Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Study of school testing finds rise in cheating, some lighthearted moments

In the crime blotter otherwise known as Nevada’s annual report on school testing, there is good news and bad news.

The good news: Teachers are mishandling tests less often than last year. The bad news: Students seem to be cheating a bit more, especially with cell phones.

And there is this unrepresentative incident:

“A student began (to) shout his responses aloud during the test.”

The perp was a third-grader.

It happened March 17 at Mitchell Elementary School in Sparks.

“What a little sweetheart!” school Principal Meredith Johnson said.

Johnson said she knew nothing about the child’s apparent enthusiasm or whether he was told to shush. It happened four months before she started as principal.

But Johnson said she knows from her teaching days all about the havoc of testing and the splendor of test administration.

“I had one child throw up on the test,” she said. “I couldn’t believe they wanted me to pack it up and send it to them,” meaning senior test administrators.

Tests are school. But the number of state-required tests on reading, writing and mathematics assessing student performance has increased sharply since the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

The Nevada Education Department has always compiled statistics on teacher mishaps with tests and student cheating, but has only issued public annual reports since the federal law was enacted.

Released this month, it is called the “Report of Test Security Activity for Nevada Public Schools School Year 2009-2010.”

There are about 436,000 students in Nevada public schools, about the same as last year. More than two-thirds are in Clark County.

Last year, Nevada students sat down for 600,000 tests, up about 15 percent from the 520,000 year before.

Of these, there were 41 instances of “improper test administration” by teachers, down from 38 the year before. (That’s about 7 incidents per 100,000 in both years.)

Seating of students, supervision of tests and collection of test papers are strictly monitored.

At Lied Middle School on March 2, there was an “unauthorized disclosure of test content.”

“A teacher glanced down at a test booklet while students were testing and had questions about the benchmarks. No compromise is believed to have occurred, and the teacher was reminded that it is not permissible to look at test content.”

Sue Daellenbach, the Clark County School District official who oversees testing, said: “We’re not supposed to see the inside of the test. Ever. They don’t want teachers teaching to the test.”

Other violations seem harmless, though.

At Beatty Elementary School on March 18, a “poster containing money equivalency conversions was displayed on the wall of a classroom during testing. Procedures for an appropriate testing environment have been reviewed with the teacher.”

Because it was an elementary school, lettering on the poster was probably large and easily read across the room. Test surroundings have to be as uniform as possible throughout the state so no one group of students has an advantage over another, Daellenbach explained.

“They became real strict about what’s on a wall or anything that might help students during the test,” she said.

What is defined as cheating or “irregularities” totaled 67 last year, up from 53 the year before. (That’s 1 incident per 10,000 tests taken, the same as the year before.) Dictionaries, calculators, and cell phones — which can be used to electronically pass answers among students — are banned during testing.

Why not confiscate cell phones at the beginning of the test? “We only have a certain test window, which is narrow,” Daellenbach said. “Stopping students, taking their phones, cataloging them, giving them back all take time.”

And, as always, children will be children.

In Washoe County, at Damonte Ranch High School in Reno, “two students were observed playing hangman on each other’s test papers.”

And teachers will always be teachers.

At Cartwright Elementary School, there was “an unauthorized disclosure of test content.”

While student tests were being processed, a copy of one test was made and circulated because the student’s answer was, as the report put it, “humorous.”

The incident report was terse: “Staff were reprimanded for their actions.”

Johnson, the principal of the school where the third-grader shouted out his answers, said such incidents area all part of school life.

When she mailed the test paper on which one of her students had vomited to test administrators, she noted that the rules were later changed so that such papers no longer had to be submitted.

“I guess nobody cared to get that,” she said.

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