Expert Calls Metro Schools Testing Policy "Gamesmanship"
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A policy developed by Metro Nashville Public Schools, supposedly to help students, may also help bureaucrats to mask the real problems in those schools, a national testing expert told NewsChannel 5 Investigates.
That plan, which the school system insists does not violate any rules, raises the question: Can the public trust the message when the school system brags about its test scores?
"We would call it gamesmanship, manipulating test scores so that the district's educational policies appear to be a bit better," said Bob Schaeffer, who works with the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, better known as FairTest.
Among the students who disappeared from the Metro Schools' statistics was Brenda Seay's granddaughter, a student at Nashville's Hunter's Lane High School.
Her course load included English I and Algebra I - both courses that she would need to graduate.
"She didn't have an A/B average, but she was passing," Seay recalled.
But Seay said that, when the second semester came around, someone at Hunters Lane pulled her granddaughter from both classes -- without ever telling her why.
"I wasn't even aware that she got moved," Seay said.
MNPS officials said that there were extenuating circumstances with Seay's granddaughter that they cannot discuss because of federal privacy laws.
But former high school guidance counselors Shana West and Kelly Brown -- both still employed by Metro -- told NewsChannel 5 Investigates that wasn't uncommon.
They said that some schools pulled some struggling students from classes that had state-mandated End-of-Course exams -- the same exams that are used to measure how well the schools are performing.
Why would they do that?
"The only reason is because they want their scores to go up," Brown said. "That's the only reason."
Chief Academic Officer Jay Steele -- the architect of the city's high Expert Calls Metro Schools Testing Policy "Gamesmanship" - Story:
