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Sunday, February 4, 2007
City Day’s practice tests
Want to see how closely questions from City Day Community School’s practice tests matched questions that appeared on Ohio Achievement Tests? Take a look at a few examples:
From City Day’s 7th grade practice test:
5) Mr. Munson asked Giovonte to draw a rhombus on the board. Giovonte drew a picture that looked like a slanty square. Ke’Nara went to the board and drew a square. Who was correct?
() Both, because a rhombus and a square must have at least four sides.
() Giovonte, because a rhombus must have one pair of parallel sides.
() Both, because a rhombus must have four congruent sides
() Ke’Nara, because a rhombus must have right angles.
From the 7th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
2) Coral was asked to draw a rhombus on the chalkboard. Coral drew a square. Ken told Coral that she didn’t draw a rhombus. Coral responded, “A square is a rhombus.”
Which statement supports Coral’s reasoning that a square is a rhombus?
A. A rhombus must have at least four sides.
B. A rhombus must have one pair of parallel sides.
C. A rhombus must have right angles.
D. A rhombus must have four congruent sides.
From City Day’s 7th grade practice test:
19) Aneyshia reduced her soda pop intake from 12 ounces to 4 ounces. What will happen to the volume of the soda pop can?
() The volume triples.
() The volume doubles.
() The volume is reduced to one half the original.
() The volume is reduced to one third the original.
From the 7th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
22) The Burton Company produces cylindrical barrels. If the height of a cylindrical barrel is reduced from 12 feet to 4 feet, what will happen to the volume of the barrel?
A. The volume triples.
B. The volume doubles.
C. The volume is reduced to one half the original.
D. The volume is reduced to one third the original.
From City Day’s 7th grade practice test:
7) Montasia surveyed 19 of her classmates about the hottest record labels. The graph shows the results.
Ice Age: 4
Cash Money: 5
So So Def: 10
Montasia’s class is representative of the whole City Day Community School. What is a reasonable estimate for how many of the 300 students in the school like Ice Age records?
() 65 students
() 100 students
() 75 students
() 125 students
From the 7th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
4) Manny surveyed 24 of his classmates about their vacation plans. The bar graph shows the result.
Visit Friends or Family: 10
No Plans: 6
Travel: 8
Manny’s class is representative of the entire school. What is a reasonable estimate for how many of the 300 students in the school have no vacation plans?
A. 50 students
B. 75 students
C. 100 students
D. 125 students
From City Day’s 7th grade practice test:
1) Bad Boy Records has a formula to determine the cost of producing records.
C = 3.15 + 0.25r
where C is the cost of producing a record and r is the number of records.
What is the cost of producing 12 records?
() $3.15
() $5.65
() $4.10
() $6.15
From the 7th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
A shipping company uses a formula to determine the cost of shipping a package:
C = 2.79 + 0.38p
where C is the cost of shipping and p is the number of pounds.
What is the cost of shipping a package that weighs 8 pounds?
A. $2.79
B. $3.04
C. $5.21
D. $5.83
From City Day’s 6th grade practice test:
20) What is the largest number that divides both 12 and 30 evenly?
() 2
() 3
() 6
() 12
From the 6th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
24) What is the largest number that divides both 12 and 30 evenly?
A. 2
B. 3
C. 6
D. 12
From City Day’s 6th grade practice test:
12) What number equals 0.20 x 0.4?
() 0.080
() 0.80
() 8.0
() 80.0
From the 6th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
1) Which number equals 0.25 x 0.3?
A. 0.075
B. 0.75
C. 7.5
D. 75.0
From the 6th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
17) Regina buys hair products and styling books at the store. She uses the expression 6h + 12b to find the cost of what she is buying, where h is the number of hair products and b is the number of hair books she buys.
Use the expression to find the total cost of 4 hair products and 5 hair books.
() $27
() $54
() $78
() $84
From the 6th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
19) Andrew buys books and videos in a store. He uses the expression 6b + 12v to find the cost of what he is buying, where b is the number of books and v is the number of videos he buys.
Use the expression to find the total cost of 4 books and 5 videos.
A. $27
B. $54
C. $78
D. $84
From City Day’s 6th grade practice test:
6) Estimate the area of a floor that will be covered by a piece of carpet that is 65 x 7 square feet.
() 75
() 350
() 500
() 450
From the 6th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
5) Square floor tiles will be put on a the floor of a school hallway. Each tile is 1 foot by 1 foot. The hallway is 85 feet long and 8 feet wide.
