Test Booklets Vanish From S.D. School

A complete set of standardized test booklets for one class and test answer sheets for four separate classrooms disappeared under mysterious circumstances last month at Hancock Elementary School in Tierrasanta.

The materials were part of the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills (CTBS), a major national standardized test that the San Diego Unified School District has used for many years to measure individual student achievement in the district’s basic skills curriculum. The test is a product of the McGraw/Hill publishing company.

Administrators do not know why the materials were stolen, but they downplay the unethical purposes to which the purloined booklets and sheets could be applied. They say the integrity of the testing process has not been violated, although security procedures should be tightened.

Nevertheless, these same officials worry that news of the theft will make it more difficult to assure the public that standardized testing procedures are secure at a time when school districts are under great pressure to show improved test scores as a result of greater state and federal funding for education.

“What I am worried about is that, with more and more stock being put onto standardized testing, that any perceived irregularity to a testing program will be heightened as a result,” city schools Supt. Tom Payzant said.

The CTBS, which includes separate parts on math, reading, spelling, and language arts, is given each spring to all students in the fifth, seventh and ninth grades. Schools that receive special state or federal funds also test all grades as a required way to show whether the extra money leads to academic progress.

The district ranks schools by their overall CTBS performance, and schools use the results for individual students in deciding what courses to place them in. The tests are “norm-referenced,” which means that they have been given to many students in many states over the years so that national percentile rankings from 0 to 100 can be computed from raw scores.

Stolen Answer Sheets

The booklets that disappeared at Hancock contained test materials for fourth-graders. The stolen answer sheets, which had been completed in some cases and only partly finished in others, came from two fourth-grade classes and two fifth-grade classes. Instruction manuals for teachers to use in administering the test also were taken.

The materials were in cabinets or on desks of individual teachers while the tests were being administered, and the thief or thieves knew exactly what was being taken, Sally Collier, Hancock principal, said.

“It clearly had to be done consciously,” Collier said. “I just can’t imagine why someone would do it.” Collier added, however, that items ranging from grade books to progress reports have disappeared under mysterious circumstances during the school year.

Grant Behnke, who heads the district’s testing division, called the situation “the most bizarre” he has encountered in eight years of supervising tests.

“You can’t all of a sudden better prepare someone,” Behnke said, noting that this spring’s testing schedule has been completed.

Behnke also downplayed whether a teacher could take items from a test booklet and “teach directly to the test” for next year, although the same tests are used year after year.

‘Out There Somewhere’

“Obviously there is a concern that the materials are out there somewhere,” Behnke said. But he said the district could detect any unusual pattern where scores for a particular school or schools suddenly increase dramatically from one year to the next.

“We would go in and check to see what would account for such a noticeable pattern,” he said.

Payzant said a number of teachers would have to conspire in order for such unauthorized “teaching to the test” to have a significant effect on reporting of scores. “If an individual teacher used the booklets in such a way, there could be changes in results for individual children but “not in the overall reporting of schoolwide and districtwide numbers to affect integrity,” Payzant said.

Both he and Behnke said they have faith in district teachers not to receive stolen test booklets.

“I would be surprised and appalled, because I don’t think that our teachers are that stupid,” Behnke said. “I have a tremendous amount of confidence in their professional integrity.

“We test 80,000 kids a year in this district, and there could be hundreds of thousands of instances where there could be misjudgments, but the number of inappropriate uses we have had has been minimal.”

However, Behnke said that all schools would be reminded about security procedures, which provide for test materials to be under lock and key at all times when not being used in the classroom.

And Hancock’s Collier said that test materials no longer will be left in classrooms overnight, even during testing periods, but returned each day to the main office.

“I think the teachers feel better about that as well,” she said. “A tighter process means that there will be less chance for our procedures to be called into question and for something like this to happen again.”