New AJC investigation casts doubts on integrity of testing nationwide. Is there a whole lot of cheating going on?
In the cheating hall of fame, Atlanta may stand out, but it may not stand alone.
Nearly 200 school districts across the country have such suspicious test score patterns that the odds of them occurring by chance are worse than 1 in 1,000. And in 33 of those districts, the odds are worse than one in a million.
In a powerhouse investigation in Sunday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the investigative reporting team that uncovered test disparities in Atlanta Public Schools reveals the findings of a seven-month analysis of 1.6 million records from 70,000 public schools nationwide.
The AJC used freedom of information laws to collect test scores from 49 states — 14,743 districts and 70,000 tests – to look for the sort of patterns that signaled cheating.
Along with our own database reporters, the AJC consulted outside experts to assess our analysis. (Please pick up a Sunday AJC as it will outline all the detailed work that went into this investigation and all the care to check and recheck the findings.)
To be clear, the new AJC national analysis doesn’t establish that cheating occurred. But it points to the same troubling pattern later verified in Atlanta schools to be test tampering after a probe by an outraged Gov. Sonny Perdue.
The student performance rises and dips in many Atlanta schools turned out to be a seismograph of shame.
The findings also point to a universal truth: Hold people accountable to standards, benchmarks or quotas that they feel are unrelenting, unrealistic and unfair and some will cheat.
“We are putting way too much pressure on people to raise scores at a very large clip without holding them accountable for how they are doing it,” Daniel Koretz, a Harvard Graduate School of Education testing expert, told the AJC.
The AJC’s findings also raise questions about whether anyone knows yet how to succeed in schools with high concentrations of poor students; most of the districts with troubling test score swings were rural and urban districts steeped in poverty.
Some immediate questions come to mind as you read the in-depth investigation by AJC staffers Alan Judd, Heather Vogell, John Perry, M.B. Pell and Dayton Daily News database specialist Ken McCall.
Are we expecting too much of teachers instructing the toughest students?
By basing school evaluations on student test scores, are we using too narrow a lens to see what is truly happening in our schools, perhaps overlooking positive developments that are not reflected in a single score?
Are we escalating the pressure on educators by linking their reviews and salaries to student scores, creating even greater motivation to doctor test results?
As the story states:
“These findings are concerning,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an emailed statement after being briefed on the AJC’s analysis. He added: “states, districts, schools and testing companies should have sensible safeguards in place to ensure tests accurately reflect student learning.”
In nine districts , scores careened so unpredictably that the odds of such dramatic shifts occurring without an intervention such as tampering were worse than 1 in a billion .
In Houston, for instance, test results for entire grades of students jumped two, three or more times the amount expected in one year, the analysis shows. When children moved to a new grade the next year, their scores plummeted — a finding that suggests the gains were not due to learning. {See response from Houston school chief here.}
Overall, 196 of the nation’s 3,125 largest school districts had enough suspect tests that the odds of the results occurring by chance alone were worse than 1 in 1,000. For 33 of those districts, the odds were worse than one in a million .
A few of the districts already face accusations of cheating. But in most, no one has challenged the scores in a broad, public way. The analysis shows that in 2010 alone, the grade-wide reading scores of 24,618 children nationwide — enough to populate a midsized school district — swung so improbably that the odds of it happening by chance were less than 1 in 10,000.
In Georgia, it fell to the governor’s investigators to prove cheating occurred. Led by two former top prosecutors, the Perdue investigation entailed 2,100 interviews and 800,000 documents and led to more than 80 confessions of cheating. State investigators accused a total of 38 principals with participating in test-tampering. Cheating was confirmed in 44 of 56 schools examined.
The findings toppled the much-heralded regime of Dr. Beverly Hall, and led to extensive upheaval in the leadership of the Atlanta schools.
The findings also sparked a national debate over whether schools teaching the least advantaged and most challenging students are being held to unattainable standards and whether test scores are a fair way to judge success.