About how many tiles will be needed to cover the floor of the hallway?
A. 95 tiles
B. 100 tiles
C. 200 tiles
D. 700 tiles
From City Day’s 6th grade practice test:
Which expression shows the equivalent expression using the associative property? 6 x (a x 8)
(6 x a) + (6 x 8)
(6 + a) x (6 + 7)
(6 x a) x 8
6 x (8 x a)
From the 6th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
7) Sarah used the associative property to find an equivalent expression to 5 x (a x 7)
Which expression to Sarah use?
A. (5 x a) + (5 x 7)
B. (5 + a) x (5 + 7)
C. (5 x a) x 7
D. 5 x (7 x a)
From City Day’s 5th grade practice test:
15) Al-Maajid has a box of 30 Yugi cards. There are 15 red cards and 15 blue cards in the box. Al-Maajid pulls out a card, records the color and returns the card to the box. After pulling 10 times, he has recorded 6 red cards and 4 blue cards.
Which statement describes whether the results are reasonable?
() It is reasonable because both 6 and 4 are close to 5.
() It is reasonable because 6 is more than 4.
() It is reasonable because he will not always get 5 red cards and 5 blue cards.
() It is not reasonable because he did not pick enough cards.
From the 5th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
17) Janet has a box of 30 cards. There are 15 blue cards and 15 green cards in the box. Janet pulls out a card, records the color and returns the card to the box. After pulling 10 times, he has recorded 6 blue cards and 4 green cards.
Which statement describes whether the results are reasonable?
A. It is reasonable because both 6 and 4 are close to 5.
B. It is reasonable because 6 is more than 4.
C. It is reasonable because she will not always get 5 blue cards and 5 green cards.
D. It is not reasonable because he did not pick enough cards.
From City Day’s 5th grade practice test:
16) Shanise covered a floor with a rug. Which unit describes how large the rug was?
() Inches
() Feet
() Square feet
() Cubic inches
From the 5th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
19) Bob covered a floor with a carpet.
Which unit of measure describes how much carpet he used?
A. inches
B. feet
C. square feet
D. cubic inches
From City Day’s 5th grade practice test:
18) Stephanie writes each letter of her name on a separate index card as shown.
S T E P H A N I E
She puts all the cards in a bag and randomly pulls out one card. What is the probability that the card is an “E”?
() 1/2
() 2/7
() 2/9
() 1/9
From the 5th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
22) Beverly writes each letter of her name on a separate index card as shown.
B E V E R L Y
She puts all the cards in a bag. She randomly pulls out one card. What is the probability that the card is an “E”?
A. 1/2
B. 2/5
C. 1/7
D. 2/7
From City Day’s 5th grade practice test:
7) Kelly has $17. She bought a shirt that costs n dollars. She now has less than $2 remaining. What inequality represents the situation described?
() 20 - n > 2
() 17 - n < 2
() n - 17 < 2
() n - 20 > 3
From the 5th grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
2) Roberto has $20. he bought a soccer ball that costs m dollars. He now has less than $5 left. Which inequality represents this situation?
A. 20 - m < 5
B. 20 - m > 5
C. m - 20 < 5
D. m - 20 > 5
From City Day’s 3rd grade practice test:
8) Goldie Lock’s hair is 10 feet long. it grows 3 feet each week. how long will Goldie Lock’s hair be at the end of 3 weeks?
() 15 feet
() 16 feet
() 19 feet
From the 3rd grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
18) A tomato plant is 7 inches tall. it grows 2 inches each week. How tall will the tomato plant be at the end of 3 weeks?
A. 9 inches
B. 10 inches
C. 13 inches
From City Day’s 3rd grade practice test:
2) The chart shows the number of books Ms. Maurer’s class read during the week.
keiton 3
Shantaya 3
Ashley 2
Jamaris 3
Norman 4
What is the mode for this set of data?
() 4 books
() 3 books
() 2 books
From the 3rd grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
24) Nine students gathered data bout their fathers’ shoe sizes.
Shoe size: 8, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 9, 10, 10
What is the mode for the data they collected?
A. size 8
B. size 9
C. size 10
From City Day’s 3rd grade practice test:
7) A number minus 10 equals 25.
Which number sentence shows this?
