Teachers resorting to cheating on standardized tests for monetary gain (class, profession)

[Ivorytickler]

Originally Posted by nana053

If you do that, then

1. Children who move from one school to another get lost in the shuffle. They may be way ahead or way behind depending on the school system they are moving to and from. Make no mistake, we are a mobile society and families move a lot.

2. Any class at the high school level needs to have predefined standards. Algebra I should be Algebra I no matter what school you go to.

3. If we actually had a federal curriculum, we could have better standards. Tests need to be tied to the actual curriculum taught. It's done in most other countries of the world.

Not only do we need to make sure every school teaches to the same standards, but we need to make sure they are taught in the same order so that kids who move mid year don't get lost in the shuffle.

I had two students start mid year. Both missed one section in chemistry and saw another twice because I reverse two sections right at the end of first semester/beginning of second semester. I'm going to flip them this year (I think things flow better if they're the way I have been teaching them but I think we're going to start seeing more families moving back to Michigan so I think this is going to be an ongoing issue) so that we won't have this problem.

If you define what should be taught and write tests based on those standards then the tests can be used to determine if students are ready to move on to the next level or not. Also, as a teacher, I will have a measure of how well I'm doing teaching the material. Of course, I'll need an item analysis for my students so that I can see my areas of weakness but in this computerized day and age, that shouldn't be a problem.

[lhpartridge]

Originally Posted by mimimomx3

I couldn't disagree more. The COMMUNITY needs to set standards and benchmarks, not the federal governmnet.

Because NCLB allows states to set their own standards, students in our state can be rated as proficient when they are actually years behind students in other states.

I want national standards so that the communities in our state have to face the fact that what passes for proficient here is actually basic nearly everywhere else.

When communities are allowed to set the standards, then the standards are whatever the community deems important. In our neck of the woods, that would eliminate whole areas of study, primarily in biology. The study of literature would also take a major hit.

[lawl_rawr]

Originally Posted by nana053

If you do that, then

1. Children who move from one school to another get lost in the shuffle. They may be way ahead or way behind depending on the school system they are moving to and from. Make no mistake, we are a mobile society and families move a lot.

2. Any class at the high school level needs to have predefined standards. Algebra I should be Algebra I no matter what school you go to.

3. If we actually had a federal curriculum, we could have better standards. Tests need to be tied to the actual curriculum taught. It's done in most other countries of the world.

I can attest to this. We are a military family and have attended schools in five states thus far. California, Colorado, North Dakota, Kansas, Georgia and now SC. (Here's to hoping it's better then what we went through in Atlanta the past two years) I actively volunteer in my children's classrooms, and have seen first hand the differences in education state to state. Both my children have taken standardized tests over the years, but the CRCT was the worst. My daughter's teacher told her entire class if they didn't pass she would be fired. Of course that in turn stressed my daughter out, as I'm sure it did some of her fellow classmates. Most of the year was planned around the CRCT as well. I don't want my children taught what is based on a test for the school and teachers.

Based on our experiences, a federal magnet type curriculum would be perfect (and many other military moms agree with me). I can't say it would be perfect for everyone, but it sure would have made our lives easier over the years with different state's standards.

[Ivorytickler]

Originally Posted by lhpartridge

Because NCLB allows states to set their own standards, students in our state can be rated as proficient when they are actually years behind students in other states.

I want national standards so that the communities in our state have to face the fact that what passes for proficient here is actually basic nearly everywhere else.

When communities are allowed to set the standards, then the standards are whatever the community deems important. In our neck of the woods, that would eliminate whole areas of study, primarily in biology. The study of literature would also take a major hit.

National standards mean that every student knows where they stand no matter where they attend school. National standards also hold teachers to the same standard.

I have no idea why people are resistant to national standards. Standards are a good thing. When we all know the goal, we can all work towards achieving it. When you don't know where the finish line is, it's hard to win the race.

I think we need to go one step farther and have common final assessments. This would insure that we're comparing apples to apples when we compare schools, students and teachers but we need to make sure that teachers and schools have access to meaningful data. Don't just tell us how our kids did overall. Tell us their areas of strength and weakness so we know to keep doing what we're doing in the strong areas and know to work on the weak areas.

