Graduates may have had peek at test

The Nevada Department of Education is investigating whether a portion of the state's graduation test was leaked to some high school students.

It's possible a copy of the Nevada proficiency exam administered last April surfaced in a $39 test-preparation course offered Jan. 31 and Feb. 6, officials say.

"This is a problem, and we're going to take care of it," said state board of education member Bill Hanlon. "This is a breach. This is, in fact, against the law."

Students must pass the proficiency exam to graduate. The test has become a controversial topic in recent months. The state Legislature ordered the test be made more difficult, and the State Board of Education has raised the scores students need to pass.

As a result, more students are failing the test. Of the juniors who took the test in October, only 49.1 percent passed the mathematics section. About 73 percent passed the reading section.

The exam includes math, reading and writing sections. Students first take the test as juniors. Students are allowed five opportunities to pass the test before the end of their senior year.

The test is given in October, February and April. Some Clark County students are taking the test this week.

The test's math sections contain 72 questions. Sixty questions are changed every time the test is given, Hanlon said. Twelve of the questions remain the same so officials can use them for statistical analysis.

Nevada law states that the exam remain tightly guarded. No one, including parents, are allowed to see the test.

But officials are now saying that the test given in April 1998 somehow landed in a course taught by Hal Overholtzer, a retired Clark County math teacher. Overholtzer taught a six-hour test preparation workshop offered through UNLV.

That means some students could have seen 12 of the 72 math questions that appear on the test they are taking this week.

"We used an old test that we thought was OK," Overholtzer said. "It was an honest error. It was over a year old, and we thought it wouldn't be used again. Nobody was trying to cheat. It makes us feel bad that people thought we cheated."

Paul Aizley, dean of UNLV's college of extended studies, said, "We've been offering test preparation (courses) for a long time, and I don't examine the tests that are used. It's assumed that they are all come by honestly."

The State Department of Education sends the tests to testing coordinators in Nevada's school districts. Those coordinators are responsible for protecting the tests as they are distributed to schools that administer the tests.

Clark County School District testing director Judy Costa could not be reached for comment Monday.

Next week, an official from the State Department of Education will investigate how the test was leaked, Hanlon said. For now, the State Attorney General's office has issued a cease and desist order to the university, effectively prohibiting the use of the April test for test-preparation courses, Hanlon said.

"Any violation of test security is extremely serious," said State Board of Education member Gary Waters. "Somehow, there was a security breach in Clark County. Somehow it got through the system."

It is not clear how the test leak might affect the results of tests students are taking this week.

"I've heard that a copy of that examination is out there somewhere," said Tom Klein, the state department of education's coordinator of the proficiency exam. "We would have to determine the extent to which the test had been compromised."

Hanlon said the leak underlies a much more important issue: that the tests should be public documents, not tightly guarded, confidential documents. Hanlon has lobbied for a change in Nevada law that would allow parents, students and the media to obtain copies of old tests.

"There is a larger question here," Hanlon said. "Why the hell are the tests a secret in the first place? The taxpayers are paying for this."

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