When test scores are too good to be true

When reporters at USA Today investigated the standardized tests of millions of students in six states and the District of Columbia, it found not one...

... not a dozen ...

... not a hundred ...

... but 1,610 examples of anomalies in which public school classes boasted what analysts regard as statistically suspect gains on state tests.

Thomas Haladyna, a professor emeritus at Arizona State University, told the newspaper that those sorts of gains are "so incredible that you have to ask yourself, 'How can this be real?'"

The answer, of course, is clear: It isn't real.

There's cheating afoot, but this is a problem bigger than that. Because when those in power become convinced that such magnificent gains are possible — even routinely possible — it diminishes the good work being done by those who are doing everything they can to help their students make moderate improvements. It also hides the teachers that are actually doing something that is truly terrific — those that we might all be learning from.