At left, Principal Shuron Owens-Lincoln of charter ICEF Inglewood Elementary, who, in her first weeks on the job, had to make the "stark choice" to forgo two years' of API rankings to inform the state of a cheating fifth-grade teacher.?
UPDATE, October 18, 2011: The Santa Monica Daily Breeze, in a story by Rob Kuznia,?reports that two schools, "relatively strong [API] performers," will be penalized for teachers assisting children to cheat on state standardized tests. An investigation that had been going on came to light when the API results announced last week showed all zeroes for Adams Middle School in Redondo Beach and ICEF Inglewood Elementary. The penalty for each school is the loss of an overall API score for two years (but not an individualized student test results).
At Adams...a math teacher allegedly dropped frequent hints and even gave outright answers to the class while administering the test. At ICEF Inglewood Elementary - a charter school - a teacher is accused of creating a study guide using actual questions from a standardized test, which schools typically receive a couple of weeks in advance of the exam date. Both were fired or encouraged to resign...On the one hand, the events leading to the disqualifications underscore the high-stakes nature of California's testing culture, which impels a small fraction of teachers to take shortcuts.?But they also reflect the state's quirky method of uncovering suspect or negligent practices: In California, schools and local school districts, which are expected to police themselves...
"There's an incentive to say nothing," said Parker Hudnut, CEO of ICEF Public Schools, a nonprofit network of 14 charter schools in the South Los Angeles area. "But we wanted to do what was right, not what was convenient."
Of the state's roughly 10,000 public schools, 118 - including Adams and ICEF - were dinged for testing irregularities. All of the cases were self-reported. Last year witnessed 123 cases.
At Adams Middle School, the case began with a tip from a parent who made an anonymous phone call to the school district.
The parent reported that the teacher, while administering a standardized math exam, gave the entire class of 35 eighth-graders the answer to a question, according to a state "irregularity report form" obtained by the Daily Breeze.
This triggered an investigation by district headquarters at Redondo Unified. Administrators went to the school and interviewed the teacher and some students. The officials concluded that the teacher was coaching students in the following ways:
Discussing the questions with individual students.
Reading the question aloud to the class and telling them to read the fine print.
Returning answer documents to students and encouraging them to check their answers.
At ICEF Inglewood, the investigation began with the discovery of a suspicious-looking sheet of paper accidentally left on a copy machine, Hudnut said. The document was taken to the office of the new principal, Shuron Owens-Lincoln, who suddenly faced a stark choice: conduct an investigation and risk schoolwide penalties during her first year on the job, or look the other way...
For previous reporting on schools found cheating on standardized tests, read below the jump.
UPDATE, September 7, 2011: Howard Blume, education reporter for the Los Angeles Times, reported Sunday that in addition to Animo Leadership (see below), a second LAUSD school, Short Avenue Elementary in Del Rey, also had its scores thrown out after three teachers were suspected of cheating or helping students to cheat on the state tests.
As reported by Rob Kuznia in the Santa Monica Daily Breeze, Animo Leadership, a charter school in the Lennox School District (Inglewood address) was disqualified last week "from receiving an official Aademic Performance Index (API) score due to concerns over cheating." (At left, Bill Clinton speaks on the Animo Leadership campus in October 2002, during Gray Davis's campaign for Governor of California.)
By By most measures, Green Dot Public Schools, a well-regarded group of a dozen public charter schools in Greater Los Angeles, had a great year on test scores.
But that success has been tempered by a black spot: One of its high schools, Animo Leadership - which has an Inglewood address but is chartered by the Lennox School District - was disqualified from receiving an official Academic Performance Index score due to concerns over cheating.
The state on Wednesday released API scores for most every school in the state, but for Animo Leadership, in place of a score, the state database listed a cryptic message regarding a testing "irregularity."
Green Dot leaders on Wednesday explained that they discovered [after being alerted by students] a high number of erasure marks on several 11th-grade physics exams, and promptly reported the matter to officials with the California Department of Education.
"We went after it pretty hard and aggressively," Mario Petruzzi, CEO of Green Dot schools, told the Daily Breeze. "We did not try to sweep it under the rug. Will people every now and then try to cheat? Of course. But how you react to it sends a strong signal about how the organization feels about it."
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