The new AJC investigation is bound to reignite that debate.
Among the discoveries by the AJC team:
•Improbable scores were twice as likely to appear in charter schools as regular schools. Charters, which receive public money, can face intense pressure as supposed laboratories of innovation that, in theory, live or die by their academic performance.
•The newspaper found changes in test scores that were statistically improbable in nearly 20 cities, with swings in scores that were virtually impossible in about a half dozen. Human intervention is the most likely explanation In some cities, we found so many dramatic shifts in scores that the odds of that happening by chance are one in 10 billion.
•In some cities, the results for entire grades of students jumped two, three or more times the amount expected in one year. The next year, when children moved to a new grade, their scores plummeted.
•Though high-poverty city schools were more likely to have suspicious tests, improbable scores also showed up in an exclusive public school for the gifted on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And they appeared in a rural district roughly 70 miles south of Chicago with one school, dirt roads and a women’s prison.
•The findings call into question the approach that dominated federal education policy over the past decade: Set a continuously rising bar and leave schools and districts essentially alone to figure out how to reach it.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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303 comments Add your comment
Tony
March 24th, 2012
5:01 pm
Another aspect of the testing debate relates to whether teachers “add value” or not. Our society has some really mixed up ideas about who’s valuable. Compare professional athletes salaries to firefighters, teachers, or police. How about the salaries of the Wall Street crowd? After all, huge salaries are supposed to be an indicator of productivity, right? Are those guys really worth salaries like this?
http://www.alternet.org/world/154671/a_single_hedge-fund_hustler_makes_more_than_85%2C000_teachers%3A_why_are_our_priorities_so_messed_up/
These are the guys who are bankrolling the charter school laws in all the states.
mountain man
March 24th, 2012
5:02 pm
As I said on the other blog, maybe testing should be done the next year, by the incoming students’ teacher. Since THEIR performance is not being questioned, they have no reason to cheat. If the students fail to achieve grade level performance, they are sent back to their previous school.
Will never happen, of course, since social promotion is the norm.
Tony
March 24th, 2012
5:05 pm
@teacher&mom Pearson, et al, are really going to kick up their bottom lines over the new Common Core. They will be able to streamline textbook production, align them with the required state tests, print and score the tests, and conduct the erasure analyses after the tests. The profit margins will be much better because of the unified curriculum.
I am already being hounded by the big publishers to buy their new Common Core aligned products that will help kids be prepared for the new tests. My job is to make sure students have good materials for their classes, not just test prep booklets.
Jeff
March 24th, 2012
5:07 pm
Show me where the original education budget AND the lottery windfall has been spent.
workman
March 24th, 2012
5:22 pm
I like the comment about re-introducing vocational classes to high school students. Thats a great idea. I love how everybody wants college, college, college. People now and days use the “oh I’m more educated than you! I have my masters degree. I got news for you college and education doesn’t teach common sense. I believe thats what a lot of people lack now and days. College education seems to take away peoples common sense by teaching them to open their horizon on thinking. There fore everybody in this county over thinks and nothing ever gets done. If we kept things simple this country would be in better shape. I strongly believe universities and higher education is a huge scamming money machine. If my kids want to learn a blue collar skill or join the military I strongly support it.
Dekalbite@Mary Elizabeth
March 24th, 2012
5:35 pm
“Part of the problem in education today is the persistent belief that a business model is more effective, than an education model, in effecting change in schools across the nation.”
Education as practiced today in the U.S. does not lend itself to a business model. That is not true in many countries that have a much higher literacy rate than we do. Many countries with high literacy rates assess students at a very young age – around adolescence – and track them into vocational and academic tracks – e.g. Singapore, Germany, Japan, South Korea, etc. Interestingly, enough Massachusetts, the only state that can compete educationally on an international level, also uses similar methods for sorting students into academic tracks or vocational tracks. While students are not widgets to be assembled and then sent to quality control, it is not unreasonable for society to expect most children to master the basic content of math, science, social studies and language arts. Not every student must be an advanced critical thinker in order to be economically sustainable and a contributor to the general welfare. Ensuring children are employable and employed when they grow up is the most important goal that schools have. If you have no job, you will be dependent on someone else’s largesse or you will be poor. Neither of these is good for the individual or for the stability of the economic and political system he lives in.
