NPR features an audio report on the Houston cheating scandal which Dallas Morning News reported in December may involve 400 or more schools across Texas. According to its report, the News‘ method of detection only caught the “dumb” cheaters. It did not “detect schools that cheat consistently across multiple grades and multiple subjects.”
NPR‘s Claudio Sanchez interviews several people including Donna Garner who attempted to expose this problem last spring but “gave up when the Houston school district’s top lawyer refused to grant her immunity from punishment,” according to the teachers’ union president.
Garner describes actions she was told to take including cruising the classroom during test sessions and standing behind students if they’d answered a question incorrectly. The student would then run a finger down the choices and knew they’d hit the right one when she moved on.
Texas educators are so inventive. Remember this?
Formula for raising scores: Drop worst from class
Two months after The Times reported the dropout-pushout hoax, The Washington Post visited the story and added another dimension, this one about the achievment miracle.( When Secretary Paige took over as Houston superintendent, only 26 percent of the city’s 10th graders were passing the state math test; the year he departed for Washington, 99 percent were passing it. Miraculous?
Not quite, suggests The Washington Post. It seems that Paige’s association with the Houston-based American Productivity and Quality Center taught him a few things about statistics that would help the district. For example, under Paige it became commonplace for at-risk 9th-graders to be retained in that grade, allowing only the competent to matriculate to 10th — the year when they would take the state math test. After two or more years in 9th grade, those at-risk students were moved up to 12th grade, in effect sidestepping the 10th-grade test. The result is that by 2001, there were 1,160 students in 9th grade and 281 in 10th grade. And 99 percent of those 281 passed the state math test. (For details, see: “Education ‘Miracle’ Has a Math Problem,” by Michael Dobbs, Washington Post Nov. 8, 2003, p 1; also the Houston TV investigative report from KHOU: Report 1 and Report 2.
On a more positive note, Jude links to an MP3 report that features Azania Al-Shabazz, a 6th grader at Crossroads Middle School in Harlem, New York. Radio Rootz! is a programme that works to involve students in the media. It originally aired on Free Speech Radio News but was edited by michael and posted here with permission from Radio Rootz!.
Zasha Medina’s opinion on standardised testing can be heard here.
Diane,
Thanks for the link to my bit on Radio Rootz.
Interesting cheating scandal you talk about. Testing is such a difficult subject, as it frequently is not only poorly designed for English Language Learners, but is also “high-stakes” meaning it’s attached to extreme consequences for the students and schools that need the most support and resources in meeting the students’ needs.
Obviously, cheating in this way is inappropriate, but at the same time, I think there is an important question about the relavency of the tests for the children and their progress in school. So often testing is more of a political tool for politicians to look good. (ie. If I promise to punish bad schools, I’m improving education). Theoretically, there must come a point when the test is so far divorced from what is important and appropriate for the student, that the teachers become alienated from the process,
I wish that we could attract more young people to the teaching profession by raising salaries and dramatically reducing class size.
Nothing ultimately can make the difference for a child who’s learned to read at home and one that learns in Kindergarten or First Grade. Testing tries to pretend that everyone should be equal in developmental continuum, and they’re simply not.
(Disclosure: I teach 2nd grade)
my thanks to you for the story. It was a breath of fresh air amidst the usual drudgery. Uplifting to know there are educators who still recognise that young people blossom when they’re allowed an active role in activities relevant to their individual needs and are valued as more than a number to be turned-off (or out) by the do-it-this-way-dummy system.
Testing may serve a purpose in education but it never deserved the one its been given.
Your students are lucky to have you.
Peace