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
Reality
March 25th, 2012
11:41 am
@Mary Elizabeth, Jefferson was against a Centralized Government. His statement regarding an educated populace was to prevent the government from becoming centralized and powerful. He would be appualled by today’s status of the government he helped create. He would be equally appualled by the status of the education system.
One of the most misquoted and misinterpretted quotes is: “A government of the people, by the people, and for the people.” Liberal and those who believe we are a Democracy, say this quote shows that this government was founded on the principal of majority rules. The correct meaning of this quote is that this Republic is to be to run by members of the populace at large, not the political elite (of the people), those representatives are to be chosen by those members of the populace (by the people), and the representatives are to provide voice of those they represent (for the people). Jefferson’s vision was for the states be more powerful than the federal government. His vision was for the states to do what was in the best interest of it’s people, not for a centralized government to determine what it felt was best for the people at large.
Today, we have a Centralized Government (the US Department of Education) setting the standards and the guidelines for everyone to follow. The States and the local BOE’s have no voice in this matter, and all they can do is implement what the Federal Government demands of them. First thing that needs to be done is return the power of educating the citizens to the States.
d
March 25th, 2012
11:44 am
@Reality, NEA was founded in 1857…. Just saying. GAE and its predecessor organizations existed nearly as long.
Now to my real point…
We do live and operate in a system that is flawed because those in charge of the system don’t have a clue. When I was in middle school in Gwinnett County in the early 90s, the mission of GCPS was to guarantee individual student success. Before I had graduated in 1997, that had morphed into the “World Class” mission statement that is still in place today. Is there anything wrong with being world class? Absolutely not, but when defining world class, maybe people need to be looking at the rest of the world. Others have mentioned tracking, holding students back, etc – all strategies used in other countries that we so desire to be like. Finland is commonly used as an example of the strongest system in the world – let’s be like Finland, do what they do…. well, let’s then UNIONIZE all teachers, and put them in charge of the system.
A friend of mine and I were talking about Common Core yesterday. She teaches kindergarten, I teach seniors. Who do you think is going to have an easier time with implementation of the CC? Read the Common Core – there is no phase in process…. It’s just here you go, here’s the standards based on years of exposure to the process, yeah, we know we just threw it on you, but if your children aren’t up to speed by the end of 10 months, it’s all your fault, you bad teacher.
Let’s then look at how we’re going to evaluate our teachers. Do we really think students aren’t smart enough to “bomb” a survey on a teacher they just don’t like? “Your teacher has a strong understanding of the content of your course.” Strongly agree, agree, disagree, strongly disagree. Hmmm, Ms. Jones wrote me up for skipping math today, so I strongly disagree. Oh, and since I did skip math, I missed how to figure the area of a trapezoid, uh oh, here it is on my EOCT, what do I do?
Does anyone realize that placing emphasis on EOCT has one really interesting consequence? Members of the class of 2015 will have EOCTs count as 20% of their final course average (which is fine), but if they pass the courses, it doesn’t matter if they pass the EOCT or not any more. Students can graduate from high school in Georgia without passing even a minimum-competency test to show that they have actually learned anything in four years of high school (with the exception of the Georgia High School Writing Test)? As it stands with students who graduate before then, they either have to pass GHSGT or an EOCT in the content area or they receive a “Certificate of Attendance” for passing the coursework. Basically, the CoA is a piece of paper that says you showed up for 4 years, you passed the courses, but you couldn’t pass a test to actually get a real diploma.
OK, I know I’ve been all over the place here, but let me sum it up in one nice little package….. Put educators in charge of education standards, education policy, and expectations of students and each other. Give us the funding we need to do it and we’ll produce the results. We’ll partner with industry to ensure that we are teaching the skills they need from workers, we can even use some time during the summer to work in the “real world” so we know what they need. The system has never trusted educators to do what we need to do because, well let’s face it…. 125, we didn’t have to have “professionals” in a classroom. Now we do. Let us do what we have been trained to do and what we have dedicated our lives to do.
Reality
March 25th, 2012
11:48 am
@Mary Elizabeth, check your party card. There is no DEMOCRATIC Party. It’s the DEMOCRAT Party. Also, as proven time and time again with the current administration, the DEMOCRAT Party is NOT the primary voice of the people. Check the poles.
TO Charter Fodder
March 25th, 2012
11:51 am
Maybe Maureen will research the Newton situation you linked. http://www.newtoncitizen.com/news/2012/mar/24/newton-school-board-holds-apparent-illegal-meeting/
d
March 25th, 2012
11:52 am
@bootney, I do have to sort of disagree with you on number 2 on your list….. I think there is a place for competitive athletics in school, but in the event that the jocks are receiving special treatment, they need to (as I told one of mine a couple of weeks ago in a term not as “friendly” or politically correct as I will use here) to be brought down to reality. My principal has a policy in place – if you are failing even one class, you’re benched. I had one of my football players beg me to “give” him a passing grade last semester. I refused….. I told him being benched was probably the best thing I could do for him as his teacher. He buckled down, got to work and pulled his grade up and, after 2 weeks of missed games, was allowed to participate again. This young man still comes to me and shakes my hand every time he sees me to show his appreciation for how much I really cared about him.
the founding fathers arent the answer
March 25th, 2012
11:55 am
why does everyboidy wanna quote the founding fathers? the world we live in today would scare the daylights out of these slaveholding men who looked at non whites as sub human..they livedin a time when women was thought of as property of the husband and only the rich got an education..please stop quoting these hypocrites as it applies to todays problems…its rather silly
Grammar Police
March 25th, 2012
12:12 pm
“Check the poles”
Would that be the North and South Poles? Geographic or magnetic?
