Atlanta Cheating Scandal Unveiled By Reporters

Joe Resmovits, via a Richard Askey email:

Three years ago, Heather Vogell, an investigative reporter at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, sat down with a data analyst to crunch some numbers.

She had just received the latest crop of scores for the CRCT, a state standardized test. Curiously, Vogell noted, several schools statewide had changed in status between the spring 2008 administration of the test and the summer retest in 2008, going from not meeting Adequate Yearly Progress rates, a calculation set by federal legislation that determines the fates of individual schools, to meeting the measure.

"We saw there were a lot more schools that met AYP than we had expected. It was a larger shift," Vogell told The Huffington Post.

Like any intrepid reporter, she had some questions. "We were poking around. We saw some schools that had very hard to believe gains, just looking with the naked eye," she said.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at July 11, 2011 2:11 AM
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