CHEATING TEACHERS...OR JUST DUMB ADMINISTRATORS?

[Todd]

We take you now to Montgomery County, Maryland, where seven government educators have just cost the school system a cool $600,000.

That's because those seven teachers and administrators, from Silver Spring International Middle School, distributed portions of the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills--a standardized test--to their sixth-grade math teachers. Some of those teachers, in turn, used the tests to devise classroom and homework assignments for their students.

Some of the students who took the CTBS recognized questions on the test from previous assignments. That's when all hell broke loose.

Since the same questions are used each year, the state will have to replace the tests for all of Maryland's 60,000 sixth-graders. Scores for the school's 300 sixth-graders will be invalidated. The cost of replacing the tests will be $600,000--and Montgomery County is going to foot the bill. That money could have paid the salaries of 17 teachers!

The scandal has cost the school's principal, assistant principal, math team leader, and four other teachers their jobs.

There are strict rules concerning the security of standardized tests like the CTBS. School administrators are (or should be) well aware of these rules. So why did the administrators and teachers at Silver Spring distribute copies of the test to their students?

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see what happened here. Advance copies of the test questions would give students an advantage when the CTBS was actually administered to them. Their math test scores might rise because of that familiarity with the questions. Which, in turn, would lead to a higher average score on the CTBS and make the school look good.

Parents, do you need any more proof that the number one goal of government
educators is not to educate your child? To bring up students' math scores through more intensive teaching would take time and effort on the part of teachers and staff. But it's so much easier to just give students a preview of the answers by sharing the test questions with them! It's so much easier to cheat than to actually make sure students are learning.

Besides, an ignorant society is easily led by its rulers. Government schools are helping our kids to slouch towards that kind of ignorance.

http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A11957-2001May10.html

 

[lavender]

 

[morninggirl5]

Teachers and Students

Had to read this thread http://www.literotica.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=32040&pagenumber=1

And once you've read that... consider this.... for the majority of teachers, your complete success and whether you will be teaching the following year is based on ONE THING.. standardized test scores.

The only people who should be losing jobs and money over this are the politicians who continue to insist on more testing and tying teacher's performance evaluations, jobs, and livelihoods to test scores that have been PROVEN to be biased against children of color and low-socio-economic status.

Standardized tests aren't designed to test what students DO know, but rather what they don't know. To get the wide range in scores necessary for the scores to be "standardized" the questions are written so that the majority of students WILL be wrong.

If you're really interested, I have much more information.. this is one of my "hot-buttons" concerning education. And that doesn't even begin to touch my objections to testing my Kindergarten kids....

 

[p_p_man]

It happens here as well...

Some friends of mine had reason to take our local Education Authority to court last year. The reason? They have a 10 year old dyslexic son but the school, with the backing of the Authority, consistently gave him a higher rating in subjects than he deserved, where the recognition of letters and figures was an important factor. We all knew he could not have reached the scores attributed to him.

The result? My friends won the case and the school and Education Authority were publicly accused of falsifying results of this one boy in particular and others in general in order to get a higher score on the continuing assessment exams.

They weren't interested in the child, just in the result.

He now attends another school in a different district where they have a planned program for dyslexics.

 

[Darowyn]

Do you want children educated or do you want them to know the answers to one specific set of questions?
Too many politicians want the second, because results, league tables and spurious competition have become a weapon in the war to get something for nothing out of the public services.
How many of these politicians drive a Kia Pride? (insert the name of the cheapest and nastiest car available near you)
They pay more because they want something better. But they want better education and health by paying less and less for it!
Crazy!

 

[cymbidia]

Some teachers cheat

...but not that many, overall. I'd be willing to put money down on a bet that the incidence of on-the-job dishonesty among teachers is far lower than in any profession requiring comparable education of its members. Any takers?

What's your point here, Todd? To prove how dishonest teachers are? To prove that all we care about are test scores? You're wrong, if so.

Some teachers care about test scores. However, many more administrators, parents, and school boards care far more deeply than do than teachers, i'd bet. Teachers just want to teach; we don't give a flying fuck about standardized test scores unless we're so pushed from the outside that we cannot ignore them at risk to our jobs.

It's NOT the teachers driving something like this, that's for sure.

Originally posted by cymbidia http://www.literotica.com/forum/showthread.php?threadid=32040
Okay. Dammit. Discounting those relatively few teachers who are putting in their time until they can collect that huge pension and those that got into the teaching gig cuz they thought it was easy money, the rest of us are highly educated, incredibly skilled, extraordinarily caring and competent people.

