“DOE has created an environment that both encourages cheating and allows the Mayor to claim achievements that cannot be verified,” Comptroller and Mayoral candidate Bill Thompson says regarding a recent audit of the Department of Education.
“My office raised a number of questions about inconclusive records of monitor visits, checklists, and reporting of testing irregularities, and the Department offered excuses equivalent to ‘the dog ate my homework,’ even including explanations that monitors have other duties and often have to cancel because of other responsibilities,” Thompson said.
Among the audit’s findings:
- The Department failed to keep track of monitors who were required to be at schools and complete mandatory checklists to ensure test integrity. Often, those monitors showed up late, or didn’t show up at all.
- Monitors indicated they oversaw certain activities that they could not possibly have been able to monitor. Seventy one percent of monitoring forms indicated “yes” to questions that were impossible for monitors to answer.
- The Department stopped performing data trend or erasure analysis to identify possible cheating or testing irregularities in 2002.
- Portions of tests remain at schools for many days, increasing the risk of being inappropriately manipulated.
Additionally, monitors did not always ensure that test administration procedures were followed. Monitors are required to arrive at assigned schools by 7:30 AM to ensure that test booklets are still in shrink-wrapped packaging and secured in a locked place.
However, auditors found that 32% of monitors arrived at the schools after that time; 16% arrived at or after 8:00 AM; and, one arrived as late as 10:20 AM.