Tallcarl
March 25th, 2012
12:12 pm
I teach the sixth and seventh grade. This is a problem world wide. The root of the problem can also be traced to a lack of discipline in the home or a total disregard of the parents to support the teachers. All parents should give time to the schools so they can be aware of the difficulty of maintaining order in class or any activity when there is no consequences for the student. It is always someone else’s fault.
Ed Johnson
March 25th, 2012
12:13 pm
@Erica, you at 8:29 am beg a frank response, so here it is.
Integrity? Have you and Ralph awareness enough to know integrity cannot substitute for wisdom? For sure, Hitler had integrity, but not wisdom as regards humanity. Similarly, although Ralph demonstrates a kind of integrity, neither of you demonstrate wisdom as regards wanting to improve public education for the sustainment of democratic ideals in service to the common good.
Do you and Ralph have wisdom enough to know you aid and abet those who, through so-called “school reform,” in general, and “public charter schools,” in particular, aim to use especially “African American” children in urban settings as objects – again, objects – of financial investment with expected returns on investment? Do you have the wisdom to see the similarity with for-profit prison systems? What difference might there be in children as financial objects and prisoners as financial objects? (Hint: no difference.)
Thus what awareness could you and Ralph possibly have of your projecting, however benignly, a callousness toward children’s humanity, short-term, and our country’s humanity, long-term? Your behaviors say you have none. However, the awareness might come, and the callousness might dissolve, if you and Ralph were to trace the origin of, say, Atlanta Public Schools’ latest charter school, The Latin Academy.
ALEC and the financial investors have been smart in pursuing what they want. To them, you, Ralph, Alisha Thomas Morgan, and similar other people of integrity without wisdom are the best proverbial frog to place in pots of comfortable water, to which to gradually apply heat, so that you will happily sit there and cook to death, without awareness but with integrity.
So, here we are, with you, Ralph, and your cohort of people of integrity without wisdom helping ALEC and financial investors to cook to death public education and, by extension, our country. What have you to gain beyond a testing-driven indoctrination of your very own children?
Now, then, do you and Ralph have the wisdom to know why “Improbable [test] scores were twice as likely to appear in charter schools as regular schools,” as the AJC’s wonderful investigation of nationwide cheating found? Please do address the question.
ScienceTeacher671
March 25th, 2012
12:15 pm
d, interesting points about the CC. From what we’ve been told, it all assumes that all students are reading and doing math on grade level.
When we pointed out in our training classes that that was far from the case, we were told that after the elementary and middle school teachers implemented CC for a few years, we should see a bit improvement (of course, we might have all been fired as ‘ineffective’ by then, since so many of our students don’t have HS level skills at present…)
And of course, a decade ago we were told that by now NCLB would ensure that all our students were on grade level, and instead fewer are, due to the dumbing down caused when we started using the CRCT instead of the ITBS (which does at least compare to national norms) and also caused by the lowering of cut scores on the CRCTs.
Reality
March 25th, 2012
12:22 pm
@Grammar Police, I believe it would be the North.
Tallcarl
March 25th, 2012
12:29 pm
@founding fathers, again someone plays the race card. Please look at the issues here through uncolored glasses because you are dripping with racism not solutions. You completely missed the bloggers point because you were not paying attention and I believe from reading your post that this has been a problem since ‘you’ were in school. I might consider your remarks if you used some correct grammar and some capitals where needed. You need to begin to read more or even take a reading course.
Dekalbite@ Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
12:32 pm
“The unnecessary and unproductive tension that that business model produces by placing students and teachers on unrealistic frustration levels is, also, counter productive to maximiing academic growth.”
I do not think the tension is coming from the business model as much as the globalization and interconnectivity of the business world today coupled with the threat of losing our military edge on the world stage.
Business is what generates the goods and services that we depend on to live our lives. Unfettered it will naturally overreach and place profits over people, so of course we need restraints. However business is the lifeblood of our economic system. As our lifeblood drains away to countries that provide either cheaper labor or a more educated workforce, the U.S. becomes weaker and our middle class becomes smaller.
Our military might will not remain if we lose our middle class, and that is ultimately what our nation’s greatness really rests on. Our unparalleled military might provides for the the stability of the world’s currency, protects by patents the generation of ideas that create whole new industries, and discourages takeovers of our industries located in countries around the world. No large corporation exists on its own. They must depend on a stable economic and military world if they are to be successful. Wars and economic chaos will topple even the most successful businesses.