() n - 10 = 25
() 10 - n = 25
() 25 - 10 = 15
From the 3rd grade math Ohio Achievement Test:
46) Monica has 18 books. She shared some books with a friend and had 12 books left.
Which number sentence could be used to find the number of books Monica shared?
A. 18 - n = 12
B. 12 - 18 = n
C. 18 + 12 = n
Permalink | Comments (22) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, City Day Investigation, Testing
Lessons in test security
This much nobody is disputing — practice tests given at City Day Community School last year somehow contained questions that were based on the actual Ohio Achievement Test. In some cases questions from the practice test and the actual state exam are all but identical.
That should never happen. How it did happen is not yet completely clear.
But what we have learned suggests test security on at least four Ohio Achievement Tests from March 2006 was compromised.
It may take some more investigating to find out exactly where those questions came from. Officials at the school insist the state tests that were delivered to City Day in February 2006 were not tampered with. But somehow it seems a test somewhere was compromised.
And at least one expert in test cheating says the state could be doing more to keep those tests secure.
Greg Cizek is a professor of education measurement and evaluation at the University of North Carolina and author of the 2003 book “Detecting and preventing classroom cheating: Promoting Integrity in Assessment.” He also knows a thing or two about Ohio. Cizek is a former University of Toledo professor who serves on a panel of testing experts that advises the state on its standardized testing program. He was also once a school board member Sylvania.
Hearing the City Day story, Cizek had a couple of immediate suggestions. Ohio allows its testing company to deliver standardized tests to schools up to seven days before the test is scheduled. That is way to long, Cizek said. With today’s just-in-time shipping options, tests should be delivered much closer to the actual test date. There also should be much tougher rules for tracking test handling.
“The states that I am aware of in which test security is taken very seriously try to have the test booklets arrive with the smallest possible interval between arrival and test administration,” he said. “In addition, those states require and “chain of handling” sign-off procedure from the minute the booklets hit the district so that there is a clear record of exactly who handled the materials and when.”
If the state wanted to take it a step farther, it could follow the example of Texas, which is now using statistical methods to track unlikely changes in test performance by schools there in an effort to catch cheaters. Texans can thank the Dallas Morning News for the state’s new vigilance. It was the Morning News’ stories about cheating in that state which finally got state officials to recognize the need for change.
There are a lot of great new methods to root out cheating. One example — computers can now track erasure marks and record how often a student changes answers from wrong to right and vice versa. Too many erased wrong answers can point investigators to schools that may need more scrutiny. The head of the state testing program, Mitch Chester, told me in September that the state’s testing company this year is conducting an erasure study for the first time.
But up until now, Ohio has not employed new methods for catching cheaters. Chester told me in the past five years the only testing irregularities he knew about were self-reported by schools, which means they were likely small procedural mistakes.
Meanwhile, the Morning News is finding hundreds of schools with suspicious results in Texas. Is possible that Ohio is that much different than Texas? Or could more advanced methods employed here produce similar findings?
One other thing the state could do that might help us better understand whether cheating is a real problem here. It could tell us when it catches cheaters. Ohio Department of Education spokesman J.C. Benton told me recently that just this year the state put in place a new policy — it no longer discusses investigations into test irregularities.
In other words, the Ohio Department of Education will neither confirm nor deny when an investigation is underway. Even when an investigation is complete, the department will not release the findings or even acknowledge it ever investigated a school.
But when it comes to cheating, wouldn’t it be better if we knew more rather than less?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: City Day Investigation, My Favorite Posts, Testing
City Day: Practice test raises questions
By Scott Elliott
Staff Writer
DAYTON — Last March, fifth graders at City Day Community School knew which unit of measurement Bob used to cover a floor with carpet.
Sixth graders knew that 6 — not 2, 3, or 12 — was the largest number that divided both 12 and 30 evenly.
And seventh graders knew that the square Coral drew was a rhombus because it had four sides.
The question is, how did they know?
In each case the students had seen these questions — or questions that were nearly identical — on practice tests they took the week before the school administered the Ohio Achievement Tests.
In all, a Dayton Daily News investigation found 44 questions on practice tests taken by City Day students that were identical or substantially the same as questions that appeared on the actual state exam they took just days later.
And when state report cards came out last year, huge gains in the percentage of students who passed the test helped propel the chronically underperforming school out of the state’s lowest rating category of “academic emergency.”
