Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
After examining two years of data, state investigators identified schools with unusually high rates of erasures, or instances where answers were changed from wrong to right. The state identified nine schools with high schoolwide averages and 25 district and charter schools with high levels of erasures in one or more grades, a state report shows.
In three Newark elementary schools, the average number of answers that were changed from wrong to right was four to five times higher than the state average of 2.43 erasures per test. A middle school in Franklin Lakes and an elementary school in Woodbridge had wrong-to-right erasure rates that were twice as high as the state average, according to the report.
This is why linking teacher pay/job security to these tests is not a good idea.
My thoughts are that when property values and property taxes and egos and pride and type A personalities and home rule all come into the mix you should expect games and cheating and fudging the numbers.
There's nothing wrong with setting standards, it's just the way it's handled that is a mess.
1. Too many tests and given too young, before kids are mature enough for it to be meaningful.
2. Tests should be graded blindly - being sent to other districts that don't know whose test it is or where it came from. Why on earth be surprised at malfeasance when people are essentially grading their own work.
One of the problems is that the standards are unrealistic. It is not fair to tie funding to whether or not a special ed kid can do algebra. NCLB is the worst thing to happen to education in the history of our country. Kids learn at different speeds, they have different aptitudes. Money should not be involved when it comes to how kids learn and develop.
One of the problems is that the standards are unrealistic. It is not fair to tie funding to whether or not a special ed kid can do algebra. NCLB is the worst thing to happen to education in the history of our country. Kids learn at different speeds, they have different aptitudes. Money should not be involved when it comes to how kids learn and develop.
This is one issue I heartily agree with. We attract many families with autistic children because they like our programs but they are held to the same standard as all other kids. A couple are hardly able to acknowledge the presence of other people in the area, they are severely disabled and yet the schools performance is judged on whether or not they can perform at grade level in reading comprehension.
This is what happens in the world of my school is better than your school. It's being going on since the 1800's. Get the erasers ready when they tie a teachers salary to the performance of their kids. That's a real bright idea. Wake up people the world isn't as peachy clean as u think or expect.
Location: The place where the road & the sky collide
23,814 posts, read 34,678,989 times
Reputation: 10256
Quote:
Originally Posted by lastinshow
This is one issue I heartily agree with. We attract many families with autistic children because they like our programs but they are held to the same standard as all other kids. A couple are hardly able to acknowledge the presence of other people in the area, they are severely disabled and yet the schools performance is judged on whether or not they can perform at grade level in reading comprehension.
Utterly bizarre.
My sister & brother-in-law taught for 36 years in a South Jersey program for low-functioning students. When they were hired, they worked as teachers & worked with the Director of Special Services to devise the program. The goal was to prepare the students to work in sheltered workshops.
Since No Child Left Behind started started, my sister had to rework her assigned portion of the test for each individual student, at home, for no additional pay. This is in addition to all of the extra paperwork that follows classified students.
My brother-in-law turned in his retirement papers when they got a new principal who had no interest in working for the paycheck. My sister intended to stay, knowing that she'd probably never see another raise, right up to the point where it leaked out that there was an attempt to take away the unused sick time payment.
All 3 teachers for that school (The program was in a separate school.) retired this year. None had intended to at the start of the year. They all had to rework the tests. They gave them to the students & sent them out to be graded. Depending on the phase of the moon, the students might pass or fail.
No child left behind is a terrible law & ill-conceived. Testing low-functioning students by age-level is insane. Withholding pay raisies from special ed teachers of low-functioning or emotionally disturbed students is ignorant. But the real reason that I think that the cheating will continue is because money will be with-held in failing districts. I think that the cheating is happening above the level of the teachers at this point.
Last edited by southbound_295; 07-22-2011 at 09:04 AM..
Reason: typo
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
