Education Week - April 27, 2016 - 14

Studies: Students Suffer
When Educators Cheat
were caused by local "rescoring" policies for the exams, in which teachers
automatically reviewed the short-answer and essay questions of students
whose scores fell near the proficiency
cutoffs for core subjects. Back then,
the researchers found 6 percent of the
scores-and 40 percent of the scores
near the cutoffs for the state's three
tiers of high school diplomas-were
bumped up over the threshold. In the
years after that first study came out,
New York changed its grading policies, first to bar rescoring and then to
move scoring to central locations outside the schools, where scorers would
not know the students whose tests
they graded.
By tracking what happened to
more than a half-million general
education students who took the
Regents exams from 2003-04 to
2012-13, before and after the grading policies changed, Stanford University economist Thomas Dee and
colleagues at Princeton and Columbia universities and the University
of Michigan dug into what made
teachers manipulate test scores and
what happened to students whose
scores were inflated.

A 'Cultural Norm'
Teachers at schools with high
percentages of poor or minority students were more likely than those
in other schools to manipulate test
scores, as were teachers at schools
whose 8th grade test scores ranked
below the city's average.
Researchers found, however, that
the rates of cheating did not significantly rise in schools where teachers
were eligible to receive bonuses based
on their students' test-score growth.
Nor was cheating significantly more
prevalent when schools were under
more pressure from state or federal
accountability systems.
"It seems that the manipulation of
test scores may have simply been a
widespread 'cultural norm,' among
New York high schools, in which students were often spared any sanctions involved with failing exams, "
the researchers concluded. The suspicious test-score patterns virtually
disappeared after the state banned
rescoring and moved grading outside of local schools.
For struggling students, the bump
went a long way. Of students who
barely passed the Regents, scoring
60 to 69 points on core subjects, on
average 76 percent graduated from
high school. Having a score pushed
just over the exams' passing cutoff
increased a student's odds of graduating by more than 28 percent. The
researchers found the black-white
graduation gap in New York City
would have been nearly a third
larger without the cheating, and the
gap in graduation rates between
high- and low-performing schools
would have risen from 18.3 percentage points to 22 percentage points.
Still, getting students over the Regents bar didn't always help them.
A student whose scores were ma-

nipulated was statistically 11 percentage points less likely to earn
an advanced college-ready diploma
than he would have been otherwise.
"On the one hand, if you are on
the margin of dropping out in high
school, and the score manipulation
gives you a mulligan, you're pretty
unambiguously better off over your
entire life," Dee said. "But if you're
a kid who had a low Regents exam
score but a high capacity for future
achievement, this manipulation
could be harmful, because you're
not going to relearn the kind of
foundational material you didn't
demonstrate an understanding of
in the Regents exam."
In secondary analyses, Dee and
his colleagues found students who
had been on a trajectory to earn Tabeeka Jordan, a former assistant principal in Atlanta public schools, is led to a holding cell after she was found
an advanced diploma before their guilty in the school system's test-cheating trial last year, along with 10 other former Atlanta educators.
scores were manipulated were less
likely to take and pass advanced- conference last month for the Na"One of the main concerns with from high school than those whose
math classes later on in high school. tional Center for Analysis of Longi- teacher cheating is that because of test scores were not fudged at all.
tudinal Data in Education Research. artificially inflated test scores, stuThere was evidence that teachIn
the
CALDER
study,
the
redents
are
not
identified
to
receive
ers
in the Georgia study changed
Cut Off From Remediation
searchers tracked the academic remedial services, such as inter- multiple-choice answers to boost
A separate study by Georgia progress, behavior, and attendance vention programs, summer school students' scores as the school
State University economists Tim of more than 50,000 elementary and or retention," the researchers told system was operating in a highSass, Jarod Apperson, and Cary- middle school students in the years Atlanta public schools. "If remedial stakes accountability environment.
cruz Bueno found even stronger following the cheating. In 2010, the programs increase student achieve- But teachers in New York likely
academic problems caused by wide- first academic year after the cheat- ment, denial of these services could thought they were manipulating
scores for "altruistic" purposes,
Dee said-to help "good" students
who were having a "bad test day,"
for example. The students who
had previously had better scores
in non-Regents math and science
Mean Likelihood of Graduation for Students With Inflated Scores
tests were more likely to be nudged
.05
over a test cutoff, as were those
with better behavior records.
But that subjective judgment also
led to implicit biases, Dee said. Black
and Hispanic students made up 70
New York changes
percent of students scoring near the
"bubble" of the Regents test, and so
scoring policies
they also made up the majority of
0
to stop cheating
those who had their scores manipulated. But teachers still were more
likely to give borderline white and
Asian students the benefit of the
doubt: White and Asian students
made up only 4 percent each of students in the test-score bubble, but
more than 44 percent of those had
-.05
their test scores nudged over, com2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
pared with 40 percent of black and
Hispanic students on the bubble.
SOURCE: National Bureau of Economic Research
Taken together, the studies suggest that cheating can be widespread in more than just multispread cheating on state standard- ing was discovered, they found mid- potentially have lasting effects on ple-choice tests, and even within
ized tests.
dle school students' attendance and the student."
environments that are not under
While Georgia's largest district, behavior stayed the same, but for
Based on the report, Atlanta heavy accountability pressure.
"Even when the teachers were
Atlanta, was embroiled in a wide- students who had had 10 or more launched Target 2021, a $9 million
spread cheating scandal at the same test answers changed, their scores initiative to create individual support acting out of what we might think
time, Sass, an economics and public in both English/language arts and plans for some 3,700 students who of as a kindness, edging [students]
policy professor, and his colleagues math dropped significantly.
were affected by the cheating and are above that test threshold, it harmed
began to track the consequences of
Math performance recovered in still enrolled. Sass and his colleagues them," Dee said."It suggests that
cheating on students in Atlanta and the second year after the cheating found on average, those students' there were kids who had that bad
another, undisclosed district.
scandal broke, but reading and Eng- math and reading scores lagged their day who had greatness within them,
In both districts, the researchers lish scores remained low.
peers by a half-year or more.
and that manipulation prevented
found schools with higher percentIn the other district, the research- them from having that greatness
ages of black students or students Links to Social Promotion
ers found cheated students were sig- realized," he said.
in poverty were significantly more
nificantly less likely to be eligible for
likely to show signs of cheating,
Sass, a policy-studies professor at extra support in math a year later
such as excessive erasures from Georgia State, suggested that this and in reading for two years.
MULTIMEDIA: Watch a PBS
Sass and his colleagues also found
wrong to right answers on multi- sort of cheating is similar to grade inNewsHour video about
ple-choice questions, according to a flation or social promotion: Students some preliminary evidence that stuAtlanta's cheating scandal.
pro bono report for Atlanta public whose scores are improperly changed dents whose scores had been manipwww.edweek.org/go/PBSAtlanta
schools and a separate study of the get passed into progressively harder ulated by 10 or more changed anunnamed district-presented at a work they are not prepared for.
swers became less likely to graduate

Kent D. Johnson/Atlanta Journal-Constitution/AP-File

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

CHEATING'S EFFECT ON HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION RATES

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Education Week - April 27, 2016

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