[Hwy phantom]

Originally Posted by wheelsup

First DC, now Atlanta?

When standardized test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real? - USATODAY.com

Shocking details of Atlanta cheating scandal - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

I thought it was all about the children. LOL

[MrRational]

Originally Posted by Ivorytickler

I have no idea why people are resistant to national standards.

The reasons (such as they are) extend beyond this one topic and have been bubbling at a low simmer for about 150 years.

[Mathguy]

Originally Posted by A Flock Of Budgies

NCLB mandates that every child be proficient in Math by 2014. Good luck with that happening.

It was recently reported that in New Mexico the vast majority of schools are not making AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress). There are many reasons for this, but I will list the two most important ones:

1) Special Education scores are tied in with regular education scores - fact. So, if the Special Education scores are low they are naturally going to drag down the regular education scores. Sorry if this is non-PC for you.
2) The current Math curriculum is what damages kids' understanding of Math - fact.

It doesn't help that many New Mexican parents don't give a damn about education. The level of parental involvement in their kids' education is abysmally low.

^^^This.

Lets stop being PC here people. In parts of the country in particular, parents don't care and as a result there is pretty much NOTHING a teacher can do other than fail the student. But, you cannot politically blame the parents....it must be the fault of BAD SCHOOLS.

So we have launched on a mission to hold those bad schools accountable but the schools have very little control over the students. It's not college, you cannot kick them out....it's not a job, you cannot fire them. These same students make life miserable for those that actually try because that makes the foul-ups look *bad*.

So, there you have it and no one wants to call-out the worst schools for the parenting (if you call lying around the house taking drugs and collecting a govt. check parenting.) ....heck Bill Cosby tried to tackle the issue and was politically and socially lynched for doing so.

[Sagitarrius48]

Originally Posted by Ivorytickler

National standards mean that every student knows where they stand no matter where they attend school. National standards also hold teachers to the same standard.

I have no idea why people are resistant to national standards. Standards are a good thing. When we all know the goal, we can all work towards achieving it. When you don't know where the finish line is, it's hard to win the race.

I think we need to go one step farther and have common final assessments. This would insure that we're comparing apples to apples when we compare schools, students and teachers but we need to make sure that teachers and schools have access to meaningful data. Don't just tell us how our kids did overall. Tell us their areas of strength and weakness so we know to keep doing what we're doing in the strong areas and know to work on the weak areas.

I agree, but have the common final assessments made up by TEACHERS and not companies...and assessments that are GRADED by teachers. I was at a Webinar entitled 'Lessons from Abroad:International Standards and Assessments" by the fantastic educator, Linda Darling-Hammond (whom the powers that be seem to IGNORE) and if anyone wants it, send me a message and I will send it to you.

First off, we have too many dang standards. In the state of Florida, it has been estimated that it would take the average student to learn all of them, 5 years beyond their high school experience! SO we need to come up with common standards (which would be hard due to the religious right, libertarians, North and South, city and country, but it could be done) and make them MANAGEABLE and hold students accountable for them.

Second, teachers need to make these common assessments and not companies. These assessments are NOT JUST "multiple guess" but ones that require critical thinking (that Am. education lacks, hence we do so poorly on the PISA -the test that shows Finland to be #1 year after year). The UK is a good example of how this is done as well as Australia where the final assessment for biology in Queensland is like this:

When scientists design drugs against infectious agents, the term “designed drug” is often used.
A. Explain what is meant by this term. __________________________________________________ __________________________________________________ ______________
Scientists aim to develop a drug against a particular virus that infects humans. The virus has a protein coat and different parts of the coat play different roles in the infective cycle. Some sites assist in the attachment of the virus to a host cell; others are important in the release from a host cell. The structure is represented in the following diagram: (they see it on the paper)
The virus reproduces by attaching itself to the surface of a host cell and injecting its DNA into the host cell. The viral DNA then uses the components of host cell to reproduce its parts and hundreds of new viruses bud off from the host cell. Ultimately the host cell dies.
B. Design a drug that will be effective against this virus. In your answer outline the important aspects you would need to consider. Outline how your drug would prevent continuation of the cycle of reproduction of the virus particle. Use diagrams in your answer. Space for diagrams is provided on the next page.
Before a drug is used on humans, it is usually tested on animals. In this case, the virus under investigation also infects mice.
C. Design an experiment, using mice, to test the effectiveness of the drug you have designed.

