D.C. School Officials Wary of Security on School Exams (DC)

April 8, 2011

WASHINGTON — As public school students in the nation’s capital began a new round of standardized testing this week, school board officials here Wednesday worried that a security seal on test booklets might not be enough to ensure that no one tampers with the answer sheets.
  
The concerns come in the wake of a USA TODAY investigation that found high rates of erasures — from wrong answers to right ones — on standardized tests in the D.C. public school system during the previous three years. In some cases, the rate was so statistically rare that experts say it could indicate cheating.

The former head of D.C. Public Schools, Michelle Rhee, has said she does not believe there was widespread cheating in the district during her tenure. But Rhee, now a national figure for education reform, has said she favors a new investigation into the anomalies USA TODAY identified.

On Wednesday, board members questioned why student answer sheets are sealed by a principal or school test coordinator — rather than by the teacher immediately following the exams.

“What gives you any guarantee that a secured, locked room is enough?” board member Mark Jones asked Tamara Reavis, the acting director of assessment and accountability for the Office of the State Superintendent of Education, which administers the test.

“We have to trust our principals that it is secured,” Reavis answered.

School board officials had planned to look into new test security measures enacted this year by the superintendent’s office. The measures include the addition of a security seal that can be broken only by the student during test time. Officials said that about half of states that use tests from vendor CTB/McGraw-Hill have such a seal.

Reavis said D.C.’s test-security protocols met industry standards, and that the district this year narrowed the time — to roughly one day — between when testing was finished and when a shipping company picked up test materials.

Ultimately, Reavis said, “the security of the tests are in the hands of the test chairperson and principal.”

Since USA TODAY’s investigation, district officials — including Kaya Henderson, the acting D.C. Public Schools chancellor — have supported a re-examination of the testing anomalies. The D.C. inspector general also will investigate the matter.

The school district, like many urban school systems, is under mayoral control. D.C.’s superintendent recommended in 2008 that then-chancellor Rhee investigate the scores at many schools with high erasures but the district initially balked. And in 2009, an outside firm cleared eight schools of cheating but said it could have gone further with its own data analysis.