Posted on 06/12/2004 7:53:33 PM PDT by ijcr
A state official said more than 100 schools in the state transferred students who scored poorly on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test to new schools just before standardized testing began this year. Many of those schools were in Polk County, where an unusual number of students were transferred in the 19 days before the testing began, said Jim Warford, kindergarten-to-12th-grade chancellor for the Florida Department of Education.
About 70 percent of the Polk students who were moved from the 64 schools scored poorly on the FCAT, Warford said Friday.
"Everything about the data from Polk raises our suspicions," he said.
Polk school board member Frank O'Reilly said he knew nothing about the state's inquiry or unusual transfers in his central Florida district.
"This is the first I've heard," he said Friday. "I just can't believe this."
Florida students took the FCAT's reading, writing, math and science exams in February and March. Scores on the state tests are used to determine a school's annual grade.
Officials questioned whether the 159 schools got rid of struggling students so their low scores wouldn't hurt the schools' showing. Scores for students who spend most of the school year at one school but switch schools just before the FCAT aren't counted toward either school's grades.
Warford said that in Polk County many of the transferred students seem to have been moved to alternative schools, which are not given grades.
Irregularities were found in 30 of the state's 67 districts but no other district transferred as many students as Polk did in the three weeks prior to testing, Warford said.
When the State Board of Education meets Tuesday, Warford said he will ask to further investigate Polk's transfers and to request information from other districts about the "reasonableness" of their moves.
Why do they even HAVE these schools? Do students at "no grade" schools get to graduate with legitimate diplomas? The existence of these alternative schools seems to be asking for slippery deals.
Well for goodness sakes--all we have to do is throw a few billion more tax dollars into these schools and the problem will go away!
I'll hold out my apron....please toss it this-a way.
:)
To help the NEA and school principals swallow the bill at all. There are so many backdoor evasion tactics to the Jeb plan that you can't really believe the numbers. However, they're better than nothing at all.
I hope they fry the @$$es of the principals involved and if the super's involved, take him/her down as well. I hate people who game a system that was intended to help kids and parents.
Breaking out an old FCAT ping list for this one. It would be hilarious if it wasn't so tragic.
The perfect nea solution - no accountability. I can't believe it, never heard of this before. Beats the heck out of that discrimatory pass/fail system. I'm sure the teacher's union would love it if all schools were graded this way.
They pull this nonsense in TX too. Home of the "Texas Miracle." They hold 9th graders back because they know they won't pass the 10th grade exam, then miraculously, those students become 11th graders with the rest of their classmates, in effect, skipping the 10th grade. See educationnews.org. to read what crooked and self-serving school administrators are capable of doing to subvert No Child Left Behind. These people should get jobs at Enron.
Figures don't lie, but liars figure.
Don't be too quick to judge.
I will agree that school administrators (and teachers) frequently try to manipulate the system. There's really no doubt about that. It's money and stats.
But I also know a female who was falling out of education, who was brought back in by an alternative school. It saved her life. That is no exaggeration.
The kids need something to do before they head off to prisons --- and if they bother to show up they will be handed diplomas. Most of these kids would be far better off dropping out and getting jobs, learning something productive, or at least placed in some kind of short vocational training program. It's all about money --- the schools can charge the taxpayers for every student they have listed --- dropping out is bad because it's $8,000 to $10,000 or more a year that gets lost for the school.
I think there should be alternative schools but test them along with the other students so this kind of manipulation stops. Test all the children in English --- that will show the true picture and show where the school district is lacking and needs to work on.
That sums up the $$$ NEA $$$. The only thing they are interested in are the $ dues $. They could care less about the students.
I thought that quote came from Alfred Shanker of the American Federation of Teachers. Makes no difference, though. The NEA probably feels the same way.
You won't get a lot of argument from me on any of that.
You will get some though.
In the case of the female I referred to earlier, there was a time when she needed to be held to a lower set of standands. It wasn't simply a matter of lowering the standards generally, she was right on the edge.
In her case, it was not a lack of intelligence or the ability to speak English. She was a very bright girl who was going thru a very difficult time. I don't know why. I never wanted to ask.
She basically dropped out, then got diverted to an alternative school. From there, she collected herself and climbed back up. It took her a few years, but it worked for her. She is one of the nicest, most productive people you'd ever care to meet.
She is also beautiful. That's how I met her. I was looking for models for a photo shoot. I met several girls this way, but this one was exceptional.
Contrary to what you might think, modeling takes a whole combination of traits. It includes looks, but it also includes brains. She had it all.
Still, there was this one time in her life that was not so good. The alternative school helped her get through that. Without it, she probably would have killed herself.
That's an example why there should be some alternative schools --- but let them take the tests so the schools know what areas they need to work on --- for example maybe all their alternative school kids do okay in reading but are very low in math --- then they'll know they need to work more with math. Or drop the tests altogether since it seems to be mostly a big joke. Or at least have the schools report on how many kids they shuffled around to avoid having them taking the test so their scores come out artificially high.
I'm all for alternate schools of some types. I just wondered if this was a gradeless school with diplomas indicating that the students have done equivilant work to EARN the diploma.
I don't really know how the alt schools work.
I do know that this girl went through a lot more effort than most kids do. She earned her diploma. She went on to college. It was a junior college at the time I knew her, but that was a big step for her. She deserved to be there. There were no free rides. Quite the opposite.
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