They have 2 hours to do this.... how many American students do you think could pass this?
And the teachers grade them, not some company.



There are 3 outcomes for the course and not 100 standards:

• Outcome 1 – 3 practical tasks (labs), one on plant & animal cells, another on enzymes, and a third on membranes.
• Outcome 2 – 2 practical activities related to maintaining a stable internal environment, one for animals, one for plants
• Outcome 3 – A research report / presentation on characteristics of pathogenic organisms and mechanisms by which organisms can defend against disease

Third, what they learn need to be challening and real world and this test and outcomes seem pretty real world to me!!
WE NEED TO DISMANTLE THE WHOLE SYSTEM, HOLD STUDENTS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR LEARNING, STOP GRADING SCHOOLS, AND WHEN WE DO, THINGS LIKE THIS WILL NOT HAPPEN.

PS. Sorry for all the different size fonts as I had to copy and paste from the PowerPoint!

[lhpartridge]

Originally Posted by Mathguy

^^^This.

Lets stop being PC here people. In parts of the country in particular, parents don't care and as a result there is pretty much NOTHING a teacher can do other than fail the student. But, you cannot politically blame the parents....it must be the fault of BAD SCHOOLS.

So we have launched on a mission to hold those bad schools accountable but the schools have very little control over the students. It's not college, you cannot kick them out....it's not a job, you cannot fire them. These same students make life miserable for those that actually try because that makes the foul-ups look *bad*.

So, there you have it and no one wants to call-out the worst schools for the parenting (if you call lying around the house taking drugs and collecting a govt. check parenting.) ....heck Bill Cosby tried to tackle the issue and was politically and socially lynched for doing so.

^^^This.

I'm in one of those parts--the Southeast rather than Southwest. Our state typically has the highest infant mortality rate in the country. Little to no prenatal cares translates after birth to little to no postnatal care. And so on until the cycle repeats itself--about 13-19 years later.

Our daughter was getting her immunization records for med school at the local health department yesterday. She was appalled at how so many parents completely ignored their crying children. One image haunted her--an obese teen mom with a clearly sick, likely undernourished newborn. She said that the workers were fielding a lot of questions about WIC, but she didn't know what it was. I had to explain about Women, Infants, and Children, and that probably, a lot of people had run out of formula and because it was the first of the month, they were their for their monthly supplies. I didn't point out to her that these will be her patients at the medical school. I think she will figure that out for herself.

There are pockets like this all over the country. I studied with a woman from Yakima, Washington, who told horror stories about the lives of the migrant children she teaches. I'm sure the slums of any major city, or the abandoned rural areas all have their own type of blight. This, in my opinion, is the major difference behind the measured educational levels in the US and other countries. You have to leave the first world to get to the levels of squalor that are seen all over this country.

I don't see any solution other than re-establishing orphanages and instituting early childhood programs with the goal NOT of relieving parents of their burdens, but of ensuring that the society does not suffer quite so intensely due to the children becoming drags on the state. Socialist countries don't just have their policies to benefit the individual. They have medical care, child care, free higher education, etc., to benefit the SOCIETY--that is, everyone in the whole country. Because we are a capitalist country that has instituted some socialistic policies, too many people have dropped the practice that sustained the poor before FDR--giving to charity. As Scrooge said, "Are there no work houses?" As it stands now, we are not capitalistic enough to provide for the poor through charity, nor are we socialistic enough to ensure that no one is destitute.

No Child Left Behind had as one of its stated goals to ensure that even the children in the worst circumstances would have the benefit of getting at least a minimum education, especially in the districts where more affluent children were doing just fine. They began with the faulty premise that the factors that differentiate the different socio-economic groups have no bearing whatsoever on student achievement--that all significant factors are extrinsic rather than intrinsic. In other words, the only thing that affects how a child does on standardized tests is the instruction in the classroom and the responsibility for that belongs 100% to the teacher.