Education is about jobs. IMO – Obama is asking the right questions. Are those jobs going to be good paying jobs with highly skilled labor (via technical schools) and mainly high tech jobs that establish whole new industries (via colleges)? We simply do not produce enough highly skilled labor (machinists, computer programmers and operators, etc.) or high tech (science, technology, engineering, and math) graduates to compete in a world that is rapidly becoming about energy (oil versus alternative) and water and who controls these two resources.
The best way to encourage deep thinkers and thoughtful citizens is to ensure as many as possible have attained not only an appropriate education but a also good paying job.
Dr. John Trotter
March 25th, 2012
12:35 pm
@ Bootney:
At MACE, Norreese Haynes and I came up with these MACE’s Eleven Simple Statements (MESS). If a school systems ignore these simple statements, they will have a complete MESS on their hands.
We often see such ludicrous actions or lack of actions taken by public school systems that we are dumbfounded at the school systems’ lack of ability to subscribe to simple precepts. When a school system simply refuses to acknowledge simple realities relative to the public schooling processes, the results are disastrous. From our combined experiences as a teacher, administrator, and/or representative of teachers over the years, we have compiled some simple realities that most superintendents, school boards, policy-makers, and politicians ignore when dealing with the public schooling processes. Below are eleven simple statements which, in our opinion, are irrefutable and intractable. To ignore these simple statements will imperil any school system.
1 – All children can learn but not all children want to learn but rather some children even refuse to learn.
2 – Unmotivated and disengaged students often disrupt the learning environments of those students who want to learn.
3 – You cannot have orderly learning taking place in the classroom without order first being established in the classroom, and the chronically-misbehaving and disorderly students must be removed from the regular classroom.
4 -You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions.
5 – Creative teaching is effective teaching, and states and school systems need to free up teachers to be more creative and therefore more effective.
6 – A smothered, suffocating, beat-down, and beleaguered teacher is an ineffective teacher.
7 – A top-down, heavy-handed approach to teacher supervision kills a teacher’s spirit and creativity and works counter to effective teaching and student learning.
8 – A teacher can only teach the student, not learn the student, just like a physician can only treat the patient, not heal the patient, and a lawyer can only defend the accused, not acquit the accused.
9 – Ultimately, the student is responsible for appropriately engaging or not engaging in the learning processes, and the onus for learning must be put on the student, not the teacher.
10 – If the student refuses to appropriately engage in the learning processes and therefore refuses to learn, there is nothing that the teacher can do to make the student learn, and the teacher should not be held responsible for the student’s refusal to learn.
11 – The artificial and manipulative inflating of standardized test scores is no true indication that students are learning but that a superintendent is trying to financially bolster his or her professional resume at the students’ expense. (c) MACE.
Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
1:18 pm
Reality, 11:41 am
“@Mary Elizabeth, Jefferson was against a Centralized Government. His statement regarding an educated populace was to prevent the government from becoming centralized and powerful. He would be appualled [sic] by today’s status of the government he helped create. He would be equally appualled by the status of the education system.”
===========================================
You are correct that Jefferson was against a centralized government. (Jefferson was also against having the government sustain too much debt and he actually decreased the national debt by $27,000,000. when he was President.) I do not deny that fact, nor am I attempting to indicate that my thinking and Jefferson’s thinking totally overlap. That is not the case, as it is not the case in the thinking of any two human beings, but I have tried to understand the essence of Jefferson’s thought processes as I have read his words, as well as books written about him. Of course, you realize that Alexander Hamilton, in opposition to Jefferson, was in favor of a centralized government and that Hamilton had the support of George Washington on that issue. (Hamilton was also a proponent of corporate and industrial growth, of which Jefferson was not, although Jefferson, in his old age, acknowledged that corporate and industiral growth would be a growing force in America in years to come, especially after his death, so that he was willing to compromise, somewhat, with the realism of that fact. His belief in public education, however, remained consistent throughout his life.
Jefferson had an extremely erudite and fluid mind. As I said previously, he encapsulated the past, present, and future into his mind and thinking as he operated daily. In the Saul K. Padover book, “Jefferson,” I read that Jefferson thought that even the U. S. Constitution, itself, should be altered, if the people, in time to come, wished it so. Moreover, he even believed that the present U.S. Consitution should be looked upon as able to be discarded and built anew, if doing so became the will of the people, in a future period of history. He believed that the Constitution served well the will of the people of its day, but he was insightful enough to under the basic raison d’etre underlying the creation of the U. S. Consitution and he could envision a future time in which that Constitution might not be sufficient to reflect the will of the people. That meant that Jefferson’s fluid mind understood process, and especially the process of the evolution of the people’s will – in point of history. Jefferson, therefore, said that the only things that should remain immutable to alteration were the human rights of the people, themselves, and their right to their own self-government.
As I have quoted here before, Jefferson said, as engraved in the Jefferson Monument, “I have sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostitlity against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” Jefferson also said, “An enlightened society needs less government than an unenlightened society.” Hence, his belief in public education.