Ohio has specific procedures for the handling of state achievement tests, but trusts each school to maintain the security of the exams. Practice questions are available on the Ohio Department of Education Web site, but they aren’t drawn from the actual tests, and in many cases don’t closely resemble the real test questions.
City Day Superintendent Roseda Goff said a consultant hired by the school used traditional testing preparation materials to drill the students prior to the test, and that no state procedures were violated.
But Carl Robinson, who joined the charter school as principal last summer, said he questioned the scores, particularly after he had assessments done on some of the students who did well on the tests. Robinson said he was fired in November, one day after approaching Goff about his concerns.
The test results seemed too good to be true, Robinson said.
The sixth-grade class at City Day, 318 S. Main St., didn’t have a single student pass the math portion of the Ohio Achievement Test in 2004-05. A year later, 100 percent of its seventh graders passed the state’s seventh-grade math test.
Similarly, no one in the school’s 2004-05 fourth-grade class passed the state math test that year, but a year later 59 percent of the fifth-grade class passed the state math exam. It now appears that those too-good-to-be-true results were just that.
“I said wait a minute,” said Robinson. “There is no way in the world to yield that kind of jump by doing what she explained to me. I thought, ‘did she have somebody come in and perform magic?’ It didn’t make any sense.”
The school did nothing wrong, according to Goff. A consultant she hired helped drill the students using traditional test prep materials, she said.
But the consultant, Rachel Armour, told the Daily News that all the materials she used to create the practice tests were provided to her by Goff. The newspaper obtained copies of practice tests she made for City Day and compared them to the actual state exams. In some cases, only names in the word problems or small details are different from the actual questions.
Robinson said an Ohio Department of Education investigator has interviewed him about the testing procedures at City Day. A spokesman for the board would not confirm that an investigation is underway, but Greg Cizek, author of a book on standardized test cheating and member of Ohio’s testing advisory panel, said, “f you have identical questions from a test that was not to be disclosed on a practice test, that’s against every testing regulation the Ohio Department of Education has.”
Robinson, who joined the charter school as principal last September, said he reviewed the practice materials used last year in hopes of recreating the impressive gains in this year’s tests. But Robinson, who has a doctorate in education from Miami University and left a university teaching job in North Carolina to take the principal job at City Day, said test preparation couldn’t account for the improvement made by the students last March.
Consider seventh grade math. In 2005-06, City Day’s seventh grade had an average score on the math test that was about 22 points above the average score for all Ohio schools. The prior year, the school’s sixth graders had an average score that was 45 points below the state average.
“If it’s largely the same kids, that’s a huge change from 45 points below to 21 points above the mean,” Cizek said.
Of the 14 City Day seventh graders who took the state exam in 2005-06, about 28 percent scored accelerated or advanced, the two highest of five scoring levels. The prior year, none of the 13 sixth graders tested even passed the test.
The fifth graders also made sizable gains from the previous year’s scores.
Of the 24 fifth graders who took the state exam in 2005-06, almost 17 percent posted accelerated scores. The prior year, none of the school’s 22 fourth graders passed the test. In 2004-05, the fourth-grade class at City Day was 54 points below the state average in math. A year later, the fifth graders were just seven points below the average for all Ohio students.
The Ohio Achievement Test in math last year was taken by every Ohio public school student — which includes charter school kids — in grades three through eight.
Overall, City Day’s 2005-06 test success improved so much the school shook off two years in the state’s lowest category of “academic emergency,” jumping two spots on the rating scale to “continuous improvement.” City Day, a K-8 charter school that opened in 1998, had consistently ranked among the worst performing schools in Dayton for the percent of students passing the state tests.
After he was hired, Robinson said he became suspicious enough of the results to ask a few teachers to conduct assessments of what their kids knew. After that, he said, he had no doubts.
“There was a blatant discrepancy in terms of what they (the students) were able to do,” he said.
Robinson later obtained a compact disc containing four practice tests created by Armour. He said a week after he was fired an anonymous caller asked to meet him in a parking lot. A car pulled up and a woman handed him the CD, he said.
A state investigator has asked him for the CD, Robinson said.
Armour, a Dayton-based educational consultant, said she was brought in for eight weeks last year to help prepare City Day kids to take the state exams. She acknowledges creating practice tests that included questions strikingly similar to those on the state exams. But she said she merely reworked and retyped what she thought were practice questions the Ohio Department of Education provides on its Web site as test preparation.
