulen school in Oakland. It cheated on their administration of the SBAC, the standardized test in California, and allowed some students to take the easier CAA test (for high needs SPED). Those that took the CAA all scored 100%. It was all public record. What did I get? Crickets. What did the charter get? Another 5-year charter renewal, a new principal, and lots of marketing to bring their enrollment up. What did OUSD get? Two district school closures.
great line: Cheating became the bastardized mechanism for “improvement.” EXACTLY true.
This is an ed reform echo chamber member in the Trump Administration:
“Jim Blew serves as the assistant secretary for planning, evaluation and policy development at the U.S. Department of Education. He was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on July 17, 2018, after being nominated by President Donald J. Trump on Sept. 28, 2017.
Prior to joining the Department, Blew advocated for education reform across the country. His roles included serving as director of the 50CAN affiliate Student Success California, national president of StudentsFirst, and national director of the Alliance for School Choice and its predecessor, the American Education Reform Council.
Blew also helped guide the Walton Family Foundation’s K-12 reform investments for nearly a decade.”
50CAN, and then an “affiliate”, Student Success, StudentsFirst, the Alliance for School Choice and, of course, Walton. If it hasn’t have been Walton it would have been Broad or Gates.
They spend entire careers surrounded by other ed reform echo chamber members-
Blew probably hasn’t had to seriously engage with a dissenting opinion in 20 years- he works exclusively inside the echo chamber. No wonder they’re always shocked when there’s pushback to one of their reforms- they don’t know or encounter anyone who disagrees with them.
I was getting gasoline the other day and there was an ad running on the pump, from the local internet/cable provider.
They say they will provide “100,000 lower income students” with internet access during the pandemic.
This is all the United States of America can manage in a national catastrophe for public school students and families- you may or may not get a donation from a corporation.
When the international testing is done after this and all the other countries who actually ASSISTED their schools score better than the US, no one should be surprised. They invested and did the work and we didn’t. We just decided to do absolutely nothing and dump the whole problem on public schools, as usual. It’ll work as well as it always does, which is “not at all”.
The UK government also did a lousy job supporting their schools in the pandemic- not as bad as the US- we win for “worst” among developed countries- but the UK response was almost as bad as the US response.
Not a coincidence, I don’t think, that both the US and the UK are completely dominated by ed reformers at higher levels of government.
I’ll make a prediction right now- when public school kids are tested and countries are compared, the US and UK will be dead last in pandemic assistance success- also the only two countries who swallowed the ed reform agenda whole and have followed it with lockstep fidelity.
The deceptive Michelle Rheesus macaque is indigenous to Ann Arbor, Michigan, but became a fast moving invasive species in Washington D.C. Armed with a building-sized eraser and a broom, the Rheesus tore up all the structures that kept human society together, throwing poo along the way. Now the Rheesus has migrated to California, briefly selling Scott’s Miracle-Poo along the way. In California, the Rheesus is somewhat contained, no longer threatening all the adults with wrongful termination and the young with tape-on-the-mouth. California had better not let down its guard, though. Let her ferocious reign in D.C. be a lesson to all. Do not feed the Rheesus.
Oh no! Tense shift the first sentence by an English teacher.
Don’t fire me, Rhee.