GregsOpinion.com

How does a low-income school produce TAKS test results on par with the state's wealthiest? The Dallas Morning News has the answer, with the HISD Miracle taking yet another hit. OK now, who here is stunned by this? Anyone? Anyone at all?

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Houston example
The News' analysis is based on examining scale scores ? the little-known numbers behind the passing rates that typically get public attention. The investigation searched for schools with unusual gaps in performance between grades or subjects. Research has shown that schools that are weak in one subject or one grade are typically weak in others.

Take Sanderson Elementary, a school in a poor Houston area.

In 2003, after years of mediocre performance, it reached what has traditionally been the pinnacle for American schools: The U.S. Department of Education named Sanderson a Blue Ribbon School because of rapid improvement in its test scores.

But the News' analysis raises questions about the validity of Sanderson's TAKS performance, particularly in fifth-grade math.

Sanderson's fourth-graders scored extremely poorly on the math TAKS test. Their average scale score was so low that it ranked Sanderson in the bottom 2 percent of the state: No. 3,173 out of 3,227 schools.

That's roughly what might be expected from a school where 98 percent of the student body is poor enough to qualify for free or reduced lunches. Hundreds of research studies have found that student poverty is the single most important factor in student academic achievement.

But Sanderson's fifth-graders had astonishing success on the math test. They had the highest scale scores of any school in Texas, beating every magnet school, every wealthy suburban school and every high-performing school in the state.

Sanderson didn't just finish No. 1. No other school in the state was even close. In scale-score points, the distance between Sanderson and the No. 2 school was as large as the gap between No. 2 and No. 116. More than 90 percent of Sanderson's fifth-graders got perfect or near-perfect scores.

'Educational steroids'
Tom Haladyna, a professor at Arizona State University who studies cheating, said that level of improvement between grades is extremely unusual. He compared it to a weekend duffer beating Tiger Woods by 10 strokes, or a scrub softball player hitting 80 home runs in the major leagues: theoretically conceivable but realistically impossible.

"They're using educational steroids," he said.

Those "steroids" were apparently used only on the TAKS test. Just eight weeks before Sanderson fifth-graders took the TAKS, they took a different standardized test, the Stanford Achievement Test. They didn't fare well, finishing below the national average.

Sanderson's principal, James Metoyer, directed all questions about scores to district officials. Houston Superintendent Abe Saavedra issued a written statement to The News.

"At HISD, our credibility and integrity must remain absolutely beyond question," Dr. Saavedra wrote last week. "For that reason, I have asked for a full and thorough investigation of the circumstances surrounding the math scores of this one group of fifth graders."

Dr. Saavedra said the district had reassigned two Sanderson teachers to "other duties" while the district and the state investigate the school's test scores. He also said Mr. Metoyer, the principal, had asked to be reassigned "in order to protect the credibility and the integrity of this investigation."

Dallas school officials reacted similarly when The News informed them last week of problems with the test scores at Harrell Budd Elementary in southern Dallas.