High Stakes Testing Leads to Cheating
From today's Seattle Times:
Atlanta schools latest in string of cheating on standardized tests
Atlanta schools latest in string of cheating on standardized tests
Tuesday Open Thread
The speaker list is up for the Board meeting tomorrow; not as packed as I thought with just four people on the waitlist. The majority of the speakers are speaking on high school boundaries (with several wanting to talk about Ballard High). There are only three of us speaking about the Green Dot resolution asking the City to not grant the zoning departures that Green Dot has requested. It's me, long-time watchdog, Chris Jackins, and the head of the Washington State Charter Schools Association, Patrick D'Amelio. (I knew Mr. D'Amelio when he headed the Alliance for Education and Big Brothers and Big Sisters; he's a stand-up guy.)
Comments
++++ Start Quote
Cheating at Springfield's Robert Hughes Academy charter school detailed on 1st day of closure appeal
Published: Monday, March 29, 2010, 11:46 PM
http://www.masslive.com/news/index.ssf/2010/03/cheating_at_springfields_rober.html
++++ End Quote
Google on
"springfield charter school mcas cheating"
BM
see:
http://seattleducation2010.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/is-our-school-superintendent-dr-goodloe-johnson-far-behind/
But hey, why not? SPS has spent millions on the development and implementation of this test paid for initially by Gates' and Broad's $10M gift to SPS and developed by Broad residents and now rolled out by our Broad backed supe. We can't let this test just be a monumental waste of time and resources, now we're going to use it to fire teachers as well!
Forget the idea of smaller class sizes, adequate books and teaching materials, well-maintained and safe buildings or support for families in need, all of which we probably could have had for the same amount of money as the MAP test has cost and gotten higher test scores to boot. No, no no, it's all about the teacher and how a student in their class, no matter the circumstances, does on a test. It's a small minded approach based on small minded thinking of people who know nothing about education but have a lot of money to push whatever ideas they have on us.
So what do you suspect will happen in Seattle if merit pay based on a student's performance is enacted and even worse, teachers being fired because of MAP scores? I've always been concerned about a teacher feeling pressured to narrow the scope of information in a class to what will be on a test using exercises in route memory if a teacher is concerned about their livelihood or career as a teacher.
No more investigating possibilities in math and science, making mistakes and learning from the experience, no more time for exploration and creative or critical thinking, just know those fill-in-the-blank "a" through "e" answers.
It's a narrow and naive focus that these ed reformers have on what education is and we in Seattle should not accept it or put up with the idea.
And I'm tired of hearing all of these Broad backed, Gates' funded faux roots organizations trying to force the idea down our throats starting with the Alliance, Stand for Children (some of whom are on the roster for tomorrow evening's lineup), LEV and Our Schools' Coalition.
It's become a cacophony of rhetoric that if you stop and think about it, what they are saying makes no sense.
We all have our own voices and are quite capable of thinking for ourselves.
Let's not allow others to think and speak for us.
When I refer to our supe's counterpart in DC, I am referring to the fact that Michelle Rhee and our supe both sit on the Board of Directors of the Broad Foundation. The way that I see it, they have got to be competing in terms of who can out ed-reform the other in front of Eli Broad, their benefactor. That's a sad state of affairs as far as I'm concerned.
Second point, the MAP implementation cost initially $10, then there was the levy that was in part to pay for the cost of buying the rights to the MAP test, $4.3, mobile computer labs for schools who do not have the right equipment, $1M, an undetermined amount of money for 25 hours of tech support for every school building where MAP will be instituted and the time of librarians, school staff and teachers as well as staff in the Stanford Center to support this MAP implementation. That probably adds up to enough money to hire teachers and support to make a real difference in the education and success of our students.
What a monumental waste of money.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/education/29scores.html?_r=1
and they went as far as mayoral control of their school district which makes no sense. Exactly what does a millionaire like Bloomberg know about public education?
Anyway, they poured millions of dollars into closing public schools and turning them into charter schools, firing teachers, the whole ed reform thing, and have now gotten worse test scores then when they began the entire ed reform debacle.
"The {NYC] graduation rate is even higher when students who graduated in August are taken into account - rising to 62.7% in August 2009 compared to 60.7% a year earlier.
While most student groups' graduation rates improved over the past year, the achievement gap between black and Latino students and their white peers remained vast, at 20 and 22 percentage points, respectively.
