A teacher in California has been accused of filling in the answers on a standardized test for a student. The elementary school student was a child that has been described as “struggling”. It has been suggested that the teacher was trying to disguise the fact that this student needed special education help.
This particular situation took place in 2009. The teacher was administering a Mathematics Assessment Resource Service (MARS) test. This is one of many standardized tests that are given to public school students across the nation. The student ended up with a score of 35 out of 40.
The girl’s parents noticed something strange. At the start of the school year, their daughter was significantly behind on math, reading, and writing. Somehow, she started getting perfect scores on classroom tests when she started Second Grade. When the parents gave their child a “quiz” she did not know the answers. The girl said that her teacher would give her the answers when she did not know them.
The parents, realizing that their child was struggling with her schoolwork, asked the school district to give her an assessment for special needs. This is the first part in a process that gives a child who has special needs the help that he or she needs in school.
It generally leads to an IEP being created, and sometimes can result in having a paraprofessional assigned to the child. It can give the child access to social workers, school psychologists, and a teacher that has been educated in how to work with students who have a variety of special needs.
The school, however, refused to assess this child, in part because of her high score on the MARS test. This lead to a closer look at that test. It appeared that “every page” had writing on it that did not match how the student wrote. There also were eraser marks were it was clear that a wrong answer had been selected by the girl, and that the answer had been replaced by the correct answer.
From this, the parents have concluded that the child’s teacher was the one who changed her answers on the state test. They have filed a lawsuit against the school in the hopes that no other child will be treated the way their daughter was. It is currently pending and waiting for an answer by the school board. In the meantime, the little girl has transferred to another school, and has been accepted into the special education program.
Why would a teacher change a student’s answers on a standardized test? The potential answers to that question are shocking. Often, how well students in a particular school do on standardized tests determines how much funding that school will get for the next school year. The better the scores, the more money the school makes. Theoretically speaking, the teacher could have been trying to ensure that her school would get more money next year.
Another potential reason could be that the teacher was trying to find a way to make sure the student was not eligible for the special needs program. Schools spend a lot on the extra staff required to meet the needs of students in these programs.
Image by Daniel Novta on Flickr