“Mrs. Goff told me they were downloaded from the Internet,” Armour said. “It just looked like it was something printed from a digital laser printer. I’m baffled by the whole ordeal. No principal has ever given me any type of secure test materials.”
Goff denied giving Armour real test questions.
“The test I gave her was a practice test,” Goff said. “Our (state) tests are kept under lock and key. They are taped, sealed and locked up. I don’t know how anybody could get anything.”
Ohio has very specific procedures for the handling of state achievement tests, but in the end the education department depends on school personnel at each site to maintain the security of the exams. Sealed, numbered copies of the exams must be delivered to each school no more than seven days before testing is scheduled to begin.
The label information on the computer files that contain Armour’s practice tests show they were created beginning at 6:35 p.m. on Feb. 27, 2006, seven days prior to the scheduled test at City Day. Other files from the following morning show they were created at 3:02 a.m., 3:21 a.m. and 5:03 a.m. Those documents have a copyright warning identifying Armour as the author.
Armour acknowledged she worked through the night after she said Goff gave her the sample questions. She said Goff told her she wanted the students to begin practicing for the tests the next day.
“That’s just how I work,” she said. “Mrs. Goff put a lot of pressure on me. I’m just a diligent person.”
Goff insists the security of the state tests wasn’t compromised. The tests were sent to the school and addressed to Juanita Barnett, the school’s part-time psychologist who also serves as its testing coordinator, she said.
Goff said she didn’t recall if she or Barnett received the tests, but in either case they would have been secured in a locked room. Barnett then typically locks the tests in a cabinet, she said. Only Goff and Barnett have keys to the room, Goff said, and only Barnett has a key to the cabinet. Goff said at one time there were two keys to the cabinet but Goff lost her key prior to February 2006.
“There is no way I could have given (Armour) any test,” Goff said. “I had not looked at a test. And I don’t see how she could have gotten it.”
Barnett declined comment. Armour’s attorney, David Williams, said his client is willing to submit to a lie detector test to support the truthfulness of her story.
Cizek said any test scores of a student who saw questions ahead of taking the test would be meaningless.
“The Ohio Department of Education has strict guidelines on what is and is not appropriate to do,” he said. “It’s flat out illegal to take secure test questions and expose them to students before the test.”
Armour, a Chicago native and Wilberforce graduate, is a former participant in the prestigious Teach for America program. She also served as an intern at the Dayton Daily News in 2003. Armour said she developed her own writing instruction program that she has taught in Illinois and Michigan, as well as in several local schools.
Armour said part of her approach to teaching urban kids is to put problems into a language they can understand. She said she commonly writes problems and questions for kids using brand names they know, such as Bad Boy Records, and proper names that may be familiar to them from popular culture, such as actress Raven Simone or NBA star LeBron James.
“What I do is take a problem and alter and change it so it reflects something the kids are interested in,” she said.
Robinson said he struggled throughout the fall to create a curriculum for the school, where he said books and materials were in short supply. He said his dismissal resulted from the questions he raised about the school’s test preparation procedures.
“I wasn’t going to stop asking questions,” he said.
Goff declined to discuss Robinson’s departure.
Investigations into cheating allegations on state tests are extremely rare in Ohio. Mitch Chester, who heads Ohio’s state testing program, told the Daily News in September that the state’s only cases of testing irregularities in the past five years came after they were reported by the schools themselves. The state does have the power to revoke an educator’s teaching license for violating the security of the tests. The normal process for an investigation of testing irregularities is for the school to first conduct its own internal probe and report its findings to the state, which decides if more investigation is needed.
As a charter school, City Day is sponsored by Education Resource Consultants of Ohio, a Cincinnati-based charter school authorizer with primary responsibility for oversight of the school. In December, ERCO Assistant Director Aaron Kinnebrew said he was not aware of any problems with state test administration last year.
“They are allowed to give practice tests,” he said.
Kinnebrew did not return repeated phone calls seeking further comments.
J.C. Benton, education department spokesman, said the state put in place a policy this school year not to discuss test security investigations, or even acknowledge when an investigation is underway.
Cizek said states like Ohio could discourage cheating by claiming copyright on all test materials.
“It seems to me that at least one way that the state should proceed on this matter is to sue the individuals involved for infringement of copyright,” he said. “I’m no attorney, but it seems like this is a pretty clear-cut case.”
Permalink | Comments (10) | Categories: Charter Schools and School Choice, City Day Investigation, My Favorite DDN Stories, Testing
