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May 21, 2010

After test tampering concerns, Regents exams will be scanned

by Anna Phillips, at 7:01 pm

High school Regents exams have long come under criticism for being easy to game: Teachers grade their own students’ work, and checks against cheating are flawed. That could change next year with a new rule voted in by the Board of Regents.

Rather than rely on a group of teachers and state officials to examine tests for grade tampering, the city will begin scanning students’ multiple choice answer sheets next year. State officials said scanning tests will let them perform a high-tech cheating check called “erasure analysis.”

That means officials will be able to look for instances of teachers changing students’ answers by counting the number of times each student erased a wrong answer and bubbled in a correct one.

Next year, only six tests that students frequently take in order to get diplomas will be scanned, but in 2012 all Regents exams will be.

Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said instituting scanning part of a larger plan to increase the public’s trust in the state’s results.

“The audits that have been done on the exams have led people to ask about the results in some instances and the scanning is the first step towards maintaining the integrity of the results,” Tisch said.

Scanning will also give state education officials more information about the tests than they’ve ever had.

Currently, the state depends on school districts to send in their students’ Regents exam results, but does not collect data about how different kinds of students perform on the exams or how they fair on certain types of questions.

“It’s not that we’re going to be grading the tests at all,” said SED spokesman Tom Dunn. “It’s that we’re going to know a lot more about how 220,000 kids who took the algebra test did on question four or how they did on questions that looked at equations.”

Dunn said it was still unclear how New York City high schools would get their exams to the one scanning center in the city, but that the state and city have more than a year to work this out.

The EMSC Committee approve the recommendation below:

The Department realizes that there will be costs associated with scanning Regents Answer sheets. To that end, we propose the following two step approach:

  1. Starting with the June Regents Administration in the 2010-2011 school year, require that all Regents Exams in the following titles be scanned for Department analysis: Comprehensive English, Integrated Algebra, Global Studies and Geography, U.S. History and Government, Living Environment, and Earth Science. These exams are all used for the awarding of a Regents Diploma.
  2. Commencing with the 2011-2012 school year (June Regents Administration), require that all remaining Regents Exams be scanned.
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  • anathema

    yeah, at least these guys is smart and figured it out. With test scores the determined factor in teachers jobs and salary, you betcha they gonna be cheating for students like lil’ thiefs. how can we trust any teacher now? they gonna just teach to the test, they gonna just grade them all great, they gonna just take there tests for the students.

  • Pogue

    anathema, I’m going tp rate your comment a 3 and hope your multiple choice answers can boost you over a 65.

  • Invictus

    I say that there needs to be some sort of minimum iq and competency requirement to be able to post in this sort of sites. The A clown strikes again.

  • anathema

    i’m just like all them others who is out here who wasn’t teached properly by my teachers. Now its finally you’re turn to feel pressure cuz you aint doing you’re job! Teachers is cheating on these regents exams cuz it makes them look good. Now the Klein and Bloomberg done realized that this is happening (what took you so long) and now teachers is gonna be held accountable for there actions (or shalt we say no actions). I had one or two good teachers, they let me hang out and chill, but most of my teachers wuz all ways yelling and telling me what to do. Now its you’re turn to be yelled at and told what to do. Mayor Bloomberg, Mr. Klein, Mr. Duncan is gonna whip you teachers into shape. Peace. Don’t be hating cuz you know it true.

  • Bovine

    I would say that I was instructed by the principal on how to grade. Let’s not understate principal culpability in this.

  • Jeff S

    No another example of how they just don’t get it….I know scrubbing is a dirty word but when done properly, it is the only fair way to grade papers. We are not talking about taking a paper whose converted score is 40 and bringing it up to 65….that can’t be done….but if I were a parent and teachers did not have an opportunity to re-evaluate papers a credit or two short of a cut off point would rightly feel cheated. The Math exams, for example, are not all multiple choice. And two completely honest people can read the same student response in Parts II, III and IV and come to separate conclusions regarding a student response. When I was an Assistant Principal of a math department, I would often have to resolve an issue where one teacher felt a response was worth 2 credits and another 3….I had a very simple rule….in baseball a tie goes to the runner…in grading Regents exams, a tie goes to the student. That is not cheating or anything; that is acting responsibly because no exam is so perfect that there is any real difference, in most cases, between a paper graded at 63 and one graded at 65…and yes there were times we couldn’t do anything with the paper, no we would not grade something that was incorrect as correct but yes we always looked for a chance in such cases to give a student the benefit of the doubt. Will this new procedure allow teachers to continue to be fair to students this way or are we headed for everything to be a machine….

  • Invictus

    All these ‘measures’ to purchase more semblance of achievement and difficulty as simply that, commercials for products that are not necessarily real. While at first, they attempt to show that their ‘standards’ means business, I bet that they have other ways of addressing the massive amounts of exams that were perfectly suited for ‘gentrification’ but all of the sudden have become heavier than plutonium…

    Mark my words, see the ushering of a New Age of “Achievement” in dumbing down the non-existent standards in the up and newly improved Regents tests.

    Welcome to the victory parade of the educational reformers with The Great Leader Klein at the helm and do not forget the Supreme Leader Bloomberg, already embalmed for his 3rd term!

    Do not underestimate the power of Absolute Wealth when it comes to fooling the masses with their propaganda ministries down in City Hall.

  • I noticed that…

    Invictus,

    If Boss Tweed duped the masses during his time, why wouldn’t the Great Reformer & leader Klein continue to fool the masses. The legacy of Boss Tweed is ALIVE!!!!

  • Teacher

    I think the actual changing of multiple choice questions is extremely uncommon and probably the least frequent way that teachers cheat. Sounds like a huge waste of time and money to look for something that happens so rarely. There are a host of other less risky ways that teachers and administrators increase scores on regents exams.

    More common ways:

    1) reading a question for a student (not allowed under regents rules)
    2) providing definitions, explanations, or rewording a multiple choice question for a student
    3) inflating scores on essays (consciously or unconsciously)
    4) staying seated the entire time as a proctor so there is no way to see anyone cheating
    5) not doing anything when a student’s eyes are wondering onto a neighbor’s exam
    6) allowing unlimited, unsupervised trips to the water fountain and bathroom
    7) allowing shared dictionaries, calculators, erasers etc.
    8) giving extra time on an exam
    9) allowing a student to remain in the room after they have attempted to cheat
    10) seeing a student whisper to a neighbor and accepting the response, “I was asking for a pen”

    If the Board of Regents really wanted their tests to be scored accurately they would have students take the exams at another school with unfamiliar proctors and have the tests graded by teachers who are not being judged by that student’s performance. If we do it for the SAT and ACT then why not the regents exams. I am not sure anyone really wants to know how students would really do.

    Teachers and administrators are judged on student performance – they want high scores
    Klein and Bloomberg are judged on student performance – they want high scores
    The Board of Regents are appointed for five year terms by politicians – they want high scores
    Politicians need to point to the success of public schools – they want high scores

  • http://www.classsizematters.org Leonie Haimson

    So what if they scan them; what protections will they put in place to check what is scanned? If SED/the Regents are serious about stopping abuses, they immediately should require that these exams be scored by people other than staff at the very same schools; people who are desperately trying to save their own jobs based on the results.

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