Is your Blue Ribbon School really top-notch?

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) continues its article series about cheating on school tests with a new piece. This one is on cheating in what are supposed to be the supreme schools in the land, the US Department of Education’s Blue Ribbon Schools.

Pulling no punches, the newspaper reports:

“Cheating has undermined the Blue Ribbon’s integrity while shortchanging students whose achievements have been overstated.”

The AJC goes on to say:

“The examination of 605 recent Blue Ribbon winners suggests that test manipulation may be even more prevalent among schools considered models for others to emulate.”

To be clear, a sudden change in school test results isn’t a guarantee that something improper has happened. The Atlanta paper admits that.

But, the article cites examples from Atlanta where four out of five recent Blue Ribbon Schools did cheat in 2009 state testing. That was confirmed in the huge investigation still on-going in Atlanta. What is shocking is that the Blue Ribbon Schools honors have not been stripped from those schools. In a system where schools still boast about Blue Ribbon status 10 to 20 years after actually winning the award, allowing cheaters to stay on the roll is inexcusable.

The US Department of Education better take some action, or the entire credibility of the Blue Ribbon Schools program could be down the drain even faster than some teachers in Atlanta erased wrong answers and changed them to correct ones on their student’s answer sheets.

While no Kentucky school is mentioned in the AJC article or the accompanying table, we in the Bluegrass State cannot assume all is well, either.

Don’t forget we had confirmed cheating on the ACT in Perry County recently. Two Perry County school staffers already had certificate action taken against them, and more might be pending.

I’ve written plenty about the Perry County situation such as here, here, and here.

In fact, the last of these articles points to comments by the Perry County superintendent claiming the issue was dead when in fact he knew investigations were on-going. That sort of denial does not improve school official credibility.

By the way, one of my blog articles about Perry County is mentioned in a new report from the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission’s Office of Education Accountability (LRC/OEA) on testing security in Kentucky.

As this LRC/OEA report points out, there have been some big holes in Kentucky’s test security procedures. It is very possible that school staff cheaters could have gotten by for years in the Bluegrass State.

With the stakes going up for schools and teachers with our new testing and accountability system, which is being administered in Kentucky schools as I write this, the appeal of cheating could be rising.

So, stay tuned on this one.