Texas Ed Spectator

Remember all the controversy around TAKS scores and the Caveon analysis about possible cheating in 2006?

Everybody Does It / Academic cheating is at an all-time high. Can anything be done to stop it?

It used to be that cheating was done by the few, and most often they were the weaker students who couldn’t get good grades on their own. There was fear of reprisal and shame if apprehended. Today, there is no stigma left. It is accepted as a normal part of school life, and is more likely to be done by the good students, who are fully capable of getting high marks without cheating. “It’s not the dumb kids who cheat,” one Bay Area prep school student told me. “It’s the kids with a 4.6 grade-point average who are under so much pressure to keep their grades up and get into the best colleges. They’re the ones who are smart enough to figure out how to cheat without getting caught.”

This sounds a lot like the kids at the schools the our former TEA commissioner, Dr. Neeley, said wouldn’t have to cheat to get good TAKS scores.

Money makes you honest « Texas Ed: Comments on Education from Texas

Dr. Neeley said the wealthy districts on the list – including many considering self-investigations – are unlikely to cheat.

“You look at Highland Park, Richardson, Eanes,” she said, naming some of the state’s wealthiest districts in the Dallas and Austin areas. “Do they have to cheat to have good scores? I gave a talk in Eanes not long ago and said, ‘Do you people think Westlake High School had to cheat to get good scores?’ “

But I’m sure things are different in Texas, right?

Technorati Tags: cheating, TEA, Caveon, TAKS, Shirely Neeley

Does anyone else’s jaw drop when they read the follow?

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News:

The Texas Education Agency is leaning toward severing ties with the company it hired to look for cheating on the TAKS test, in part because the results have generated negative publicity for the state.

Does this mean TEA had expected them to generated good publicity about possible cheating? Caveon fulfilled its part of the contract, it’s TEA that has had problems dealing with the results.

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News:

The agency also has some concerns about some methods used by the company, Caveon, officials said.”I don’t have a lot of confidence in them anymore,” state Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley said. “Right now, I’m sure not inclined to ask Caveon for anything anymore.”

Because they might give her more bad news?

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News:

But Dr. Neeley and other state officials have repeatedly said they had not planned to investigate any of the schools and that they have done so primarily in response to media coverage of Caveon’s findings.

At least she’s honest. So what was the point of the process? I know that they wanted to establish a “baseline” for future evaluations but it still seems to me that these flags were never meant to render the final status of cheating in a school. They were meant to indicate further investigation even if they weren’t going to make the results public.

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News:

“It’s how it’s been misconstrued that’s the problem,” said Robert Scott, deputy commissioner of TEA. “The statistical analysis may be fine. But the implications have been ‘everybody’s cheating.’ “

The implication that “everybody’s cheating” has been the result of the pathetic manner in which TEA has handled the results, not the results themselves.

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News:

Caveon uses statewide data to determine how big a jump in TAKS performance a student typically has from year to year. Then it filters out students whose gains were more than a certain amount above that state average. Schools that have too many of those students get flagged as suspicious.But because it uses the same standard for all schools, Caveon’s method puts additional scrutiny on high-achieving and high-wealth schools. Students at those schools tend to have higher gains from year to year than schools with lower performance.

The result is that Caveon flagged a large percentage of the high schools in well-off suburbs – schools where students generally achieve high TAKS passing rates without having to resort to cheating. Some superintendents have said they don’t trust Caveon’s gain-score methodology.

Let’s see, so students in wealthy districts generally don’t have to cheat to have high TAKS passing rates. The implication is that because of background, they do well on standardized tests anyway. However, these schools were flagged because of a big jump in test scores from year to year which means these schools had significantly lower test scores the previous year.

Now wealthier districts may have access to more resources that allow them to dramatically improve test scores from year to year but the fact remains these districts had low test scores that had to be raised. Given the expectations, as suggested by Neely herself, that students in wealthy districts shouldn’t have any problems passing the TAKS, why wouldn’t some in a district resort to cheating to meet those expectations?

It’s statements like the following that got TEA into this mess to begin with:

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News:

Even though investigations are coming, state officials have said that Caveon’s methods are not reliable enough to evaluate the test scores of individual students and were intended to uncover “anomalies,” not cheating.

Apparently it was very difficult for the reporter (way to go Joshua) to look up the specifics of the contract which states:

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News:

According to Caveon’s contract, its duties were to provide “summary and detailed results” that include “cheating and piracy activities by individual examinees,” “the incidence of test fraud/theft by classroom and school,” and “anomalous test results in schools that are most likely due to cheating by test administrators or outside sources.”

Maybe TEA isn’t part of the reality-based world. Even if the powers that be really did think all Caveon was going to do was report “anomalies,” what was TEA going to do about the anomalies? And these people are running our education system? No wonder it has problems.

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News:

All 699 schools suspected of cheating on the TAKS test will face a state investigation, the Texas Education Agency announced Monday.Sort of. The word “investigation” can have many meanings.

Now why couldn’t they have reached this “decision” when the results were first released? Did anyone at TEA really think that they would get away with not investigating the schools?

Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Latest News:

And state officials still have no plans to seek the additional test data that would make a detailed investigation possible. For example, the state still does not know which students have the most suspicious test answer sheets.

TEA appears to be getting good at this, not asking for data. They can’t provide their teaher’s qualifications because they don’t have the data and now they won’t be able to fully investigate because they don’t have the data.

Brenham Banner-Press Online Edition:

Neeley also said she has no patience for those who claim educational reforms hammered out by lawmakers in House Bill 1 during a special session this year “will be the death” of athletics, fine arts and UIL academic competitions.

“That’s malarkey,” she said.

Schools will always have programs such as athletics, cheerleading and band because “that’s what makes school fun … that’s what creates leadership,” said Neeley, who during her educational career has been a teacher, principal and district superintendent. “And my hat’s off to you for emphasizing the things that make school fun.”

So math, English, science, history and such aren’t fun? It’s not that I expect science classes to be fun where students and parents shell out money for tickets for the local science fair. What bothers me is the head of TEA seems to believe that kids only “tolerate” the non-fun classes because of the available fun activities. I think this is part of the problem with our society in general, kids don’t want to have to do anything unless it’s fun. Marketing has taken over all aspects of life. Just because it’s interesting, useful, or necessary isn’t good enough.

Then there is the leadership issue. According to Neeley, leadership is created in the fun programs. These are the students who become our leaders in society. No wonder our society doesn’t want to give up football. And when the state requires schools to spend 65% of their funding on classroom instruction, politicians can rest assured that varsity football is included under the definition of instruction.

Well, at least cheerleading hasn’t disappeared yet from Texas schools.