Graduation rates for students with disabilities rose 2.2 percentage points to 24.7%, while those for students who speak English as a second language increased by 3.9 percentage points to 39.7%."
I'm even skeptical - it probably covers up the real truth. I wonder how many minorities attend NYC schools?
NYC's largest export is families with teenagers.
PS Banned from another blog because I had the nerve to say constructivism was a model for learning...funderstanding is now hyper-funked.
Of course, if we replaced the idiot textbooks with something that was understandable maybe so many students wouldn't have to resort to cheating.
http://www.newrochelletalk.com/?q=node/243
It includes a link to the New York Times story about former Charleston, SC super-principal MiShawna Moore
(protege of Dr. Goodloe-Johnson), famous award-winning cheater.
In the academic paper which forms the basis for the chapter in Freakonomics on cheating on high-stakes testing, Rotten Apples: An Investigation of The Prevalence and Predictors of Teacher Cheating, published in MIT's Quarterly Journal of Economics, Levitt, an economics professor at the University of Chicago and Brian A. Jacob of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University concluded that "serious cases of teacher or administrator cheating on standardized tests occur in a minimum of 4–5 percent of elementary school classrooms annually".
4 news stories from this spring/summer and an original about the Supe's connections to money..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJTMz1gBDjs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6yRTZ-R0qs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RMD18E1J4g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_hYlbUGokg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfoyhsbsvqw
If no one else has already, will post on SEA facebook page...
I've been unfriended from the Alliance for Education, LEV and Stand for Children pages/blogs so cant post there... maybe someone else can...
I will try to spend the time to post on the various neighbourhood blogs also... who else can take on some of this distribution task?
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/08/16/standardized-testing.html?ref=rss
Wouldn't the district's proposal be more acceptable if SPS Admins and Principals were evaluated with the same test scores percentages as they are proposing for teachers? Last year Goodloe-Johnson lauded her $5000 as a merit bonus, but that is only a small percentage of her more-than-the-governor salary. What if she was evaluated the same percentage based on the district average? Would she roll hers then? Would long time SPS educators and current district negotiators like Brockman, Terrell, and Thomson be so enthused for merit evaluations if their own salaries and evaluations were based on the average of student test scores for the entire district.
And... why did the district negotiate for a year and half, developing a plan with SEA, and then change at the last minute. While the SPS team was negotiating, which SPS admin(s) had time to develop and create from scratch a new and last minute proposal? The Broad positions? Was the past year and a half of negotiations a ploy, setting up the last minute switch? Why would the board condone this type of behavior. Makes me wonder if the SPS proposal wasn't already roughed out.
And...what is the school board doing? It is well established that Goodloe-Johnson is not well received in Seattle. Her personal quirks and rudeness aside, the board appears to be using her to break the teachers and then are hoping for her leave because there is so much negativity to her presence. Unfortunately, there will be so much negative stigma/taint left on those admins remaining that we will again have to replace them with new people, and they will have an entirely new solution to enhancing student test scores.
http://www.youtube.com/user/dbw8m#p/u/1/uONqxysWEk8
Also, this comment was posted on the recent "Who's teaching LA's kids?" article from the LA Times:
StacieHammes at 7:22 PM August 16, 2010
As a former teacher, who worked at the same school between 1998-2002, I knew John Smith. During that time, it was known that John Smith enthusiastically took in the students who had the worst behavior problems on campus, and was frequently assigned them. During their time with John Smith, these students became socially appropriate, and continued to demonstrate academic growth at the same time. I am not saying that Mr. Aguilar is not a great teacher, but to bash Mr. Smith without knowing the whole picture of who his students are is irresponsible at best.
Student test scores are a simplistic measure that provide incomplete information.
and yes, I think MGJ spent this past year "working with" the SEA on the evaluation stuff as a stalling measure until she got the performance management piece in place, thanks to the lapdog board.... that's why there was only a year-long contract put in place last year and that's why the "bait and switch" now....
If so, teachers who are "graded" on "merit" would suffer because some teachers (or students, or principals etc) cheat: The honest teacher's scores wouldn't look as good, comparitively, as the the cheater's.
The cheater's test scores throw the whole system out of whack and penalize honest teachers.
Not to mention dishonestly representing children as mere numbers, and bogus ones at that.