“When addressing poverty becomes a priority in America, as it was in my youth, not only will educational results be more substantial and long-lasting, but we will, also be creating kinder and wiser citizens.”
You cannot address poverty without addressing education. Education in terms of acquiring marketable skills is the best way out of poverty. Your youth, like my youth was spent in a world that does not exist today and will not exist again. Technology has flattened our world, and globalization has produced a scale of competition we could never have envisioned. Addressing poverty is only one of many issues we need to address in order to ensure we remain viable as a nation.
Novice Teacher
March 24th, 2012
5:43 pm
As a young teacher in an extremely urban, extremely poor neighborhood, I have to say that this is disheartening. I’ve always believed that putting students in a box is the wrong way to go about things. You cannot determine everything through standardized test scores. What should be used instead is a series of progressive classroom observations to see if students are responding positively to a teacher’s classroom methods. I also agree with the poster who said that we need to bring back technical school. Yes, every child can learn, but not everyone can learn in a classroom environment. Some students are academic, some students are more hands-on. We have to start responding to what the children need rather than what our government officials want.
atlmom
March 24th, 2012
6:03 pm
the reality is that the system is completely broken, from top to bottom. Idiot programs like NCLB or RTTT or whatever you want to call it today is just more failure.
We have to admit that the federal govt doesn’t know what it is doing and dismantle it all from the federal perspective. Stop bribing states with federal money. Lower federal tax rates so that localities can have the money to spend on schools.
Let the states take the lead, because the feds taking the lead isn’t working.
Or better yet, go to a completely new system. Electing or appointing a board to be in charge of a school system will lead to only more failure.
Allow schools to operate independently. Allow parents to choose schools for kids. Allow schools to fail if they have no kids.
That’s the only way this will work. Failing schools now have an incentive to fail – they get more money that way.
I hate to be so cynical, but that’s the way it seems to be.
atlmom
March 24th, 2012
6:10 pm
we have spent a generation or two telling people that the govt will take care of them. Now they think that’s the case. They think all they have to do is drop their kid off at the school door and in a few years, their kids will come out educated. That is hardly the case…seriously.
So then now, decades later, we’re shocked – shocked – that the govt didn’t have our best interest at heart.
The edu
atlmom
March 24th, 2012
6:11 pm
sorry…the education system in our country is but a symptom of a much larger problem. But it’s the easiest to blame for societies ills.
Dekalbite@Maureen
March 24th, 2012
6:15 pm
Is there a reason DeKalb is not included in the Georgia database?
Maureen Downey
March 24th, 2012
6:32 pm
@Ga, Sorry, I see regime in my head yet always type regimen.
Maureen
Jack
March 24th, 2012
6:43 pm
“It’s going to get worse…not better.” You have hit the little old nail squarely on its shiny little old head. When the schools abandoned reading and math for sensitivity studies, the down-hill slide began.
carlosgvv
March 24th, 2012
6:50 pm
All the social experiments put into place since the 60’s that have been designed to have all students, black, white and Hispanic, score the same on tests, have failed. Looks like cheating is the latest option. Once it’s eleminated, it’s back to the drawing board for more experiments.
catlady
March 24th, 2012
7:36 pm
mountain man, part of the problem with testing students is that many of them don’t give a damn how well/poorly they do! They blow through it, rather than giving it maximum effort. Not to say some kids don’t feel a sense of personal pride–they WANT to do well because it is a challenge, but many, many don’t give it their full effort because they know “it doesn’t count.” Even in the gateway grades (3, 5,
students KNOW, because they have observed, that virtually NO ONE is retained. For example, at my school, with 3-5 graders, we don’t hold back even a half dozen kids total, out of a total of 600+. (see the AJC expose of this from a few years ago–it isn’t just my system.)
