Georgia Milestones Audit Assessment Reports

The Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA) serves as the reporting and accountability agency for Georgia education. As such, it is charged by law with inspecting academic records of schools to ensure that education institutions are faithful to performance accountability requirements. Through an academic audit, GOSA reviews student assessment data and other school records reported to the State to confirm accuracy and explore the effectiveness of local school initiatives in improving achievement.

The Georgia Milestones Assessment Audit is divided into two separate analyses:

The Answer Change Analysis, formerly known as the Erasure Analysis, identifies classrooms and schools where the number of wrong answers that have been changed to right answers on individual student answer sheets is well above the state average. It is conducted on the following assessments:

  • Assessments Included
    • Grades 3 to 8 End of Grade Assessments (EOG) in English-Language Arts and Mathematics, and in Grades 5 and 8 in Science and Social Studies.
    • Grades 7-12 End of Course Assessments (EOC) in the following ten high school courses: Ninth Grade Literature and Composition, American Literature and Composition, Coordinate Algebra, Algebra I, Analytic Geometry, Geometry, Physical Science, Biology, U.S. History, and Economics.
  • Flagging Methodology
    • EOG (Grades 3-8)
      • Five percent or more of classrooms in a school are flagged at four standard deviations or greater, OR
      • One classroom is flagged at seven standard deviations or greater.
    • EOC (Grades 9-12)
      • Five percent or more of classrooms in a school are flagged at five standard deviations or greater, OR
      • One classroom is flagged at seven standard deviations or greater.

The Unusual Response Pattern Analysis, identifies schools that have unexpected test score gains across years (95th percentile or higher) using a cohort of students as well as unexpected patterns in student answers (95th percentile or higher). For unexpected patterns, it examines the following four areas: The patterns examined include (1) unlikely blocks of consecutive, identical answers, (2) highly correlated answers across tests, (3) correlation of responses across test items, and (4) cases where students miss easy items but answer difficult answers correctly.

  • Assessments Included
    • Grades 4-8 English Language Arts and Mathematics
  • Flagging Methodology
    • Schools where two or more testing groups had test score gains and unusual response patterns that were in the 95th percentile, OR
    • Schools where one testing group had test score gains and unusual response patterns that were in the 99th percentile.

Appendices in each document provide more in-depth information on the calculation formulas and business rules. It is important to note that the results of both analyses above are used as an initial flag to spur further investigation of many indicators to determine if any cheating occurred. It is important to note that the flags do not indicate that cheating has occurred.