Personally, I believe in an America that will secure reasonable social safety nets for its citizens. I believe doing that will create a more humane, less judgmental, and more secure nation. I believe, as did FDR, that every citizen has the right, through his government, to a good education, adequate healthcare, pension in his old age for social security, and the right to a decent paying job. I believe that a centralized government helps to secure these rights for the people. I believe that if, in time, the people’s will is for their government to secure these rights for every citizen, that their will should be done through their votes. And , I believe that Thomas Jefferson, although he did not believe in centralized government in his day, would support the overriding will of the people to choose whatever form they wished from their government to take which served their will, in unfolding ages in history. After all, the reason of the government should be to serve the will of the people.
If you care to read my analysis of how my thinking compares and contrasts with the thinking of Thomas Jefferson, in a little more depth, you might be interested in reading my entry on my own blog, entitled, “Egalitarianism and Capitalism.” Link, below:
http://maryelizabethsings.wordpress.com/2011/12/08/egalitarianism-and-capitalism/
—————————————————————————-
Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
1:25 pm
CORRECTION in this sentence part:
“He believed that the Constitution served well the will of the people of its day, but he was insightful enough to under the basic raison d’etre underlying the creation of the U. S. Consitution. . .”
Should have read, thus: “He believed that the Constitution served well the will of the people of his day, but he was insightful enough to understand that the basic raison d’etre underlying the creation of the U. S. Consitution. . .”
Brandy
March 25th, 2012
1:48 pm
@Mary Elizabeth, Ron F., et al…Have you guys seen this recent post on Education Week, Teacher: Teacher in a Strange Land, “Not Common. Not Core, Either”? http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2012/03/not_common_not_core_either.html?qs=Common+Core
This quote from Joanne Weiss (Arne Duncan’s Chief of Staff) is both revealing and appalling re:business interests in education:
“The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale.”
Yes, making money by increasing the market potential is the goal here–not what might be best for students. Appalling.
mountain man
March 25th, 2012
1:52 pm
Dr. Trotter – I agree with your MACE eleven statements, but there is more that needs to be added. They specifically do not offer solutions. How do you teach children who are not present in the classroom? How EXACTLY will you deal with discipline? How will you keep the students who have not learned from advancing to the next grade level? How do you address parents that have not adequately prepared their children for school? How do you address one-parent households? Hunger? Poverty? How do you address SPED students taking most of the funding for the school system?
mountain man
March 25th, 2012
1:55 pm
Oh, and I left out the anti-education culture: when students think education makes you act “too white”.
EduKtr
March 25th, 2012
1:59 pm
I’m fairly new to this blog but already notice most of the comments are from a handful of professional trolls—many of then union types.
Teachers’ union apologists and defenders of the status quo: What is it you fear about testing and parental choice? You will have every flawed argument at your continued disposal … along with every cherished though questionable education statistic. Plus the full attention of parents determined to finally get for their children a true chance in life.
Yet you doubt your power to persuade the marketplace. I wonder why.
Reality
March 25th, 2012
2:04 pm
@Mary Elizabeth ” that every citizen has the right, through his government, to a good education, adequate healthcare, pension in his old age for social security, and the right to a decent paying job”
This comment is going to be off topic, but I just want to understand something. You believe everyone has a right to an education, healthcare, a pension, and a job? So you believe that everyone has a right to another person’s life?
In order for you to have a Right to an education, someone must be forced to give up a portion of their life in order to educate you.
In order for you to have a Right to healthcare, someone must be forced to give up a portion of their life to treat you.
In order for you to have a Right to a pension, someone must be forced to give up a portion of their earned income in order to support you.
In order for you to have a Right to a job, someone must be forced to give up their capital in order to give you something to do.
You know who else believed in all this? The Soviets…and where are they today?
Reality
March 25th, 2012
2:06 pm
@Mary Elizabeth, basically, you believe: “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need”
Your statement and your beliefs are directly from Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto.
Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
2:09 pm
DeKalbite at 12:32
Again, we agree in large part, but we also disagree somewhat.
Let’s look at these remarks of yours:
“I do not think the tension (in public schools) is coming from the business model as much as the globalization and interconnectivity of the business world today coupled with the threat of losing our military edge on the world stage.”
[ I think what you are overlooking here is that there has been a concentrated and stealthy effort of conservative ideologues of the past 30 to 40 years to dismantle public education, as well as to "starve the beast of government" as they see it, in America. That movement has created undue tension within public schools by insisting upon test results - across the board - that are not realistic to the ability levels of some students. I agree that America must educate students to compete in the world of increasing technological advancement and globilization. However, business leaders who insist on rapid change in public education must realize that there will always be a wide range of achievement in public schools because the ability levels (IQs) of students will not all be the same. The top students must continue to reach their potential, and the slower ones must be nurtured to reach their potential, also, without demanding that they achieve more than is realistically possible for them to achieve, in point of time. It is that last point that is a main contributor to unrealistic and unproductive tension in public schools today.]