We earn a pittance of what comparably educated people earn. We work WAY longer hours than the much-ballyhooed 9-3 workday. During those long summers "off" we're attending workshops and taking state-mandated classes in order to keep our credentials current, not to mention being physically at school after the students leave for the summer and before they come back in the fall. We organize our lesson plans in the summer, discarding that which didn't work and trying like hell to find new and interesting ways to present the material our school boards and principals just told us we'd have to teach in the fall.

During the school year, teachers like me, teachers at the middle school level, counsel girls who just got their period for the first time and talk to them about how to change napkins and what to do with them when they're ready to be discarded. We try to work the new kid who speaks no English into our mid-quarter science class, oh by the way, test next Tuesday and no, we don't have enough microscopes to go around, do we?, you'll have to share with Juan and Kimmy who don't want to share with the new kid. We deal with parents who want to know why Johnny got a "D" on his report card and don't i have to give them some warning before giving him a grade like that? (Why yes, that's why i send progress reports home weekly beginning the second week of classes, a thing you know cuz you've been signing them. Ohhhh, you never saw one let along signed it? Hmm, maybe we'd better get Johnny in here...) We deal with sniffles and kids that come to school hungry and kids who have burn scars from that bad uncle of theirs. We deal with mothers who drink too much and can't make it to school plays, so the kid does her best, shamefaced and sad.

We deal with endless requests to serve on this committee or that one. We have weekly and monthly Faculty meetings and club meetings at which we are the advisor. We sell magazines to all our relatives every year to try to send every 6th grader in the school to camp, cuz we know there's kids whose families don't have the money.

Then there's OUR families and the time, energy, love, respect, presence they need from us.

On top of all this, we are teaching our subject. Mine happens to be science, in a specific yearly rotation (astronomy, meteorology, geology, evolution, microbiology, animal biology, plant biology). I teach this stuff with wit and verve and high fucking expectations of every student. I thread science through the hormones popping off every which way in every one of my classes, periods off to see some assembly about the dangers of drugs, weeks off to DisneyWorld with parents, and the hours Ivy spends staring listlessly out the window wondering why Ryan doesn't like her anymore.

And i LOVE what i do. If they didn't pay me, that'd be okay; i'd still do it. I'm a damn good teacher and i *know*, right down to the tips of my toes, that there are a bunch of people out there in the world that see the place, their lives, and their opportunities, differently... with more hope and a broader palette of choices... because of me.

Not just anyone could do the job either. It takes a tough, smart, flexible, caring, organized, flame-retardant, no-bullshit kinda person to be a good, long-lasting classroom teacher at any level.

So you go ahead and knock the system all you want but stay the hell away from teachers. We're not in it for the money, none of us. We're not in it cuz we're gonna be famous. We're in it cuz it's a fucking calling and cuz we HAVE to teach. Most of us, anyway.

 

[p_p_man]

It's the usual story...

...of when people mean something they say something else entirely.

No-one is having a go at the teachers per se but if their unions are not strong enough to stand up against regulations governing standardised exam scores or their unions have another reason for not opposing the policy (saving jobs maybe?) then of course the teachers are going to bear the brunt of any hostile reaction.

Because at the end of the day it's the members that dictate union policy.

 

[SpecialK]

Bowing to the greatness of cymbidia!

Wow! That was fucking beautiful!!

K

 

[CRaZy]

Sigh. Seems to me that the entire Western world has the same attitude to education. We want smart kids. We demand that teachers perform. Oh, and by the way, we want to do testing in order to decide if you will have a salary next year and whether or not the school will have its budget cut.

Here in Australia, funding has been directly linked to school performance. If your school does well on whatever test is currently deemed to have greatness, it will receive more money. If students enrol at a private school, money for that student is taken from the government schools and fed into the private system. Private schools therefore have school fees PLUS government money to spend as they see fit. Government schools have pitiful handouts which they must then spend in psychotic ways that the government sees fit (making every child learn a second language when some are struggling with their first language).

As an administrator in a school, I would never support a system which allows cheating in tests. There are however, ways and means to make statistics look better (moving the mean etc.). Would I use strategies like this to make my results appear higher, consequently receiving more funding and the ability to provide a better education for my students? Bet your bottom dollar I would!!!

Teachers are highly skilled and flexible workers. The best teachers are often sought by private enterprise for other professions eg. PR. In the western world, increasing numbers of our best teachers are realising that their skills are transferrable into higher paying jobs which receive greater respect. The attitude that every teacher is out there propogating cheaters is an example of why they are leaving the profession.

Teachers are caught between their calling to nurture young minds and the need to be hard-nosed public servants in order to keep their jobs and school funding. It IS rewarding but it's no picnic. No teacher does it for the money alone. Write letters to the government about their stupid tests, or better still, help your nearest government school fundraise. Then, teachers would be able to get on with the job of educating and not have to play silly number games.