Charters Erase Achievement Gap through Innovative ... Cheating

by Clay Burell

categories: Charter Schools, Standardized Tests

Published June 10, 2009 @ 07:38PM PT

Three cheers for this charter school network's silver bullet to erase the achievement gap: cheat on the standardized tests. Or so the evidence suggests:

In the past, parents languished on waiting lists before enrolling their kids in Hernandez's [Cesar Chavez Network] schools. Regularly recognized for excellence in serving mostly low-income kids, Hernandez's schools earned a nod from President George W. Bush in 2007 for "closing the achievement gap." The Chavez network was considered innovative, even inspiring.

Is it? Here are some things to consider before enrolling your kid.

Possible CSAP abuses

Cesar Chavez schools in Pueblo are part of Pueblo City Schools (PCS). Elsewhere, they're members of the Colorado Charter School Institute. All of them, like most public schools, are assessed to a large degree on students' test scores.

Robert Vise, PCS executive director of assessment and technology, says he stumbled upon some eyebrow-raising information regarding the 2008 Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) test scores at Pueblo's Cesar Chavez Academy. According to data Vise received from the state, more than 60 percent of the Academy's 684 third- through eighth-grade students were given special accommodations for the test, such as extra time to complete it. These accommodations normally are afforded only to children with established physical or developmental disabilities.

All 220 students in fourth and fifth grades were given special accommodations in the test's reading portion, Vise says, and all but two also received special accommodations on the math portion.

"I've never had a whole grade level at a school have accommodations," Vise says.

The figures were jarring, particularly because Vise's own records suggested a small fraction of the children had qualifying disabilities, and a significant number were actually classified as being "gifted."

[....]  In 2005, [John] Brainard, then the Pueblo district's director of assessment and research, documented four phone calls from concerned parents of CCA third-graders, all relating the same story: Their children said CCA staff had brought them into a "CSAP review" following the test, and encouraged them to change some answers.

Along with staff from CTB-McGraw-Hill, CSAP's creators, Brainard was allowed to examine written answers on CSAP reading tests for Chavez's third-graders. Although no one ever accused the Chavez kids of cheating, significant erasures or changes were found in 62 percent of the tests, and some new answers appeared to be done in different handwriting.

Despite the evidence, the test results were never revised. (Read the rest...)

Silly Colorado. Instead of cheating to boost test scores, they could boost them honestly, a la New York, by dumbing down their state tests.

Oh never mind. As Joel Klein and Arne Duncan never tire of telling us, the fact that parents are on waiting lists to get their kids into these schools is proof not of their successful and highly-financed marketing campaigns, but of their quality.

(h/t Susan Ohanion)

Photo by Mr_Stein