Posted on 08/03/2011 9:34:57 AM PDT by Presbyterian Reporter
In the wake of school cheating scandals across the country, several states are racing to implement new testing protocols before classes resume.
In New York, Education Commissioner John B. King Jr. created a task force last month to review all aspects of student assessment.
"The Commissioner will be announcing a series of measures to ensure the integrity of our testing system before our students return to school in September," New York State Education Department spokesman Jonathan Burman said in a statement Monday.
Specific measures haven't been announced, but state officials said they want to avoid problems that have plagued school systems in Atlanta, the District of Columbia and Philadelphia, where teachers are suspected of erasing wrong answers on standardized tests and replacing them with the right ones, all to make it appear that students were performing better than they actually were.
Education specialists say the scandals are largely driven by the high stakes attached to the tests. After the implementation of the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act, schools can be labeled as "failing" if test scores don't improve, leading some teachers and administrators to take matters into their own hands.
Atlanta became the poster child for such corruption after a recent government probe found that 44 schools and 178 teachers and principals had been faking test scores for the past decade. Dozens of schools in Pennsylvania, including many in the Philadelphia area, are under investigation. In the District, the inspector general for the federal Education Department is looking into suspected cheating, and D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Kaya Henderson has welcomed the review.
Similar cheating charges have confronted schools in Dallas, Baltimore, Houston and elsewhere.
More than 30 New Jersey schools remain under investigation for falsifying test scores, and state officials are taking a variety of steps to prevent cheating.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
“””We get this curriculum wherein we are instructed... ORDERED... to have the kids read Maya Angelou, bell hooks, Gary Soto, Amy Tan... contemporary writers from a politically correct roster who tend to write fairly simply, in short sentences...
Then the kids get the state tests with excerpts from Call of the Wild and Anne of Green Gables. You can just imagine these kids’ reactions. They have no idea what the heck they are looking at.””
Your complaint is with the teacher’s union who is deciding to teach the kids some politcal correct garbage without taking into account they will be tested on classical literature.
So if the kids fail, then the voters need to remove the teachers and the administration from the school.
I think it is great the kids are being tested on classical literature.
Failure to teach classical literature is reason to remove those in power from their positions.
Thanks, I will.
For myself, I stuff as much as I can in and around the blocks of the curriculum: Hemingway, Jane Austen, Francis Hodgson Burnett... some of those books I had to buy with my own money because the schools don't buy that sort of thing. I just wish more Freepers really understood what a teacher is up against.
It probably should read “hide the scandals and cheating”.
That's right. Let me tell you, Asian students in my district are sitting at the same desks with the same books and the same teachers as the Hispanic ones. The difference is what happens when they go home. The Hispanic kids, by and large, go home, throw their backpack on the bed that mama made for them, grab some hot cheetos and settle down in front of the television while mama makes dinner and waits on them hand and foot. Especially the little boys. The little girls help with dinner. If you bring the parent into school to tell them the child is doing badly, they either shake their heads sadly and helplessly, or argue that you are being mean to their darling.
But Asian parents? Let me tell you, you could take a Sharpie and write an F on their kid's forehead and send the kid home. Asian mom will pull out a knife and tell the kid "You have 2 weeks turn that to B or I cut head off!!"
(Okay, mild exaggeration. Some stereotyping. But I'm tellin' ya...)
I believe most FReepers understand that the good teachers are up against the teacher union mentality of the majority.
How we get the voters energized to remove the teachers union mentality from the school system is another issue and I do not have an answer.
The high school two blocks from my house received “D” grades from 2004 to 2009 and a “C” grade in 2010. 2011 grades have not been released yet. And this is at a brand new high school that was totally rebuilt in 2002. Even with this dismal result I do not hear peep from the voters about the fact the kids are functionally illiterate when they graduate.
Thanks, I was not looking local. After some hunting I found it on our local school site. They seem to be in line and no jumps out of range.
The superintendent of Atlanta Schools, Beverly Hall, is being given a pass by the media (most likely because she's black) on the problems in her administration so far (she retired to avoid the mess). She claims that she didn't know about it and should not be held accountable for it. I can't help thinking that when the results came out favorable (before they were aware that the positive results were due to cheating) that the press lauded her with fulsome praise. Seems to be a dual standard for blacks around here. They're given lavish praise for the slightest and most mediocre accomplishments, and ignored when they commit malfeasance.
Example from an article on the cheating in the Atlanta paper
Embattled Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent Beverly Hall announced Saturday that she will step down in June, ending a remarkable 11-year tenure that won praise nationally...The paper had to get at least one little kiss on her a$$ even covering the cheating scandal.
But if teachers proctor students from the same school, then there is pressure to cheat coming from the principal and superintendent (as in Atlanta).
Absolutely. It is fraud. In fact, when reading about these stories, you see the classic 'fraud triangle.' Motivation/pressure, justification, opportunity. The pressure involved in the schools' funding and their own jobs provides the motivation. The fact that they can tell themselves that they are only doing it so that the increased or continued funding can help the students, and they'll quit as soon as the scores really do come up is the justification. The stupid idea of giving the teachers access to completed tests is the opportunity. There's not much a local system can do about the first two, since the federal government has provided the motivation and the lack of morals pervading today's society, particularly the left, where most 'educators' are, provides the justification. However, there is no excuse for the school system to provide these teachers with the opportunity. I mean, in Atlanta, they were taking them home and having parties where they changed the answers. Why in the world were they allowed to walk home with them? Ideally, a third party would administer the tests. However, the costs involved may not allow that, but other controls could be used, such as each student sealing his test after completion in a way that would prevent tampering.
'During today's in-service, we highly commend the breakout session titled "Detection-proof methods for increasing those scores".'
LOL
Freepers miss a lot. They catch more than the population at large but when it comes to some issues it is more ideology than understanding.
Trust the local schools to do the right thing and they will cheat.
Bring in the feds and it costs more money and prevents the local schools from making their own decisions.
We should get rid of this 'No Child Left Behind' nonsense, get rid of the Dept of Education, and return the control of schools back to the states and localities.
Over time kids from bad schools will by-and-large not get into the best universities or get employment with the best companies.
Let the market decide who gets to make a living and who gets to go on welfare.
>>But if teachers proctor students from the same school, then there is pressure to cheat coming from the principal and superintendent (as in Atlanta).
Well it depends. A lot of the really crappy inner-city schools have high turnover so you have a lot of non-tenured teachers who will do anything not to be fired through attrition (proof of being warned thrice), which is something that the admin can do very quickly through observation/duty schedules/class covering/parental complaints/etc. When a teacher becomes tenured (3-5 years) then the admin has to show about a billion steps taken to get the teacher on the right track.
Something tells me that these were newbie teachers right out of school that were willing to do anything to keep their jobs.
>>When a teacher becomes tenured (3-5 years) then the admin has to show about a billion steps taken to get the teacher on the right track.
>>Georgia eliminated teacher tenure in 2000
That explains it.
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