Mary Elizabeth
March 24th, 2012
7:36 pm
@DeKalbite@Mary Elizabeth, 5:35
“Education as practiced today in the U.S. does not lend itself to a business model.
That is not true in many countries that have a much higher literacy rate than we do. Many countries with high literacy rates assess students at a very young age – around adolescence – and track them into vocational and academic tracks – e.g. Singapore, Germany, Japan, South Korea, etc. Interestingly, enough Massachusetts, the only state that can compete educationally on an international level, also uses similar methods for sorting students into academic tracks or vocational tracks.”
———————————————————————-
What you have described above is a sound educational model, not a business model. A business model would be one in which profit is the foundation of the school’s existence, instead of public taxes. Also, the high pressure upon teachers and students to produce results that are unrealistic to the individual ability levels of students is also a business model that is counterproductive in education.
Again, I consider what you have described above a sound educational model. I also believe that a sound educational model would insure that all students are assessed, as to their exact instructional levels, from kindergarten through 12th grade and that they are taught as close to their individual instructional levels as possible, throughout their tenure in school. That insures mastery learning and success in school. Again, that is an educational model.
You are correct that education and poverty are interwoven. However, the focus in society today, as compared with LBJ’s War on Poverty is minimal. The balance is not what it should be, in my opinion. Social programs (those outside of the educational arena) and educational programs go hand in hand to help lift people out of poverty.Yes, technology is part of this age, but placing a priority on bringing people out of poverty is not limited to one era or another. It is a matter where we place our priorities and values. As a retired educator, I know very well the value of education not only to lift people out of poverty but also to maximize their potential, i.e. the outstanding educational backgrounds of President and Mrs. Obama.
I think that we agree more than we disagree. I have little contention with what you have said, other than I, more than you, believe that more emphasis should be placed on social programs outside of schools to help lift those out of poverty – which can become generational, especially without direction. That does not mean that educational advancement should not, also, be a high priority to lift from poverty. There exists too much of a dichotomy of wealth and privilege in the nation today. We need to develop more opportunities for more mobility of the poor into the middle class, in my assessment.
Hillbilly D
March 24th, 2012
7:42 pm
While I don’t know for a fact if there is cheating on the tests nationwide, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find out that’s the case.
catlady
March 24th, 2012
7:52 pm
Further background: My system is 76% free lunch, with about 30 kids in my school who fail in each grade each year. Many of these are sped, so they go on. However, the other 2/3, many of whom have failed the CRCT every year, are not retained.
Any time you use student scores to evaluate others, you are making a huge leap of faith, that those scores are acurate, and that they have meaning.
Jordan Kohanim
March 24th, 2012
8:06 pm
Sadly, this enlightenment (brought about by the ajc-kudos), will have come too late for many educators. The testing mania will have driven out many fine teachers before people wake up to the misinformation of this over-reliance on data.
Schools and kids will suffer for it. Bless the teachers that are able to stick with it.
Me
March 24th, 2012
9:01 pm
Private School for my kids
You speak the truth!
Me
March 24th, 2012
9:03 pm
Oh lord! Trotter is in here spamming his crappy union! Figures!
bootney farnsworth
March 24th, 2012
9:18 pm
simple but brutal fact:
no matter how good the teacher, you CAN NOT educate someone who has no interest in being educated.
Dekalbite@ Mary Elizabeth
March 24th, 2012
10:36 pm
“A business model would be one in which profit is the foundation of the school’s existence, instead of public taxes. ”
Public taxes are analogous to the revenue stream in business which is not the same as profit. Employee salaries and building and transportation maintenance, etc. are the expenses. The profit – also called Return on Investment (ROI) – is student achievement.
The ROI for schools is student achievement. We invest our tax dollars, and we expect student achievement in return. That is actually a reasonable expectation of profit from the educational system.