“Business is what generates the goods and services that we depend on to live our lives. Unfettered it will naturally overreach and place profits over people, so of course we need restraints. However business is the lifeblood of our economic system. As our lifeblood drains away to countries that provide either cheaper labor or a more educated workforce, the U.S. becomes weaker and our middle class becomes smaller.”
[I do not disagree with anything in this paragraph you wrote. I, too, believe that "business is the lifeblood of our economic system." I simply believe that business should do what it knows best, and that is to continue with business affairs, securing profits for its investors, and bringing economic viability to our nation. I believe that business simply needs to focus on its own raison d'etre in American society and stop telling educators how to run education which educators know much more about than businessmen and women (as well as legislators, for that matter). It is the height of arrogance to for businessmen and women to assume that they can run public schools better than educators.]
“Our military might will not remain if we lose our middle class, and that is ultimately what our nation’s greatness really rests on. Our unparalleled military might provides for the the stability of the world’s currency, protects by patents the generation of ideas that create whole new industries, and discourages takeovers of our industries located in countries around the world. No large corporation exists on its own. They must depend on a stable economic and military world if they are to be successful. Wars and economic chaos will topple even the most successful businesses.”
[I do not agree with paragraph in large part. Remember Eisenhower's warning to Americans to beware of the military-industrial complex. I think you could heed his words. I do not believe that the military is the answer for our future security on this planet. Nor did Jefferson.]
“Education is about jobs.IMO – Obama is asking the right questions. Are those jobs going to be good paying jobs with highly skilled labor (via technical schools) and mainly high tech jobs that establish whole new industries (via colleges)? We simply do not produce enough highly skilled labor (machinists, computer programmers and operators, etc.) or high tech (science, technology, engineering, and math) graduates to compete in a world that is rapidly becoming about energy (oil versus alternative) and water and who controls these two resources.
The best way to encourage deep thinkers and thoughtful citizens is to ensure as many as possible have attained not only an appropriate education but a also good paying job.”
[Again, I agree with all of this. I am not in contention with you. Remember I quoted from FDR's Second Bill of Rights for Americans, given in his 2nd Inaugural Address, that every American had the right to a decent paying job. That is certainly one of the most important elements of education. President Obama, and Gov. Deal, are both correctly [placing a priority on vocational and technological education. However, education is about also more than that. Education is not only about training to secure good jobs, it is also about developing higher consciousness so that people are able to reach a greater enlightenment than they had previously attained. Examples of that kind of enlightenment are the formation of this government in the 1780s, the removal of slavery as an institution, creation of child labor laws, the ending of segregation and Jim Crow, the building of a more egalitarian world in which military power does not dominate.]
Brandy
March 25th, 2012
2:10 pm
Also, please read this insightful blog posting that very effectively reveals the real intent behind the Common Core–the dual purpose of teaching to the test and raising profits.
http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2012/03/depressing-idiocy-of-common-core.html
Some telling quotes:
“As readers of this blog are already aware, the Common Core standards for English Language Arts were designed by a man named David Coleman, a former McKinsey consultant who was hired by the Gates Foundation and never taught a day in his life.
Coleman has now prescribed for the nation’s schools that at least 50 percent of all assigned reading in grades K-5 must be “informational text” rather than stories, plays, poetry or other types of imaginative literature, and 75 percent “informational text” in grades 6-12.
All but four states have now signed onto the Common Core and Coleman’s rigid instructions. Goodbye to novels or other sorts of reading that will fully engage a child’s imagination!
In a recent EdWeek article about how school districts are preparing for these new curricular demands, Josh Thomases of the NYC DOE is quoted as follows:
“Most teachers are not taught how to teach reading,” he said. “Teachers, especially secondary teachers, need help figuring out what they’re going to do to pause long enough in the teaching to have students grapple with text describing the real world. That’s our task.
“It’s not so much that we have the wrong materials in our schools, but [it's] actually figuring out how to structure classrooms so we speak to text and kids are using text in conversations with each other and are grappling with the meaning of text. We can do that with the texts at hand,” he said.
“In the longer term, yes, we need to make sure that by the end of high school, students are reading science journals,” Mr. Thomases continued. “But right now, just simply the act of reading the science textbook and absolutely making the textbook—rather than the teacher—generate the answers. … If we did that in every classroom across America, we would see very different outcomes.”
Make the textbook generate the answers? Isn’t that rather reductionist? Why would that help students learn or teachers teach?”
Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
2:15 pm
Reality, 2:06
I am not a Communist. I am a liberal Democrat.
Erica Long
March 25th, 2012
2:29 pm
@Ed Johnson, you put my husband’s name in the same sentence as Hitler. Clearly, you have no intention of carrying on a reasonable discussion. Good luck to you.
Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
2:33 pm
Brandy, 1:48
@Mary Elizabeth, Ron F., et al…Have you guys seen this recent post on Education Week, Teacher: Teacher in a Strange Land, “Not Common. Not Core, Either”? http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2012/03/not_common_not_core_either.html?qs=Common+Core
. . .Yes, making money by increasing the market potential is the goal here–not what might be best for students. Appalling.”
