{"id":681,"date":"2013-04-22T09:26:10","date_gmt":"2013-04-22T16:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=681"},"modified":"2013-05-08T10:11:13","modified_gmt":"2013-05-08T17:11:13","slug":"d-c-school-cheating-issue-calls-test-driven-incentives-into-question","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/charlestkerchner.com\/?p=681","title":{"rendered":"D.C. School Cheating Issue Calls Test-Driven Incentives into Question"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post can also be found at EdSource<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The smoke surrounding allegations of test score cheating in the Washington, D.C public schools burst into flame last week.\u00a0 In a 4,300-word blog post, titled Michelle Rhee\u2019s Reign of Error<\/a>, <\/em>the veteran educational journalist John Merrow linked the former schools chancellor with documents that suggest that she knew about widespread cheating on standardized tests and looked the other way.<\/p>\n

Merrow drew parallels between Washington and Atlanta, where former superintendent Beverly Hall and 34 others have been indicted.\u00a0 But the underlying question is whether school reform can successfully be driven by rewards and punishments tied to standardized tests.<\/p>\n

First, the Watergate question: <\/em>what did Rhee know and when did she know it?\u00a0 As U.S.A. Today reported<\/a><\/em>, District of Columbia Public Schools officials have long maintained that a 2011 test-cheating scandal that generated two government probes was limited to one elementary school. \u00a0Merrow, however, reported that a long-buried memo from an outside data consultant warned as far back as January 2009 that educator cheating on 2008 standardized tests could have been widespread, with 191 teachers in 70 schools “implicated in possible testing infractions.”<\/p>\n

Consultant Fay G. Sanford noted substantial numbers of erasures on test forms where corrections were made from wrong answers to correct ones.\u00a0 (Erasers leave smudge marks that the machines doing the grading recognize along with the answers.)\u00a0 \u201cIt is common knowledge in the high-stakes testing community that one of the easiest ways for teachers to artificially inflate student test scores is to erase student wrong responses to multiple choice questions and recode them as correct,\u201d Sanford wrote.<\/p>\n

When asked, Rhee said that she didn\u2019t recall getting a memo from Sanford an assertion she repeated last week to the Los Angeles Times <\/em>editorial board<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A day after the Merrow report was issued, another investigation was released citing \u201ccritical\u201d violations of test security in 18 classrooms located in 7 district schools and 4 charters.\u00a0 The test was given in more than 2,600 classrooms, and current D.C. schools chancellor Kaya Henderson<\/a> said in a statement, \u201cWe are pleased that this is yet another investigation that confirms that there is no widespread cheating at DCPS.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Henderson is not quelling demands for a district-wide investigation.\u00a0 Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, has called for an independent investigation as did Washington Post<\/em> writer Valerie Strauss<\/a>, who said, \u201cThe memo does not offer conclusive evidence that cheating occurred, but it literally begs for a thorough probe to be conducted \u2014 this time by investigators with subpoena powers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, an in-depth evaluation of D.C. schools by a National Research Council panel continues.\u00a0 The study is chaired by two Californians: Carl Cohn, a professor at Claremont Graduate University and member of the state school board, and Lorraine McDonnell, a professor of political science at U.C. Santa Barbara.\u00a0 Their work is not confined to test tampering, but considers the overall effect of governance and management changes.<\/p>\n

Test tampering only the symptom<\/h2>\n

Education policy organizations that have generally supported Rhee were quick to minimize the test tampering as \u201cbad judgment.\u201d\u00a0 Michelle Gininger at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute<\/a> cautioned that: \u201cCritics are bound to say that all reforms that Rhee stands for\u2014teacher evaluations, tenure reform, and school choice\u2014should be dismissed. \u00a0But let\u2019s not abandon education reform and accountability at the expense of our students, which getting rid of testing surely would.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, along with her fear-based management style, reliance on test scores is the Achilles heel of Rhee\u2019s reform policies.\u00a0 Accurate test scores form the basis for her performance-based pay system and means to determine which teachers and administrators should be kept or fired.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the system Rhee advocates inherently motivates people to cheat.\u00a0\u00a0 As Cornell Law School professor Lynn Stout wrote in the Los Angeles Times<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>\u201cIt\u2019s almost impossible to design objective performance metrics that can\u2019t be met through illegal or undesirable behavior\u2026. And when you create a system that inadvertently incentives illegal or undesirable behavior, you get more of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is the lesson of organizational history, not an isolated \u201cbad judgment\u201d aberration.\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s about more than school test scores in the District of Columbia, Atlanta, Texas,\u201d or even Rhee\u2019s possibly outsized claims of how well her students did during the three years she taught school in Baltimore.\u00a0 The policies Rhee endorses create bad incentives.\u00a0 Bad incentives lead to disastrous results.\u00a0 They certainly played a part in the largest business collapses in recent history: Enron, WorldCom, Lehman Brothers, and the collapse of the subprime mortgage market.<\/p>\n

The antidote is not to abandon incentives tied to test scores and other measures of achievement, but to use them in ways that actually motivate teachers, and more importantly students, who are the real workers in the education system.<\/p>\n

What motivates teachers most?\u00a0\u00a0 Student success: if organizational system of curriculum, pedagogy, professional training, and school organization helps students experience success then teachers are highly motivated.\u00a0 Teachers are motivated by being part of a winning team, a school that does well at its own mission, which most often is not test score maximization.\u00a0 Teachers are motivated by being part of an occupation that is honored and trusted.\u00a0 These are the lessons from a century of study.<\/p>\n

How should we then use achievement data?\u00a0 First, build feedback into the lesson and project level of schooling rather than waiting for end-of-year tests.\u00a0 Second, use tests that actually measure student performance on substantive tasks.\u00a0 In other words, build data feedback into the everyday life of teaching and learning.<\/p>\n

What policies use data effectively?<\/p>\n