Test Prep Has Teacher in Trouble

In the latest sign of the pressure educators feel to produce high scores on the state standardized test, a teacher in the Orange Unified School District has been suspended for giving students work sheets with examples taken directly from the actual Stanford 9 exam.

Although educators throughout Orange County expressed dismay over the infraction, many also said that as Stanford 9 determines the future not only of students but of teachers and entire school districts, the pressure will lead to testing violations of all sorts.

Orange learned April 5 that an eighth grade mathematics teacher at Cerro Villa Middle School had distributed work sheets with questions lifted from the eighth-grade mathematics section of the Stanford 9 test and from related materials. The teacher was placed on paid leave the following day.

State regulations forbid using actual questions from the test, or even creating material that parallels the test too closely. Teachers and administrators involved in Stanford 9 testing are required to sign an affidavit promising not to copy any part of the test booklet.

“As a district, we are tremendously disappointed in unethical conduct,” said Supt. Barbara Van Otterloo. “When this investigation is complete, we will take appropriate disciplinary action.” Citing confidential personnel issues, Otterloo declined to comment further.

Orange teachers union President John Rossmann, however, said the suspended teacher did not mean to cheat.

“This was a procedural error by a new teacher,” he said.

This isn’t the first such incident statewide; earlier this year, the Los Angeles school district disciplined 13 teachers at Banning High School for similar actions, and eight teachers in Woodland, outside Sacramento, are under investigation for doing the same earlier this month.

While these represent clear violations of the state rules, they also exemplify a deepening dilemma on the Stanford 9 testing that the state has yet to resolve: Teachers must enable their students to perform well on the test, and ultimately their fate and extra funding for their schools depends on it, but they’re supposed to do it without using material similar to the test itself.

“This is a national problem and I think it’s bound to happen unless people are provided with two things: the capacity to actually teach well and, secondly, a test that you can document is sensitive to good instruction,” said Eva Baker, co-director of the UCLA-based National Center for Research and Evaluation.

“The problem is that attention has shifted from learning to test scores,” Baker said. “The assumption of the policymakers is test scores equal learning, and I’m not sure that’s accurate.”

The Stanford 9 has been administered to California students in grades two through 11 for the past two years and is used to determine a school’s rank in the Academic Performance Index.

Those rankings ultimately will be used to reward schools and teachers that meet targets for improvement and show significant progress. It will also identify schools that fail to reach their goals, resulting in sanctions from reassignment of staff to closure or state takeover.

California Teachers Assn. President Wayne Johnson said pressure like that increases the chances of these and similar infractions.

“What we have found is that when you get into this kind of testing frenzy and everything rises and falls on the results of this one test, then you create tremendous pressure on people,” Johnson said.

State officials say few districts have reported cheating on the Stanford 9 within their ranks. Orange reported its incident last week, although not required to do so.

The 214 Cerro Villa math students who saw questions from the actual test will have their final scores flagged by the district. Whether they will be invalidated by the state is still under discussion.

While the rules forbid teachers from prepping students with materials that resemble the test’s format too closely, they do not spell out exactly what that means.

“It’s a test that is so shrouded in secrecy that it creates a frustrating environment for teachers,” Johnson said. “You’d like to be able to prepare the kids, but the test is not aligned to state standards, it’s not aligned to the curriculum or with textbooks, so what do you do?”

Barbara Colton, spokeswoman for the state Education Department’s assessment office, agreed that the state still has yet to clarify many of its policies regarding the test to school districts.

“We still need some policies and procedures that just are not in place yet,” Colton said. “Those are not easy things to deal with, and we’re working on it.”

Several weeks ago, the Capistrano Unified School District asked the state for a ruling on the matter, sending education officials test-preparation papers used by neighboring Saddleback Unified. Without identifying the district involved, Capistrano asked the state to clarify whether the materials violated testing restrictions.

“A number of teachers and parents . . . have made that an issue here for us, wanting to know why we can’t use them too,” said Capistrano testing director Jeff Bristow. “The state, however, has been remarkably unclear and unwilling to give us an answer.”

Bristow said the district would rather err on the side of caution. While not seeking to complain about another district’s practices, Capistrano would like guidance from the state. If the materials are fine, then teachers there will use them too.

Colton said Thursday that the materials Capistrano sent are not appropriate for test preparation.

“It appears to us that these materials do cross the line,” Colton said, adding that several other school districts in the state have been asking for clarification on what test preparation materials might go too far in the state’s view. Some questions in the materials were so close to ones on the test, she said, that they raised copyright concerns.

Saddleback officials expressed exasperation with that opinion.

“If materials testing basic skills crosses the line, then just about everything we’re teaching in the primary grades is crossing the line,” retorted Saddleback Supt. Peter Hartman. “We don’t use any materials that are specific to the Stanford 9. And if what we’re doing is illegal, then just about everything any district in the state is doing is illegal too.”

*

Times correspondent Marissa Espino contributed to this report.