==========================================
Brandy, thank you so much for this link and for all of this information. I find that I am presently getting a little “shopworn” from all of the blogging that I have done on this thread today, so I am going to “bow out” for the remainder of the day. But, rest assured, I will certainly read your posts and your link in full, by tomorrow, and I will respond to them, by late tomorrow.
Thank you, again, for your continuing effort to keep all readers substantively informed.
GNGS
March 25th, 2012
2:36 pm
A simple and cost-effective way to reduce cheating is to make test results of every student public. A D student getting a high pass in a high stake test will raise red flag quickly among his/her peers. There are many additional benefits such as that student will have a more realistic review of his/her academic standing, and SOME parents may be shamed into paying more attention to their kids’ school work.
PINKY AND THE BRAIN
March 25th, 2012
2:53 pm
It is a sad thing that administrators are bullying teachers to cheat on test. Yet, these teachers are still being held responsible for their actions. What about the principals, Beverly Hall, the state of Georgia education department. It is ashme the principals and administration feel the need to bully the staff to make themselves look good. However, what goes around will come back around.
There are many principals that bully their staff in DCSS. These principals do a lot of under handed things toward their staff. Allgood Elementary is a good example. This principal has taken money from the staff to cover up the underhanded spending that is going on. These principals hire their friends to come in and teach a class charge the county one price and pay the teacher another price. This is also, happening at other schools Flat Shoals. They get away with it because they use Title one funds. Title one funds are for supplemental programs for student learning. However, you don’t see any supplies for students. You spend 23,000.00 on consultants. The principal at Redan Elementary told the staff she wanted them to all wear signature blazers by which she called in her friend’s company to sell the blazers and logo. Flat Shoals principal is so low down that a dying teacher he put out of his school. He told the young lady that he needed a teacher that comes to work.
His skills as a principal and human being leave a lot to be desired.
Bullying in the public school system is alive and well. Education has truly lost it way. How and will education ever find its way back or was educating ever what education was about.
Ed Johnson
March 25th, 2012
3:02 pm
@Erica Long,
Again being brutally frank, here…
You put your husband’s name within the same context of Hitler and others who are keen to operate with integrity without wisdom. Moreover, yours is callous and selfish disregard for needing to do the hard work of improving public education as the basis for sustaining democratic ideals in service to the common good, and in service to humanity.
Don’t shy away now to avoid the question: Do you and your husband, Ralph Long, have the wisdom to know why “Improbable [test] scores were twice as likely to appear in charter schools as regular schools,” as the AJC’s wonderful investigation of nationwide cheating found? If so, please do tell all why you believe you do. Your silence will be taken to mean you do not have such wisdom.
Dr. John Trotter
March 25th, 2012
3:04 pm
@ mountain man: Real quick, OK? Very busy today. I’ll give you just one of my radical proposals which will surely have people howling for its barbarism, but it will work because kids are very smart and they want to be cool.
Each school system should establish a Non-learning Center (NLC). Make no pretense of sending a defiant and disruptive “student” to the NLC with him or her doing some school work. No. School work is not permitted here. It is the non-learning center. Hence, the name. The students will hate this stigma of “non-learning.” Good. This is the point.
If some kids want to play cops and robbers and cut the fool and act like learning is just not important for them or their fellow classmates, then they get a sentence to the Non-learning Center…with fully armed guards. (The fully armed guards are not so unusual because many of our large high schools currently have five or more police officers or armed security personnel with arrest powers walking the halls.) The “student” at the NLC is not permitted to talk one bit. He or she looks straight ahead at a wall in a carousel. This atmosphere has to be highly structured, rigid, and unpleasant. This will give these miscreant students some idea of what prison life is like. If a student bows up and acts the fool at the NLC, he is taken before a student tribunal to be expelled from the school system. Trust me, the great majority of these thugs will get the message and earn their opportunity to return to the regular school environment with an attitude adjustment. The word will spread about how bad the NLC is. The NLC should not be some glorified Alternative School. © MACE, March 25, 2012.
Jayne
March 25th, 2012
3:09 pm
REmember this article the next time you hear about how uncorruptible our teachers are and how mo’ money is the answer to all our education woes. Without accountability for how the money is spent, we are fast coming upon an impasse. On the one side will be teachers and others demanding more and more money for “our children”( ( by which they really mean teacher and adminstrators) and on the other will be many parents and taxpayers who demand accoutability for results.
One outcome may be the large scale abandonment of public schools with money flowing to private schools. Public schools will be left to run on a shoestring until thier power elites warm to the idea that change is required.
Traveling parent
March 25th, 2012
3:25 pm
I like Germany’s education system. The Stated collects the tax. Instead of the money going to one particular system, the parents enroll their child into whichever school system they choose. The school system then sends the information to the government. At that point, the government sends the money to that school in order to cover the cost of educating that child.
