If teachers helped them with the right answers, the theft is compounded. Shame on them. Public dollars spent on education are ripped off.
That’s why the state Board of Education had no choice Thursday but to order an immediate investigation into suspected tampering on last year’s state standardized tests that were given to elementary and middle school students across Georgia.
Right now, it looks bad.
The board’s action follows recommendations given Wednesday by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement. That office revealed disturbing findings from a statewide analysis of erasure marks on student answer sheets on schools across the state, which suggested tampering may have occurred at one in five Georgia schools.
That’s alarming. The good news - if you can call it that - is that only one of Savannah-Chatham County’s 41 elementary and middle schools (Hodge Elementary School) made the state’s suspect list of 191 schools. Those schools will get extra scrutiny, and rightly so.
Seven local elementary schools showed minimal evidence of a potential problem and will have to make changes, such as preventing teachers from being proctors for their own students. Meanwhile, 33 local schools were free and clear, which is reassuring.
And good for all 11 elementary and middle schools in Effingham County and all seven elementary and middle schools in Bryan County where no evidence of possible cheating was detected.
At issue is the credibility of the state’s primary measure of student achievement in grades one through eight, the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. The exam must not be compromised by someone with an eraser and an answer sheet. Otherwise it undercuts what the state and local school districts are trying to do to improve education, reduce the dropout rate and prepare young people for college or local job markets.
The long-suffering Atlanta school district fared the worst, with 43 schools showing "severe" evidence of an excessive number of answer sheets where wrong answers were erased and the correct answers marked in.
But it’s not just a big city issue. Albany had eight schools on that same list. Augusta, Columbus and Gainesville had higher percentages of schools flagged than other communities.
In fairness, what the governor’s office detected so far was only smoke. Sometimes where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Or there’s simply more smoke. That’s why it pays to take a closer look, which is what the state board is doing.
Perhaps there’s a simple answer. Perhaps large numbers of students at these 191 schools corrected wrong answers on their own. Indeed, we hope that’s the case.
But if that’s not the case, then school districts must try to identify the cheaters and stop them in their tracks.
Some critics have already accused the state of dumbing down its CRCT tests so more students will pass. If students must also cheat to pass, that’s more disheartening. Good for the state board for wanting answers.
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