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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2008 > December > 22 > Entry
Scott Elliott: State skipped the tough questions about cheating
The Ohio Department of Education has the power to discover how cheating occurred on state tests administered at City Day Community School in 2006 and punish those responsible.
But, amazingly, it appears the department is prepared instead to forget the whole thing. That’s an outrage.
City Day, a Dayton charter school, came to public attention in February, 2007, when a former principal told the Dayton Daily News he believed he was fired, in part, for asking too many questions about the school’s extraordinary improvement on state exams. (I then was a reporter, and I wrote the City Day stories on this issue.)
How amazing was City Day’s sudden test score gain? In 2005, the school’s sixthgrade scores ranked among the worst in Ohio, falling behind 97 percent of all Ohio schools. Incredibly, many of the same students scored ahead of even perennial test champ Oakwood the very next year as seventh-graders, ranking in the top 4 percent of all Ohio schools.
How did City Day’s students go from the bottom 3 percent to the top 4 percent in one year? The kids had seen the state exam questions — in fact, practiced on the actual test questions for several days — before they took the exam.
In all, there were 44 questions on City Day’s practice tests that were either identical or substantially the same as questions that appeared on state exams they took just days later.
The test score gain vaulted chronically low-performing City Day out of the state’s lowest rating category of “academic emergency” for the first time ever, helping avoid any danger of state sanctions.
In the wake of the revelations, two people at the school pointed fingers at each other — Superintendent Roseda Goff and consultant Rachel Armour. Goff, who hired Armour, said Armour was solely responsible for creating the tainted practice tests. Armour said she merely retyped and reworked questions Goff told her were practice questions to make the tests.
Nearly two years ago, the education department said it was launching an investigation to get to the bottom of the cheating allegations. And earlier this month the Ohio Board of Education stripped Goff of her teaching license.
Yet somehow, the department’s reports to the state board and all its documentation in support of taking Goff’s license never mention a word about any cheating at City Day.
That’s because the state got a big break that allowed it to completely sidestep the messy and inconvenient questions about cheating.
Months after the testing issues came to light, Goff was convicted of a misdemeanor on a separate but also serious charge. Teachers told law enforcement that Goff had discouraged them from reporting a case of suspected child abuse. The conviction was plenty good enough for the education department to propose revoking her license.
But what about the cheating? Shouldn’t we find out for sure who was responsible? Should Armour face any consequences? Should procedures be changed to guard against other test security breaches?
Stan Heffner, the education department’s associate superintendent for assessment, and department spokesman Scott Blake said last week that the case is technically still open and, therefore, can’t be discussed publicly by state law. Theoretically, charges could still be made against Goff, but that is unlikely since she has already faced the department’s worst penalty by losing her license. Only the evidence the state board has already considered can be released.
Were Goff and Armour even subpoenaed and interviewed? What does the state know about how the cheating occurred? Those questions can’t be answered right now, and likely never will be, Heffner and Blake said.
Conveniently, this gets the state off the hook for having to explain how supposedly secure tests could be so easily compromised. Meanwhile, the people responsible will never face consequences for these actions.
That’s a pretty bad result for the thousands of honest principals, teachers and students who play by the rules on every test.
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