How to protect your school and district from cheating scandals in an era of high stakes accountability.

1. Best Practices in Test Security
Wyoming Law Conference 2015

2. Today’s Meet
• For today’s presentation materials and to ask
questions or chat with me go to
• https://todaysmeet.com/MS2TestSecurity

3. The ugly side of accountability
The higher the stakes the higher the chances for
corruption!

4. Hypothetical Discussion 1
You are the District Test Coordinator. A middle
school parent calls you and reports that her child
says the tests from the 7th grade state assessment
were the same problems they practiced in class the
week before.
Before you can fully investigate, you receive a call
from the state department that one of your board
members has turned the school in for cheating.
What do you do?

5. Las Vegas
• Cheating Teachers Caused School’s Scores to
Skyrocket
• Changed student answer sheets

6. Atlanta
• 35 indicted
• 12 administrators, educators on trial
• Alleged to have cheated, lied and stole as a
cleverly disguised conspiracy to inflate state
test scores
• High pressure culture

7. Columbus
• State investigation of district reveals “top-
down culture of data manipulation and
employee intimidation”
• Changed test scores and grades

8. El Paso
• Superintendent pleads guilty to inflating
district test scores by holding back low
performing students and forcing others to
drop out

9. Philadelphia
• Three principals fired for test cheating
• Wrong to right erasures on tests reveal
patterns

10. L.A. County
• 5 school districts stripped of scores on state
test
• Claims of cheating, misconduct or mistakes in
handling standardized tests

11. Peoria
• Staff members at charter school admitted to
directing special education students to erase
answers on state standardized tests
• Staff admits to erasing some answers
themselves

12. New Orleans
• 33 schools flagged for possible cheating
• Plagiarism, improper test proctoring, excessive
changed answers

13. Best Practice 1
• Define cheating and irregularities
– Erase or changing an answer
– Filling in blank answers
– Providing correct answers
– Excluding students with poor performance on test
days
– Cueing students on incorrect answers
– Talking students through definitions and processes
– Giving extra time for students who don’t have
accommodations in the IEP

14. Best Practice 2
• Provide professional development on test
administration
• Have teachers sign an attendance sheet
• Make sure those who are absent receive a
makeup session
• Attach the agenda for the testing workshop to
the attendance form and file it away – it may
protect you later

15. Best Practice 3
• Assign a test coordinator at each school who…
– Develops policies and procedures
– Schedules a limited time for testing
– Administers tests in “controlled and secure”
settings

16. Best Practice 4
• Develop Chain of Custody
– Limit access to tests
– Inventory and/or audit test booklets
– Keep record of who, when and where materials
were accessed from a secure location
– Remove test materials immediately and score off-
site
– Securely lock materials after each test day is
completed

17. Best Practice 5
• Monitor test administration
– Train proctors
– Have at least two adults trained to proctor in each
testing room
– Monitor the tests during the scheduled times

18. Best Practice 6
• Conduct comprehensive integrity analysis
– Ratio Analysis/Erasure analysis
• Look for unusually high numbers of answers changed
from wrong to right
– Item-Response Pattern Analysis
• Look for unusually common response patterns from
students in the same class
– Test Score Analysis
• Look for exceptionally large increases from previous
years or large declines in next year’s test

19. Best Practice 7
• Have procedures for investigating allegations
of cheating or misconduct
– Emphasize prevention and protection of
employees from false allegations
– Provide a process for reporting, to whom, and
when
– Develop a policy that protects “whistleblowers”
– Follow up with all schools using the Wrong/Right
answer analysis for their school

20. Best Practice 8
• Investigating
– Investigate immediately
– Ensure that all witnesses are interviewed
– Coordinate with proper authorities
• Chain of command BUT know what to do if superiors
are involved – who do you report to then?
– The level of reporting to authorities may depend
on the type of test and the state of your
employment

21. Best Practice 9
• Identify district ethics statements or other
documents that address testing
• Make sure faculty and test proctors are aware
of those documents
• Wyoming has a Professional Conduct Guide
that addresses standardized testing

22. Best Practice 10
• If all your best efforts fail
• Investigate, document, then discipline or
prosecute those who are guilty

23. MJS Consulting LLC
• Dr. Mark J. Stock
• 64 Arrowhead Drive
• Laramie, WY, 82070
• Work # 307-766-6825
• Cell # 307-399-1711
• mstock1@uwyo.edu
• University of Wyoming
• Assistant Professor Educational Leadership

24. Hypothetical Discussion 2
A teacher stops by your office (you are the
principal) and says, “Something odd happened
today. I asked a new student who was transferred to
my class this semester from Mr. Jones’s class how he
did on the final assessment. He says the class never
took it. But when I looked on the computer, it shows
scores for all the students. I asked the other 4
students from his class and they all said the same
thing.”
What should you do? Take 10 minutes to discuss