High Stakes Fudging on No Child Left Behind

by David Safier

School Districts all over the country are inflating their graduation rates, some by over 20%. Mississippi keeps two sets of graduation books. One says the rate is 87%, the other 63%.

Inflation of graduation rates and standardized test scores has gone on for years, but NCLB has turned it into an epidemic, because schools with low test scores and low graduation rates are labeled as failing.

Texas was the breeding grounds for the high stakes testing that led to NCLB, and it was heavily invested in showing that scores were rising. Of course, schools taught to the state test, but that wasn’t enough to guarantee high passing rates. So a number of freshmen who were sure to fail the high stakes sophomore test remained freshmen for two years, then miraculously became juniors. Many low performing students were counseled to drop out of school and work for their GED.

Our schools have become obsessed with “the bottom line” — test scores and graduation rates — at the expense of their educational mission.

A few years before I retired, high stakes state testing began in Oregon. I picked up the packets a few days before I gave the tests and put them in a locked file cabinet. After the students finished their tests, I collected them and brought them to the office at my leisure.

I never opened a packet prior to test day, nor did I change a single answer on a student’s score sheet after it was turned in. But I could have, and my students passing rate would have increased. If I peeked at the test questions, I could have “taught” my students a few key facts and vocabulary words that would have boosted a number of students from failing to passing. Once I collected the tests, I could have erased a few wrong answers and bubbled in the right ones for students I knew would be on the border between passing and failing.

I wasn’t tempted to cheat for my students, because, first, I knew my students would score reasonably well, and second, my years of teaching made me immune from administrative coercion. (And third, I have a high maintenance superego that would have hounded me.) But for a first or second year teacher fearing for his/her job, the temptation would have been far greater. And an unprincipled principal who wanted to be sure the school’s scores looked good could adopt a dozen measures, some perfectly legit, some underhanded, to increase the odds in his school’s favor.

Many people realize these high stakes tests undermine our schools by creating huge pressures to teach to the test rather than teach what is best for their students. Fewer people understand how easily students’ scores can be manipulated in a number of ways, some legit but deceptive, others definitely underhanded.