Posted on 02/11/2010 7:56:39 PM PST by reaganaut1
ATLANTA — Georgia education officials ordered investigations on Thursday at 191 schools across the state where they had found evidence of tampering on answer sheets for the state’s standardized achievement test.
The order came after an inquiry on cheating by the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement raised red flags regarding one in five of Georgia’s 1,857 public elementary and middle schools. A large proportion of the schools were in Atlanta.
The inquiry flagged any school that had an abnormal number of erasures on answer sheets where the answers were changed from wrong to right, suggesting deliberate interference by teachers, principals or other administrators.
Experts said it could become one of the largest cheating scandals in the era of widespread standardized testing.
“This is the biggest erasure problem I’ve ever seen,” said Gregory J. Cizek, a testing expert at the University of North Carolina who has studied cheating. “This doesn’t suggest that it was just kids randomly changing their answers, it suggests a pattern of unethical behavior on the part of either kids or educators.”
Professor Cizek praised Georgia for conducting the analysis, saying that many states do not monitor erasure rates to check for potential cheating.
Kathleen B. Mathers, the executive director of the state Office of Student Achievement, which is separate from the State Department of Education and is controlled by Gov. Sonny Perdue, a Republican, said the statewide analysis was done after a smaller one — prompted in part by articles in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution — led to an inquiry that found cheating at four schools.
“It’s an extra step to take to make sure the data accurately represents what our kids have learned, so that we know the best way to help them,” Ms. Mathers said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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Freakonomics has an interesting chapter on this same topic.
You don’t want parents’ self-esteem lowered by having to face the fact that their children are ignoramuses, do you? Why, then they might have to be responsible. Much better to declare a need for more “school reform” and give the cheating educators more money so that they can continue to make the parents feel somehow adequate.
Not surprised.I wonder how long this has been going on?There must have been a reason to check.
They would make good officers who can conduct elections in order to ensure that Dims win.
Union teachers trying to get the bonus for “improved” test scores?
If they were producing good results. at east you would have to consolation of knowing that after subtracting he margin of enhancement (i.e., cheating) - they might be performing at an average level. But the reality is that most public schools in GA are doing horribly. In my decade of living in the Atlanta area, it seemed that East Cobb and one section of Chamblee (with a predominance of Asian and Asian-American students) were holding up their end of the curve. The Atlanta schools were miserable failures, in standardized test measures as well as graduation rates.
It’s yet another measure of how old I am, and how lucky I was in where I went to school - but, I do not remember being aware of any cheating through high school and my undergraduate years, that I was aware of.
It’s flat-out insane that teachers, principals, or anyone else with a vested interest in the test results has access to the answer sheets. These things should be administered by independent professionals and the answer sheets immediately sent off to some distant central location (outside the state!) to be scored by machine under the auspices of another batch of independent professionals. If these aren’t administered and scored by people who have no vested interest in the outcome, they’re completely useless — and for something completely uesless, they’re d*mned expensive to taxpayers.
I know the Atlanta-area schools from the inside and I am not one bit surprised by this. Georgia ranks no. 45 in the country and the schools are a mess. I have begged my daughters to put my grandbabies in private schools or home school them.
Then again, what can be expected from the state sec of education that WE have?
It all goes back ....unfortunately to Bush’s “no child left behind BS” which mandated certain test score achievemnents or the schools are screwed. Intelligent people have known for years that inner city schools could not comply with these dictates....so what happens...the administration in these schools, in order to save their jobs, etc. engage in cheating....they know their pupils can’t possibly pass these exams. I live in a predominately white northern suburb of Atlanta and our kids have no problem passing these tests....but its the same old thing every year with the inner city schools with a black demographic. You may want the dog to jump over the fence...but some dogs can’t...and it don’t matter how many times you beat them...these administrators/teachers just lowered the fence. I’m not saying its right...I’m just sayin’
Is this the wonderful “socialization” homeschoolers are missing?
Is this the “real world” that homeschoolers are missing?
Are these the wonderful role models that homeschoolers are missing?
Just wondering.
It all goes back to lying and cheating!
Bush held a gun to their heads and made them lie and cheat?
And...Worst of all when the scores come back it is the **children** and parents who are being lied to and cheated of a real education.
one of oh so many....
I sadly suspect that even if the inner city schools where these kids go are closed, the kids aren’t going to do well anywhere. Without being 24/7 nannies the school teachers can only do so much. Bush’s program found a problem, to be sure, but it also assumes it can be answered by kicking schools in the rear. What about the parents, if there even ARE parents?
We can only do so much.
Well what I see Bush’s program doing is shutting down inner city schools and pushing hundreds of little hoodlums into suburban schools along with their troubles. All for the sake of faulty premises. I’m fine with the idea of vouchers when the choice is given to the parent or guardian. But if the parent or guardian won’t give a hoot, I don’t see why the problem should be visited on the suburban schools because Bush gallantly thought they could keep the kid from being “left behind.”
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