School testing incidents up from last year

By Emily Richmond (contact)

Tuesday, Sept. 13, 2005 | 10:37 a.m.

Incidents of testing irregularities at Nevada's public schools increased 20 percent in 2004-05 over the prior academic year, a new report shows.

The state Education Department found 145 testing irregularities among the 360,000 answer sheets processed by the department. In the prior year, there were 121 testing irregularities found among 285,000 answer sheets. So the rate of irregularities was the same each year -- 0.04 percent.

The highest number of incidents, 36, involved improper test administration. There were also 23 reports of student cheating or misconduct, down from 26 in the prior year.

The 2001 Legislature mandated that the Education Department issue an annual test security report following a rash of incidents involving students having improper access to materials, cheating and mishandled answer sheets.

The state Board of Education has also come down harder on teachers found to have willfully violated test security measures. Four teachers were sanctioned in 2004, including a Clark County educator whose license was revoked after he provided his students with a study sheet made up of questions he had copied from the state math proficiency exam.

Overall, cheating accounted for 16 percent of all reported testing irregularities last year in Nevada, a decrease from 21.5 percent in 2003-04.

State education officials credited the declines to better enforcement of testing policies and proctors who were more vigilant during the administration of the exams.

"We've tried to emphasize that we can't tolerate these situations," said Keith Rheault, state superintendent of public instruction. "The message was spread a little firmer this year at the site level, so I credit the school districts for doing a better job."

Schools are also now required to develop test security plans which detail storage and access to materials. In addition to updating training manuals, the state is developing single-page check lists for use before, during and after test administrations, Rheault said.

Of the 145 incidents total incidents statewide, 49 were reported at Clark County schools, down from 58 in the 2003-04 academic year.

Sue Daellenbach, testing director for the Clark County School District, said she was pleased by the drop in the number of incidents and noted that it occurred even as 12 campuses and 12,000 students were added.

"Of course we would like to be perfect," Daellenbach said. "But with more than 300 schools, 300,000 students and 2,000 new teachers to train every year in the proper procedures, I believe we are doing very well."

Students caught using electronic devices during exams, including cellular phones, continues to be a problem.

"I don't think that's ever going to change," Daellenbach said. "When you have that many students and that much technology, it gets awfully tempting for them."

When broken down by the type of exam, Nevada's track record was uneven. The high school proficiency exam's reading and math sections showed a 22 percent decrease in reports of testing irregularities. But there were sharp increases in reported problems with writing assessments at various grade levels.

On the high school proficiency exam's writing section 19 irregularities were reported, up from five in the prior year. The number of incidents reported from the eighth grade writing assessment doubled to 18 from nine in the prior year. And incident reports were also up for the fourth grade writing assessment, to 16 from 10.

On the high school writing exam the majority of the reported incidents, 11 out of 19, involved schools testing ineligible students. At the eighth grade level nearly half of the reported incidents, seven out of 18, were the result of students being tested twice.

In Clark County several English Language Learner students were accidentally given the test twice, Daellenbach said. The mix-up occurred when the students sat for the exam in their regular English classes and then again in their ELL class, Daellenbach said.

"Unfortunately we didn't catch that -- we'll be a lot more vigilant this year," Daellenbach said.