Review Aims to Avert Cheating on State Tests

New York State education officials announced Monday that they had begun to review the way they detect and prevent cheating on standardized tests, taking a step to avoid the cheating scandals that have engulfed school systems in other states.

New York does not conduct statistical analyses of its high-stakes third- through eighth-grade tests to scour for suspicious results that could signal cheating, like unusual spikes in a school’s scores or predictable erasures on multiple-choice questions, officials said.

Analyses in Atlanta and Philadelphia, among other cities, have produced evidence of tampering on a scale that calls into question those cities’ educational achievements.

The State Education Department released a brief statement on Monday saying that the education commissioner, John B. King Jr., had convened a ?high-level working group in mid-July to begin an immediate review of “all aspects of the state’s testing system.” Officials said details would be available soon.

The group, headed by Valerie Grey, the executive deputy commissioner, will make recommendations to districts that will ensure “the integrity of our testing system before our students return to school in September,” though it may continue making recommendations after the school year starts. Schools are due to get the results of the 2011 third- through eighth-grade tests this week.

“We are in a period now where I believe the results of state testing systems around the country are coming under scrutiny,” Merryl H. Tisch, the commissioner of the State Board of Regents, said in an interview, adding that the state was acting to shore up public trust in its tests.

One hurdle, she said, was technological: the state’s testing systems are not designed to send computerized versions of results for easy comparison. But the state has hired a new testing company, Pearson, to develop its middle and elementary school tests beginning next year, and “the next iteration of test production will add technology to the system to make these types of studies much easier,” she said.

While New York City conducts investigations when questions about results are raised at a particular school, the city’s Education Department does not look systemwide for suspicious patterns on the tests. Those tests are the primary way the city judges the performance of elementary and middle schools on its annual school report cards. Before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg won control of the schools, the city did conduct erasure analyses, but they were stopped by the Board of Education because of concerns about cost and effectiveness, city officials said.

On the state tests for high school students known as Regents exams, an analysis by The New York Times found a suspicious spike in the number of students who scored just over the passing bar, a statistically improbable result. The city has begun to audit those exams, and the state has changed a policy that had required teachers to re-grade Regents tests of students who came close to passing.

On the elementary and middle school tests, however, the main concern of policy makers has been score inflation, not cheating.? Acknowledging that the tests had become too easy to pass, the state adjusted scoring last year, causing hundreds of thousands of additional children to fall below proficiency.

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Shanghai Schools’ Approach Pushes Students to Top of Tests

“Who in this class can tell me how to demonstrate two lines are parallel without using a proportional segment?” Ms. Li called out to about 40 students seated in a cramped classroom.

One by one, a series of students at this medium-size public school raised their hands. When Ms. Li called on them, they each stood politely by their desks and usually answered correctly. They returned to their seats only when she told them to sit down.

Educators say this disciplined approach helps explain the announcement this month that 5,100 15-year-olds in Shanghai outperformed students from about 65 countries on an international standardized test that measured math, science and reading competency.

American students came in between 15th and 31st place in the three categories. France and Britain also fared poorly.

Experts said comparing scores from countries and cities of different sizes is complicated. They also said that the Shanghai scores were not representative of China, since this fast-growing city of 20 million is relatively affluent. Still, they were impressed by the high scores from students in Shanghai.

The results were seen as another sign of China’s growing competitiveness. The United States rankings are a “wake-up call,” said Arne Duncan, the secretary of education.

Although it was the first time China had taken part in the test, which was administered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, based in Paris, the results bolstered this country’s reputation for producing students with strong math and science skills.

Many educators were also surprised by the city’s strong reading scores, which measured students’ proficiency in their native Chinese.

The Shanghai students performed well, experts say, for the same reason students from other parts of Asia — including South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong — do: Their education systems are steeped in discipline, rote learning and obsessive test preparation.

Public school students in Shanghai often remain at school until 4 p.m., watch very little television and are restricted by Chinese law from working before the age of 16.

“Very rarely do children in other countries receive academic training as intensive as our children do,” said Sun Baohong, an authority on education at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. “So if the test is on math and science, there’s no doubt Chinese students will win the competition.”

But many educators say China’s strength in education is also a weakness. The nation’s education system is too test-oriented, schools here stifle creativity and parental pressures often deprive children of the joys of childhood, they say.

“These are two sides of the same coin: Chinese schools are very good at preparing their students for standardized tests,” Jiang Xueqin, a deputy principal at Peking University High School in Beijing, wrote in an opinion article published in The Wall Street Journal shortly after the test results were announced. “For that reason, they fail to prepare them for higher education and the knowledge economy.”

In an interview, Mr. Jiang said Chinese schools emphasized testing too much, and produced students who lacked curiosity and the ability to think critically or independently.

“It creates very narrow-minded students,” he said. “But what China needs now is entrepreneurs and innovators.”

This is a common complaint in China. Educators say an emphasis on standardized tests is partly to blame for the shortage of innovative start-ups in China. And executives at global companies operating here say they have difficulty finding middle managers who can think creatively and solve problems.

In many ways, the system is a reflection of China’s Confucianist past. Children are expected to honor and respect their parents and teachers.

“Discipline is rarely a problem,” said Ding Yi, vice principal at the middle school affiliated with Jing’An Teachers’ College. “The biggest challenge is a student who chronically fails to do his homework.”

While the quality of schools varies greatly in China (rural schools often lack sufficient money, and dropout rates can be high), schools in major cities typically produce students with strong math and science skills.

Shanghai is believed to have the nation’s best school system, and many students here gain admission to America’s most selective colleges and universities.

Bao Beibei contributed research.

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