After unearthing a massive cheating scandal in Atlanta public schools, a team of reporters from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper set out to see if testing in other cities and towns across the country might have been compromised as well. The result: An analysis of 69,000 schools in 49 states, and a new series of stories describing big swings in test scores at some schools that pointed toward the possibility that overly eager or nervous educators were gaming the system.
The Georgia newspaper also made all of its data available to other 
journalists, and The Scoop has taken the Connecticut numbers and reformatted them to allow tracking a group of students over as many as five years. Clicking the spreadsheet image at the bottom of this post (or simply clicking here) will launch a spreadsheet with about 22,000 Connecticut Mastery Test results for 768 Connecticut elementary and middle schools.
The Atlanta analysis followed groups of students as they progressed through grade levels. So rather than, for example, comparing sixth-grade math scores at a school from one year to the next, the reporters compared sixth grade math scores in one year with seventh grade math scores the next year, as those two tests would have been taken by the same group of students (with slight variations as pupils left or joined the school).
The Atlanta paper deemed exceptionally large jumps in test scores from one year to the next as suspect, particularly if scores then fell back down the following year. (“After gaining skills one year, students don’t suddenly become incompetent,” the reporters explain.)
In its nationwide analysis, the paper flagged 196 districts where unusual test-score swings were found in a large percentage of the student groups that were tracked. Among the districts are Bridgeport and Torrington. In Bridgeport, nearly 10 percent of student groups in 2008 had average test scores well outside the predicted range, based on their performance the year before. In Torrington, the figure was 20 percent. Those numbers do not establish any wrongdoing, the paper said, but in total, the 196 districts represent “troubling patterns that experts say merit further examination.”
The Connecticut data includes test scores from 2006 to 2010. As a result, they do not include the fraudulent scores discovered in 2011 at Hopeville Elementary School in Waterbury, where Republican-American reporter Michael Puffer revealed widespread cheating that led to disciplinary action against a dozen educators, including the school’s principal.
The data are arranged alphabetically by district and school. Scroll down to find your school, then read across the sheet to see how groups of students performed through the years. The figures in red represent average scale scores on the CMT for each cohort of students. So in the single example below, from the Bolton Center School, third-grade students in 2006 had an average score of 241 on the CMT reading test. Those same students, with slight variations, then achieved average scores of 256 in 2007 (as fourth graders); 257 in 2008; 266 in 2009; and 262 in 2010.
As noted above, click the spreadsheet image, or click here, to launch the full spreadsheet. (And don’t worry: the type in the full spreadsheet is larger and easier to read.)
Find something amiss at your school, or know of problems with testing in your community? Let us know, by contacting The Scoop here.
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2 Responses to Are CMT Scores at Your School Suspicious?
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The ones gaming the system are the leaders and then the get promoted to Special Master or Acting Superintendent and they get their positions from the Commissioner. When will these “leaders” be held responsible?
Where have you been?
Now let’s head to Hartford and see what Steven Adamowski and the education reformers have done there with the Connecticut Masterly Test (CMT).
Adamowski was named Hartford’s Superintendent in November 2006, so the baseline for assessing his success is the 2006-2007 school year. We’ll use the 8th grade CMT Mathematics test to see what happened.
(see link below if chart does not align with cut and paste)
School Year % of students taking standard CMT % Moved to the Modified Assessment Test % at or above proficient % at or above goal
2006-2007 91.7 0 47.8 22.7
2010-2011 84.6 9.8 60.1 +12.3 31.8 +9.1
Adamowski’s and his supporters claim that during his years in Hartford, the percent of students testing at or above the proficient level went up 12.3 (Column 4: 60.1 – 47.8 percent) and that there was a 9.1 percent increase in number who scored at or above goal (Column 5: 31.8-22.7 percent).
But hold on just a minute.
The year after Adamowski became superintendent, the State Department of Education began to roll out its new Modified Assessment Test – an alternative test for those whose skills were so deficient that they couldn’t succeed with the CMT.
As Adamowski left Hartford in 2011, 9.8 percent of Hartford’s lowest performing students had been removed from the CMTs and were now taking the Modified Assessment Test.
(Actually just over 13 percent were now exempt either because they were taking the Modified Assessment Test, their lack of proficiency in English is so great that they didn’t take the test, they were part of another very small program called “Check List” or they handed in a CMT test that had “no valid score.”)
While Adamowski and ConnCAN applaud the “growth” in Hartford’s test scores they fail to explain that 10 percent of the entire student body was moved out of the CMT’s and to a remedial test during the period Adamowski was superintendent.
http://jonathanpelto.com/2012/03/21/steven-adamowski-governor-malloy-and-perfecting-the-art-of-inflating-test-scores/
Investigate grade adjustments and increased graduation rates as we just keep pushing kids along….guess who bullies the teachers.
Anyway the email we received has to do with the grading system in Hartford schools and involves mandatory average bumps and how students have learned to game the system in a way no doubt many shortsighted teenagers would. Why wouldn’t they? The whole education system they have been brought up in is one concerned with “juking the stats” and meeting rate goals. The main thing many have learned from the system is the most important thing is how to work the system to meet the minimum standards.
Email to the Mayor’s Office was referred to contacts at the Hartford School system. Multiple emails to the Hartford Schools contacts were not replied to. The verbatim email follows;
“The Hartford schools have a new computer program called Power School. The program tracks everything; attendance, grades, GPA, etc. Teachers set up their grade book by entering assignments and giving each assignment a weight toward the final grade. (For example homework could be 20%, classwork 20%, quizzes 20% and exams 40%.) The program keeps a running average for each student. However, just before the marking period ended in January teachers were instructed to go into the program and manually override the average of every student receiving a failing grade to a minimum of 55.
Students who never show up to class receive a 55. Students have figured out that in a four marking period course they must earn a 75 one marking period to pass the course. Then they do not have to return to class. In a two making period course they must ear a 65 during one marking period to pass the course.
This improves the graduation rate doesn’t it? Makes Adamowski look good doesn’t it?”
http://sadcityhartford.blogspot.com/2011/04/schools-out.html