It provides school choice for the parents, giving them the freedom not only to decide where their child goes to school, but also their money. The schools in that country compete with each other for the students and the money.
The system has two advantages over the American system. The system works because it is a free market education system. Second, the parents maintain an interest in their child’s education and stay involved because they want their child to be in a particular school and will see to it that the child does what is needed to be done to stay there.
The end result, Germany ranks higher in education and the cost to educate a child is far less than it is here in the States.
Prof
March 25th, 2012
3:31 pm
@ Reality, Mar. 25, 11:48 am: “There is no DEMOCRATIC party. It’s the DEMOCRAT party.”
From Wikipedia: “”Democrat Party” is a political epithet used in the United States instead of “Democratic Party” when talking about the Democratic Party. The term has been used in negative or hostile fashion by conservative commentators and members of the Republican Party in party platforms, partisan speeches and press releases since 1940.”
Everything else you’ve written here is equally suspect, including your 2:04 and 2:06 jibes at Mary Elizabeth.
Ron F.
March 25th, 2012
3:34 pm
“Teachers’ union apologists and defenders of the status quo: What is it you fear about testing and parental choice? You will have every flawed argument at your continued disposal … ”
First- read carefully. There are NO teacher unions, BY LAW, in the state of Georgia. Our professional organizations are no more powerful or influential than any other lobbying organization out there. Right now, the NRA has more ifluence than we do on anything at the state level.
Second- change the system all you want, test all you want, and you’ll still get the same bell curve of results. Teaching has increasingly become nothing but “teach to the test” anyway, so you won’t have to change much. As many have posted here (if you read without judgment), parental choice is fine. I BEG parents to get involved in their children’s education. If more were, would we have the problems we have now? How many parents bother, even in affluent districts, to come to more than just Open House night performances? I’ve taught 20+ years and can count on one hand the number of parents who have come during a regular school day just to check things out. If charter schools can do it better, then bring them on and let’s see. Problem is, you can’t change the pool of kids you have to teach, their needs, or the quality of home life they have. There’s no magic cure-all, and we have to work together to figure it out.
Reality
March 25th, 2012
3:41 pm
The state of our education system is not a Republican or Democrat thing. It’s not a rich or poor, black or white thing. There are many problems and right now, very few solutions.
1) The government doesn’t really want an educated population (an eduacated population will know when their freedoms are being infringed upon and will do something about it).
2) The teachers really don’t want to have prove themselves worthy of their paychecks (accountability).
3) Many parents that send their children to government schools are uninterested and uninvolved in their child’s education.
4) Some cultures (the black community mainly) do not value education (ie….they see it as “acting white”).
5) The money issue (for example the HOPE Scholarship). The more kids you graduate and receive the HOPE Scholarship, the more money your school district gets. Grades become given and not earned.
6) No one wants to hurt anyone’s feelings. (No one wants to say, dear mom and dad, you child is an idiot, and will need to repeat the grade level).
Some solutions:
1) Do away with the Federal Department of Education and return the power to the States.
2) Stop fearing the Teacher’s Unions and create a system of accountability. If you want more money then you need to prove you can not only do the job, but show a legitimate success.
3) Offer school choice to parents. Allow them to decide not only where their kids go to school, but also the school taxes. (It wont garauntee parental involvement, but it would get more people involved…after all, it’s their money they are spending).
4) The culture issue….that’s something that will have to be corrected within the community.
5) Keep track of the students in college. Put a restriction on the funds. Require the students to graduate college while maintaining the HOPE Scholarship all the way through college before the school districts can receive the bonuses.
6) Suck it up. Self Esteem only applies in the adolescent years. No one cares how popular you are at your job. No one really cares about your feelings once you leave High School. Stop worrying about their feelings and start teaching. If they can’t keep up, leave them behind (after all, we will always need someone to flip burgers).
reader
March 25th, 2012
3:45 pm
@mary elizabeth: It has been a financial priority (to the billions) to eliminate poverty by our government in the 60’s and SINCE the 60’s. Throwing money at the problem has not changed a thing, made it worse. Until people realize the value of an education, poverty will continue. Until people return to living like a nuclear family, it will continue. Most children from two parent homes have an advantage as they come to school. I do agree with your point that what children “see” at home, they value in life. Also, poverty in the US means TVS, cell phones, fake nails, etc. Real poverty means no home, no food. Big difference in poverty in the US vs. other countries.
ScienceTeacher671
March 25th, 2012
3:46 pm
Traveling parent, are we to assume then that Germany has a national curriculum, a national school system, and not a bunch of state and local school systems?
I wonder how much money we’d save in Georgia by consolidating some of our tiny little systems so that we didn’t have nearly 180 different school boards, school superintendents, and central offices in a state with less than half the land area of Germany, and just over 10% of Germany’s population.
Reality
March 25th, 2012
3:46 pm
@Prof, I would be suspicious of anyone who quotes Wikipedia. It’s not a valid source of information in that anyone can make changes to any listing. The owners of the site make no effort to validate the information. If you are a professor as your screen name leads, you’d know that.
