What Atlanta newspaper cheating investigation says about Philadelphia | Philadelphia Public School Notebook

What Atlanta newspaper cheating investigation says about Philadelphia | Philadelphia Public School Notebook:

What Atlanta newspaper cheating investigation says about Philadelphia

by Dale Mezzacappa on Apr 04 2012 Posted in Latest news

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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, whose investigation of test score anomalies in Atlanta exposed a culture of cheating and led to the departure of former superintendent Beverly Hall, has expanded its reach to analyze test score results across the country.

According to the AJC, Philadelphia shows up on a list of 196 school districts "that appear to most resemble the pattern of test score jumps and drops found in the Atlanta Public Schools cheating scandal."

For a multi-part package published last month, AJC obtained detailed test score data for 2008 through 2011 for grades three through eight from almost all the states and more than 14,000 districts. Using complicated statistical analyses, it created "cohorts" of students, comparing scores from year to year in each school. For instance, the 4th grade scores in a given school from 2008 were compared to the  5th grade scores in 2009, and so on, and flagged for for unusual jumps. Themethodology, although it has been questioned by some experts, accounts for