Will cheating scandals change the focus on high-stakes testing?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has another explosive story out this week about possible cheating on standardized tests. This time, the newspaper looked at suspicious circumstances in nearly 70,000 schools across the country and found “red flags” in about 200 districts, an analysis that “suggests a broad betrayal of schoolchildren across the nation,” the newspaper said.
The newspaper looked for schools where test-scores had abnormally large leaps or drops from year to year. In Atlanta, an earlier investigation led the district to put more than 100 educators on paid administrative leave, and it is currently moving to fire some of them. (Four have already resigned rather than go through with a hearing.) This latest series of reports may lead to a similar fallout in other states and districts. More interesting to watch, however, will be whether the AJC investigation and another one published last year by USA Today in partnership with The Hechinger Report will have an impact on state and federal education policy.
The investigations into cheating have added fuel to the debate over standardized testing, which has become a big
The newspaper looked for schools where test-scores had abnormally large leaps or drops from year to year. In Atlanta, an earlier investigation led the district to put more than 100 educators on paid administrative leave, and it is currently moving to fire some of them. (Four have already resigned rather than go through with a hearing.) This latest series of reports may lead to a similar fallout in other states and districts. More interesting to watch, however, will be whether the AJC investigation and another one published last year by USA Today in partnership with The Hechinger Report will have an impact on state and federal education policy.
The investigations into cheating have added fuel to the debate over standardized testing, which has become a big