Feel free to research the information on Marx’s Communist Manifesto. The basic principal of Communism is “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”
Reality
March 25th, 2012
3:56 pm
@Scient Teacher671,
I like the idea of doing away with all the local BOE’s. They serve no purpose anyway. It would help each county save some money. Perhaps dividing the state into Educational Districts with a Representative of each county in that district being on the board. One Superintendent for the district. Consolidating could prove beneficial on this part. The other part of that would be to give the parents the choice of schools they want to send their child to within the district and to have the taxes follow the child…..even if it’s in another county.
Reality
March 25th, 2012
4:05 pm
@Prof, feel free to prove me wrong on the basic principal of Communism, “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” In order for you to have a right to something, someone else must give something up. That’s why there is only 1 Amendment in the Constitution that applies to the People, while rest applies only to the Government. That is a discussion for another article, not this one.
Reality
March 25th, 2012
4:10 pm
@Ron F, I agree.
1- We need to do away with standardized testing. Stop forcing teachers to “teach to the test.” Give them the freedom and the ability to truly teach and educate the children.
2- Parents MUST become more involved. It’s their kids.
3- It is definitely something that needs to be attacked on multiple fronts, the parents, the teachers, the kids, and get the government out of the way.
Paulo977
March 25th, 2012
4:42 pm
Digger
March 24th, 2012
12:02 pm
Given students with low inherent ability, NOTHING short of cheating will raise scores.
________________________________________________________
ARRRRRRRRRRRRR …!!!!!!!!
This is the ‘philosophy’ that is guiding those who are ‘driving ‘ the education system here !
.
Dekalbite@ Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
5:00 pm
“I do not believe that the military is the answer for our future security on this planet.”
It would be nice if the world worked that way, but when you have too many people chasing too few resources, there will be conflict. In the past and currently our species has shown no sign of everyone coming together to equitably share resources.
” I simply believe that business should do what it knows best, and that is to continue with business affairs, securing profits for its investors, and bringing economic viability to our nation”
Well, that’s really the point. Business cannot bring economic viability to our nation without a top notch educational system. Granted there are other elements to the mix that business needs to be successful, but a good educational system is one of the most vital components.
“Education is not only about training to secure good jobs, it is also about developing higher consciousness so that people are able to reach a greater enlightenment than they had previously attained. ”
Good jobs in the U.S. are tied to living in a safe neighborhood, having access to health care, and so many other benefits that allow you to develop that “higher consciousness”. I would suggest you read (if you haven’t already) “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America” by Barbara Ehrenreich.
“The top students must continue to reach their potential, and the slower ones must be nurtured to reach their potential, also, without demanding that they achieve more than is realistically possible for them to achieve, in point of time.”
And the best way to achieve that for low income students is with competent teachers in small classes. That has not been the focus of the managers in education. We must create a model that holds the managers responsible. Beverly Hall vacations in Hawaii while everyone else is held responsible.
Take teachrers out of school during tests
March 25th, 2012
5:03 pm
He added: “states, districts, schools and testing companies should have sensible safeguards in place to ensure tests accurately reflect student learning.”
Teachers and all school system staff should be REMOVED from the testing process altogether. A third party should administer the tests. No tests should be shipped to teh schools. The testers should come in with their tests while the entire staffs of all the schools are gone.
They should administer the test, leave and take the tests with them and grade them.
This will take ALL the pressure off of the teachers because there is no way they can cheat. They cannot be forced to cheat because it will be impossible.
The test should be given at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year.
The results would be pure.
Sure, it will cost money but not nearly as much as all the scandal, cheating, lawyer fees, administrative leave fees….and the horrible feeling when that seismograph measures the tsunami of cheating later.
GM
Ain't Buying it
March 25th, 2012
5:14 pm
I came from a poor family and my parents didn’t give a ratz azz about me. I took all the standardized tests and always did especially well. We had zero preparation. We were told to get a good night’s sleep, eat a good breakfast and bring two number two pencils to school.
These tests are ridiculoulsy easy.
If anyone without a learning disability fails them, they are the victims of a lousy school system.
There’s no mystery here.
It’s just bad schools.
GM
AJC is NOT Credible
March 25th, 2012
5:17 pm
@Ed Johnson: Thanks for defending public education!
DLink
March 25th, 2012
5:21 pm
The U.S. has measles. Someone should fix that.
ScienceTeacher671
March 25th, 2012
5:37 pm
Reality, I’m guessing you live in the metro area. For those of us in “the other Georgia,” letting parents send their children to the school of their choice, no matter which district, wouldn’t be much of a choice in any case, unless there was a huge, expensive bus network set up to transport the students.
For instance, it’s 20 miles from my home to the nearest school. It’s not the best school, but it is a school. It’s 30-40 miles to the nearest good school.
Once Again
March 25th, 2012
5:45 pm
Is anyone surprised? Is anything actually going to change? Are any parents going to finally care enough for the future of their children to pull them out of government schools and work towards their eventual closure?? Hey, its only your kids’ future we’re talking about.