News Analysis: Money to catch test cheats lacking

ATLANTA --- State officials say they had two good reasons for not widening their investigation into test-cheating beyond four elementary schools, even though they thought the problem was much larger.

"Financial and logistical," said Eric Wearne, the deputy director of the Governor's Office of Student Achievement, an agency charged with ensuring testing integrity. "Our office consists of six people."

The agency took a full year after the exams to bring a recommendation of sanctions against the schools. At issue were standardized math tests administered at more than 600 elementary schools to fifth-graders at the end of the 2008 summer school.

The tiny staff was strapped just looking into four elementary schools where evidence suggested tampering of answer sheets.

After a statistical analysis of the scores, counting the number of erasures on answer sheets and conducting personal interviews, four investigations were all that could be done, he said.

The budget is another reason. State tax collections have been dropping all year, and the fiscal year that ended June 30 wound up off by 10.5 percent compared to the previous year.

Agency director Kathleen Mathers announced that the scope of the investigation was limited to the most obvious cheating so there would be little question about the facts. That would serve to deter others in the future, she said.

Gov. Roy Barnes created the Office of Student Achievement as part of his education reforms eight years ago because he wanted to make educators more accountable for their students' performance.

Mr. Barnes gave the office authority to conduct investigations and recommend stiff sanctions against schools found monkeying with tests, but little was done with the investigation powers until this year.

Gov. Sonny Perdue made Ms. Mathers head of the office in 2007, and since then it has been putting the pieces in place to mount professional investigations, Mr. Wearne said. She is drafting a plan for more aggressive investigations during the coming school year.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that its analysis tipped off the office, but Mr. Wearne said Ms. Mathers' team was already on the trail.

The clue was standard deviation, used to compare the change between the summer-school retest and the students' original failing score from the school year. Those that varied the most -- 3.5 standard-deviation points -- triggered the detailed analysis.

When one State Board of Education member asked how widespread the cheating actually is, Ms. Mathers had a jarring response.

Using the 2 points of standard deviation statisticians normally employ would have turned up about 20 schools, five times the current number. More sobering, she was only talking about the fifth-grade math retest, not every grade level.

Neither the state board nor the Office of Student Achievement has power to punish individual educators or administrators. The DeKalb district attorney filed charges there on his own, but neither state agency intends to refer the accusations to the attorney general.

The state investigators have shared their findings with the state Professional Standards Commission, which licenses teachers. But the commission strengthened its policies only after the cheating occurred. Still, any certified teacher could be suspended without pay for cheating.