So now we have this situation--where excellent teachers have spent a lifetime trying to ensure that the children of the poor have access to the same opportunities as the more fortunate, but now they are forced to be rated upon the children's success on essentially meaningless skills that are not of the teacher's, nor the parents', nor the children's choosing.

My only fear about national standards, and it is a deep one, is that the same people who came up with NCLB will be in charge of setting academic standards for each grade and subject rather than people who are actually experienced and skilled in those same academic areas.

[Mathguy]

Originally Posted by lhpartridge

^^^This.

I'm in one of those parts--the Southeast rather than Southwest. Our state typically has the highest infant mortality rate in the country. Little to no prenatal cares translates after birth to little to no postnatal care. And so on until the cycle repeats itself--about 13-19 years later.

Our daughter was getting her immunization records for med school at the local health department yesterday. She was appalled at how so many parents completely ignored their crying children. One image haunted her--an obese teen mom with a clearly sick, likely undernourished newborn. She said that the workers were fielding a lot of questions about WIC, but she didn't know what it was. I had to explain about Women, Infants, and Children, and that probably, a lot of people had run out of formula and because it was the first of the month, they were their for their monthly supplies. I didn't point out to her that these will be her patients at the medical school. I think she will figure that out for herself.

There are pockets like this all over the country. I studied with a woman from Yakima, Washington, who told horror stories about the lives of the migrant children she teaches. I'm sure the slums of any major city, or the abandoned rural areas all have their own type of blight. This, in my opinion, is the major difference behind the measured educational levels in the US and other countries. You have to leave the first world to get to the levels of squalor that are seen all over this country.

I don't see any solution other than re-establishing orphanages and instituting early childhood programs with the goal NOT of relieving parents of their burdens, but of ensuring that the society does not suffer quite so intensely due to the children becoming drags on the state. Socialist countries don't just have their policies to benefit the individual. They have medical care, child care, free higher education, etc., to benefit the SOCIETY--that is, everyone in the whole country. Because we are a capitalist country that has instituted some socialistic policies, too many people have dropped the practice that sustained the poor before FDR--giving to charity. As Scrooge said, "Are there no work houses?" As it stands now, we are not capitalistic enough to provide for the poor through charity, nor are we socialistic enough to ensure that no one is destitute.

No Child Left Behind had as one of its stated goals to ensure that even the children in the worst circumstances would have the benefit of getting at least a minimum education, especially in the districts where more affluent children were doing just fine. They began with the faulty premise that the factors that differentiate the different socio-economic groups have no bearing whatsoever on student achievement--that all significant factors are extrinsic rather than intrinsic. In other words, the only thing that affects how a child does on standardized tests is the instruction in the classroom and the responsibility for that belongs 100% to the teacher.

So now we have this situation--where excellent teachers have spent a lifetime trying to ensure that the children of the poor have access to the same opportunities as the more fortunate, but now they are forced to be rated upon the children's success on essentially meaningless skills that are not of the teacher's, nor the parents', nor the children's choosing.

My only fear about national standards, and it is a deep one, is that the same people who came up with NCLB will be in charge of setting academic standards for each grade and subject rather than people who are actually experienced and skilled in those same academic areas.

Here are my thoughts on NCLB. They may sound cynical, cruel or whatever but I am a realist.

In the current state of the US there is nothing we can do to force people to be accountable. We give them enough resources to reach breeding age in a nanny state and then create more of the same. (I have a cousin or two like this.)

NCLB won't help them. It would take a flat out intervention to help those kids and that's not allowed unless the situaiton is dire and by then the kids are years behind and scarred inside and out.

So, what NCLB does is pull our brighter kids down to the lowest common denominator which hurts A LOT in schools that are smaller and\or cannot offer varied pace or accelerated classes. I don't really care if one of our future prisoners or floor sweepers is a little better educated if it means 5 other students don't reach their potential as teachers, engineers etc.

Don't get me wrong, we need floor sweepers etc. but if their education is a little better or worse there is not a major societal impact.