There is much discussion about holding parents, teachers and students responsible for student achievement. However, the component we don’t hear very little about is the managers. In business, the managers (lower, mid and upper level) are ultimately held responsible for results. We have not held our “managers” in education responsible for the results. We can change the people on the manufacturing floor (teachers), and we do with high rates of teacher turnover in our low income schools, but at some point we must ascend the chain of command to hold the upper management who sets the framework responsible.
The “Charter School” movement is a crude variation of the desire to circumvent the “managers” of education. While I don’t agree that charter schools are the answer for many reasons I have elaborated in this blog, I can understand their goal of wresting power from the increasingly bureaucratic system that plagues so much of education today.
Education has been impervious to attempts to hold the decision makers (and by decision makers I don’t mean teachers) accountable for the many mistakes they have made from relaxed discipline to increasing paperwork at the classroom level to staff development conducted by individuals who have scant knowledge of and experience in the classroom and its subject matter. At some point we must hold them accountable. Businesses who do not hold their managers accountable do not stay in business for very long.
Without a significant reinvestment at the classroom level, there will be little progress for low income students.
Every student should have:
1. A clean and safe environment
2. Reasonable class sizes taught by a well compensated and competent teacher
3. Adequate access to cutting edge technology and equipment
It seems we have the money for every program and test and new idea that comes along in education, but little to fund the three components above in low income schools.
Beth
March 24th, 2012
11:13 pm
Outrage and denial from Education Department in Nashville, but in my opinion it is true. My daughter came home from taking the assessment tests telling me that she got almost all of the questions correct. When I explained that she cant know that for sure, she said that there were teachers walking around and looking over the kids answers and letting them know if they had missed some. They would tell them they might want to look at such and such section again. To me, that is cheating. And I am pretty sure her school isnt the only one!
Ron F.
March 24th, 2012
11:38 pm
bootney: sometimes they have no interest because, from a very age, the system shows them via the test scores just how far behind they are. By 2nd grade if not before, the kids know who ranks where in the score pile, and the kids on the bottom will give up in not too many years. I’ve been working with struggling 5th graders on Saturday mornings to help them get ready for the CRCT, and I can see how easily they get frustrated. The sad part is, many of them won’t pass- not because they don’t know how to do it, but because a pencil and paper test for several hours is just more than they can stand. They already know they struggle, and by 8th grade we will have beaten them into nothingness. They’ll believe they can’t do, so why bother to keep trying? And they work so very hard for me because they want, more than anything, for someone to tell them they’re good and smart and worth believing in. After sitting through another frustrating, long, boring test, you can see the gradual onset of worthlessness when the scores come back and, yet again, they miss the mark. These talented, wonderful children start school behind their peers and get nothing but reminders, printed out in detail, of just how deficient they are. No wonder they lose interest.
Ron F.
March 24th, 2012
11:48 pm
catlady: I did some work a few years ago in my master’s program that studied the validity and reliability of standardized tests. It was interesting to see how many questions came up and how tests are “proven” to be valid and reliable. A bunch of hogwash if you ask me.
I’m also at the point in my career where my tongue tends to get a little independent of my brain. I asked not too long ago, in the middle of yet another presentation stressing the importance of variety in assessment, why we worry so much about it when all that matters in the end is the doggone standardized test score at the end of the year. I can assess, reteach, differentiate, razzle, dazzle, and stand on my head until a kid gets a concept and prove it a dozen ways that he gets it. The same kid will, in most cases, still not pass the standardized test because the length, the language, and the method of testing go against everything we’re “encouraged” to do when teaching, and never accurately reflect what the kid knows. But try to get that across to the bean counters and they’ll look at you like you just broke out speaking in tongues or something.
Dr. Craig Spinks/Georgians for Educational Excellence
March 25th, 2012
3:39 am
“A whole lot of cheating going on?”
Is today Sunday, March 25, 2012?
