Richard P. Phelps was hired by D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee to oversee testing, which was a crucial element in her plans to “reform” the district and raise test scores. During his time there, outsiders raised questions about whether there was widespread cheating on tests.
Phelps addresses those questions in this post.
He begins:
Ten years ago, I worked as the director of assessments for DCPS. For temporal context, I arrived after the first of the infamous test cheating scandals and left just before the incident that spawned a second. Indeed, I filled a new position created to both manage test security and design an expanded testing program. I departed shortly after Vincent Gray, who opposed an expanded testing program, defeated Adrian Fenty in the September 2010 DC mayoral primary. My tenure coincided with Michelle Rhee’s last nine months as chancellor.
The recurring test cheating scandals of the Rhee-Henderson years may seem extraordinary but, in fairness, DCPS was more likely than the average U.S. 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.
Phelps’ articles were originally published at the Nonpartisan Education Review. They were reposted on Valerie Jablow’s blog.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Yes, cheating is wrong. It is unethical and nobody should condone it. And yes, cheating is a problem on standardized tests administered in schools. But Richard Phelps is deluding himself if he believes that the problem is that we don’t have third-party sheriffs doing a better job at policing the test administration.
As bad as cheating is, the intense discussion of cheating obscures the real problem: the nature of the tests and how we use the test data. A director of assessments, such as Phelps, should be shouting at least as loudly that we routinely use the test results inappropriately and unethically for a wide variety of purposes for which the tests were not designed. He should be writing blog posts about the educational malpractice of using the test data to evaluate schools and teachers, and make student placements. And he should be screaming at the top of every mountain about the educational quackery involved when we use the faulty data to “prescribe” remediation strategies for individual students.
Instead, he truly believes that the problems with assessment in schools can only be solved when “control of the evidence is ceded to genuinely independent third parties,” i.e., we should be hiring a cadre of “test police” to cut down on cheating. How about, instead, having directors of assessment becoming less fixated on test proctors and more worried about making sure that everyone, including the Michelle Rhees of the world, understands clearly what the tests actually are measuring, how the test data can and should be used appropriately, and how the test data should not be used?
Well said. (I don’t think he gets it.)
also well said 🙂
Martin Garzman, I so agree with your post. I would add only that the simple quantity of stdzd tests administered—annual—is one of the root problems. When you invest that level of time and money, you expect weighty import, and will find it regardless of facts. The instigation of annual stdzd tests in 2001 was quite likely brought about by heavy lobbying/ campaign donations of textbook/ testing/ IT industry [already funding stds devpt], with civil rights support and ‘accountability’ as mere lipstick flavors for left and right. Other for-profit uses grew around them like kudzu: magazines, realtors and colleges benefited from the sorting/ ranking; low scores garnered test-prep materials for the first group of grifters, plus state takeover et al ed-consultants; charters sprang up around closures, etc etc. We end up with institutionalization, late 20thC-early 21stC American style: a labyrinthine, public-private spider’s web, all based around educationally fraudulent use of stdzd tests.
Stdzd testing, as noted by the American Statistics Association’s 4/8/14 paper, has uses for which it is designed. Administered to representative samples every 2 years by NAEP, it provides a rough comparison of school systems across states and regions as to quality of ed delivery to various subgroups. That fulfills the policy needs of the fed Dept of Ed as defined in the Civil Rights era. Tests like Iowa Basics, once administered every 3 yrs or so to all students, can be used in that way within states, and had the additional benefit of helping gauge progress/ strength/ weakness of individual students in subject areas. [My children’s teachers used results to help parents plan midsch course selection, and to alert us to changes/ trends.] None of that was sexy enough for Reagan Reps & Third Way Dems: they were looking for public-private partnerships [and/or outright privatization] to finance lower taxes/ depletion of the public good.
in fairness, DCPS was more likely than the average U.S. school district to be caught because it received a much higher degree of scrutiny
In fairness to whom? To Richard Phelps?
Phelps is a fellow of the Psychophysics Lab, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about him.
Psychophysics?!!
Is that a lab for physicists who are psycho?
George Kennan warned US State Dept officials that soviet officials regarded all truth as jaded basis for personal advancement in a system that mostly rewarded these officials with respect to their ability to make Stalin feel good about his efforts. Thus they saw all truth as relative, suspiciously related to the personal agendas of individuals instead of objective in nature.
Phelps makes the reform movement seem mighty similar.
Who is Stalin in this picture?
Stalin is any official who supplants objective truth with calculated falsehood
High stakes tests are invalid. Cheating is just one reason.
All that standardized tests do is hold talented people back.
I just attended a professional development training about anti-racism. It was said there are segregationists, assimilationists, and anti-racists. Testing lies somewhere between segregationist and assimilationist.
Assessmentationist