Beverly Fraud
March 25th, 2012
4:15 am
Remember when Arne Duncan flew to Atlanta twice in a futile attempt to POLITICALLY PROP UP Beverly Hall?
He’s going to have to fly faster than a particle at CERN if he thinks he can clean up THIS mess.
Good luck with that.
Beverly Fraud
March 25th, 2012
4:17 am
Maureen, has the AJC ever used the Open Records laws to request correspondence between Beverly Hall/APS officials and Arne Duncan/DOE officials?
Who knew WHAT, and WHEN did they know it?
Beverly Fraud
March 25th, 2012
4:19 am
For that matter, why not the AJC request correspondence between Kathy Cox and her “good friend” Beverly Hall? Let’s make SURE the Metro Chamber of Commerce weren’t the ONLY ones trying to “finesse this past the governor.”
Reality
March 25th, 2012
4:51 am
@Tony: I agree, many cultures in this country do not value education. As to why we pay athletes the way we do, when was the last time you saw 50,000 people show up for a school debate?
Let’s face it, many countries in this world are far supperior in education then the US. Yet, the US spends MORE per captia than any other country in the world, and we rate lower than most third world countries. Politicians and teachers say we need to spend more? Let’s spend less, reduce pay, and weed out the free loaders. When we have teachers who really care about teaching, then we can discuss increasing spending.
Reality
March 25th, 2012
5:52 am
Let’s stop dumbing down the education system by teaching to the dumbest denominator. If a child can’t keep up and comprehend the concepts, fail them and hold them back. Back when I was in school, teachers taught to the median level. If a child failed, they flunked the grade level and had to repeat. When was the last time anyone heard of a child having to repeat a grade level without the parent demanding it? Today, they teach to the level of the slowest child in the class….because they are more worried about hurting the child’s self esteem rather than trying to educate. When the system no longer teaches, what do you expect when the kids can’t pass a test, and in order to make things look good, the teachers throw parties in order to get together and change the answers on them. As much money as we are spending on the Government Education System, we are definitely not getting what we are paying for. If the system was subject to the same standards as products are held to in the Free Market Place….the system would be RECALLED!
Beverly Fraud
March 25th, 2012
7:23 am
“When we have teachers who really care about teaching, then we can discuss increasing spending.”
EMPOWER teachers, by giving them the AUTHORITY to hold students accountable, and you’ll be surprised at how many DO really care.
I’m guessing (though I don’t know him) that Fled cared, but when we demonstrate, REPEATEDLY that we don’t care about those who teach, they flee.
Charter Fodder
March 25th, 2012
7:47 am
I want to know what Dr. Trotter thinks about this – is this why we have so many problems – is this common? Limits on free speech? http://www.newtoncitizen.com/news/2012/mar/24/newton-school-board-holds-apparent-illegal-meeting/
Eddie L.
March 25th, 2012
8:17 am
Three problems-MONEY-there is too much money going to education. I have never seen so many greedy, self centered teachers in our system. Trips all the time, rewards, honors, new computers. All this breeds more whining. Teachers make great pay and most wouldnt qualify for a real job at that pay and benefit scale. RACE-why are all the videos by news showing just black students. We should be outraged by all of them. GOVERNMENT-need I say more.
A Student
March 25th, 2012
8:24 am
My friends and I have a plan for our final exams at the end of the school year. I’m not going to say what school I go to, because I know some of my teachers read the paper.
Our plan is to call out the answers to the exams. If the teacher has a problem with it, we’re are simply going to say, “You cheated by changing the answers are our CRCT’s. We figure we’ll skip the middle man and do it here in the classroom.”
Erica Long
March 25th, 2012
8:29 am
@Ed Johnson and others,
I am not completely certain what you mean when you speak of Ralph’s “involvement with ALEC”. I can only assume that you’re referring to Ralph’s vote in favor of public charter schools. As you well know, Ralph was the only elected official to unequivocally call for Beverly Hall’s resignation and the removal of those administrators who set an environment that forced some teachers to cheat.
It sounds like we will never agree with you on the role effective public charter schools can play in preparing our children. That’s completely fine. However, you have no right to question Ralph’s integrity or his commitment to the educational outcomes of the children in his district, a district that had at least three elementary schools among the worst of the CRCT cheating.
Ralph knows that th state and federal government must do all it can to support an environment where public schools can flourish. That environment should also include public charter schools. Clearly, we are in dire need of a national recommitment and reform to public education. That comprehensive reform is likely to take years. Parents like us need right now solutions to this crisis for their children. We do not have years to wait. For many families, that right now solution comes in the form of a public charter school.
I will never convince you, and that’s fine. But, you don’t get to question Ralph’s integrity. Period.
GaPatriot
March 25th, 2012
8:50 am
I am more concerned with the 75% and up of children who receive a “free” lunch. We know that it is not free, it is paid by the less than 50% of us who actually pay taxes.
If you cannot afford to pay for your child’s lunch, then why are you having children?
The problem stems from parents, the culture of government providing for your family and little interest in educating either yourself or your children. It has nothing to do with self esteem, it has to do with laziness and complacency and no demand for a partner who can provide not only basic necessities but a secure future before you have a baby.
Generations of government assistance has only brought us larger generations needing assistance and little ability or desire for self-achievement of success. The open borders supporters have contributed with masses of illiterate illegals having anchor babies to acquire the safety net of services paid by taxpayers who also have little interest in education or self-reliance.
We will run out of money before we actually turn this process around. I believe we have reached that tipping point.
Dekalbite@ Maureen
March 25th, 2012
8:55 am
I can’t find Dekalb County Schools in Georgia in the drop down menu. Was DeKalb left out for a reason?
Dekalbite@ Maureen
March 25th, 2012
8:57 am
Never mind. I found it under Decatur. So sorry. I thought Decatur referred to City of Decatur Schools. I guess I’m showing my localism.
teacher&mom
March 25th, 2012
9:00 am
I wonder if the LA Times and NY Times will reconsider publishing the rankings of teachers? DId a teacher receive a poor rating because he/she had a number of students whose test scores from the previous year are inaccurate? Given the data, how confident are they about the accuracy of the rankings?
Perhaps the AJC should give them a call and ask?
Perhaps someone should compare the teacher rankings to the list of flagged schools to see if there is a correlation?
@Jordan K brings up an important point. “The testing mania will have driven out many fine teachers before people wake up to the misinformation of this over-reliance on data.”
How many good teachers have been driven out of the profession? What will it take to return sanity to the system?
catlady
March 25th, 2012
9:05 am
Of course, one “explanation” for the huge, improbable rise in scores would be that the baseline test was given without much emphasis on doing well, and then the followup test was given where all the kids knew they were under the gun.
Chaos
March 25th, 2012
9:12 am
This was bound to happen when the primary goal of education was converted to the primary goal of increasing self esteem. Our educational system has been shaped by college and university professors who were a product of the 60’s and 70’s…free love, all things are equal, I’m o.k, you’re o.k…These profs have taught this crap for nearly 3 decades and our school systems across the nation are full of administrators who refused to allow teachers to hold students accountable.
As an example: Just the other day, teachers in an unnamed Georgia school were asked to send letters home to parents of students that are in danger of failing the CRCT. When the principal saw that the list accounted for nearly 20% of the school, she demanded that the teachers go back and “re-evaluate their findings” because that many students indicate that teachers aren’t doing their job. The result: less than 5% of the parents received any notification that their children weren’t performing well. The principal feels better, the parents feel better because they didn’t get a letter, and it still doesn’t change the fact that many students aren’t going to make it. Meanwhile, the teachers know the truth and they know that they will be the ones with the fingers being pointed at them when the train wreck happens later this spring.
We demand results, but won’t hold students accountable. Students fail the material but are socially promoted anyway. The next year, teachers are forced to deal with children who are not only not on grade level, but may be multiple grade levels behind…and then the administration points fingers and says teachers aren’t doing their jobs. (sigh)
It is a shame that cheating is going on. It should be grounds for dismissal if it is proven. But please remember, it is just a symptom of a far greater disaster if our educational system doesn’t start being honest about where we are.
@catlady
March 25th, 2012
9:13 am
As a member of the baseline test group, I can tell you that you are right. When they wanted to test the test, they told us outright, this will not count and it will not affect your graduation. They also told us that the reason behind us taking the test was to establish a mean score.
Our response, we “Christmas Treed” the H#@L out of it.
sneak peek into education
March 25th, 2012
9:15 am
@ Erica Long “For many families, that right now solution comes in the form of a public charter school”
What I don’t understand is why some are so willing to jump on the bandwagon that seems to be a promise of a quick fix to our Educational System in America. I am sorry to say this Erica but the current push for Charter Schools is the new “shiny and sparkly” promise to be dangled in front of the noses of parents who are disillusioned by the education their child receive. This seems a short-sighted point of view. Even when it has been shown that, in most instances, Charter Schools do not perform better than traditional schools, in many instances are run but companies whose only motivation is making a profit, and are not held to the same levels of accountability than tradition schools (why?????). As a nation, we take the individualist approach (what is good for me and mine) rather than what is good for all. School choice is already alive and well in our society-let’s get behind our traditional school model and work on making it better.
Mom
March 25th, 2012
9:22 am
If only teachers would teach again – then they wouldn’t have to cheat to make their students look good. Remember the days when you did classwork and homework, they were graded overnight and put in a gradebook? No selective grading to save the effort of work. No three week delays on finding out how a student did. Remember when teachers worked more than a 30 hour week 9 months a year and were happy about it? Remember when the focus was the student and not their benefit package. Not all are like this to be sure, but if you compare the differences of today’s classroom with the classroom of merely 30 years ago you’d be horrified.
My student is in MS and his core teachers teach exactly 4 classes a day. That is four hours more or less. The rest of the day is to plan and grade theoretically. They arrive at 8:30 – out by 4. 9 months with generous vacation all throughout. Week for Thanksgiving, two weeks for Christmas. Come on – let’s try a little harder!
Reality
March 25th, 2012
9:23 am
@sneak peek into education : “As a nation, we take the individualist approach (what is good for me and mine) rather than what is good for all.”
Here’s a news flash for you. The education model that the US Education System is built on Karl Marx’s theory. The system is designed to educate people just enough to make them good employees and government subjects.
A well educated populace is a dangerous animal for any government.
Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
9:41 am
sneak peek into education, 9:15 am
I agree with everything that you have written. I will, further, state that there has been too much involvement in public education by corporations looking out for their interests in education through an organization called ALEC, which is national in its impact, but which also has influence in Georgia’s legislation.
Now, I will repeat your last line: “School choice is already alive and well in our society-let’s get behind our traditional school model and work on making it better.” And I would add to that, “including funding it properly.”
ScienceTeacher671
March 25th, 2012
9:45 am
Mom, do you have a college degree? If so, you too can teach. Why don’t you try out the cushy job of teaching middle school, with four hours of work per day, generous vacations, and great benefits?
I can assure you that it’s not as easy or cushy as it looks. And I worked in the corporate world for 15 years before I began teaching, so I do know how “both sides” work.
Old timer
March 25th, 2012
9:51 am
Boy, mom, I worked in a middle school from 1989 to 2006. I and my peers in Clayton County worked from. About7 or 7:15 till after five most everyday. And …took work home…..we taught five classes, had lunch and hall and bus duty……parent conferences, IEP and Student Support meetings as well as team, grade level, and curriculum meetings. I also had my own children to take care of…..and a husband who worked long long hours. During the ten months I worked……no flirty hour weeks for me….much longer.