Posted on 02/16/2006 5:10:01 AM PST by Sybeck1
Memphis city school officials say they found widespread cheating at Riverview Middle School, where staff tampered with dozens of last year's tests and corrected wrong answers.
The district is still trying to figure out who was involved. Investigators with the school system are still questioning staff and the former principal of the school, Barbara Campbell, who now heads Shannon Elementary.
No one has been disciplined.
"Let me say we will not tolerate cheating," Memphis Supt. Carol Johnson said before Monday evening's school board meeting. "Perhaps, the most severe, egregious fact is that children were cheated. They were told they were doing fine, when they weren't."
Johnson called the cheating at Riverview on the eighth-graders' exams "an affront to all those who work so very hard to get scores up and improve learning."
The dramatic gains at Riverview Middle caught the district's attention last summer when state test scores on the TCAP and Gateway were released. Within weeks, the district grew suspicious of Riverview's success.
In one year, the school had gone from one of the lowest performing middle schools in eighth-grade math to the second-highest performer.
In one year, Riverview's eighth-graders had gone from being 54 percent proficient in math to 95 percent proficient -- the highest gains in that grade in the district.
Of the roughly 8,000 eighth-graders in the district, only 22 eighth-graders had made the unlikely leap from being below proficient in math one year to advanced in math the next, research director Bill White said. All 22 of those students were at Riverview.
"The more we kept digging, the more we found," White said.
On the TCAP math test, 37 eighth-graders had 10 or more erasures on their answer sheets changing wrong answers to right. One student had 21 erasures (on a test with 64 items) correcting all wrong answers.
On the TCAP reading test, 43 eighth-graders had 10 or more erasures on their answer sheets changing wrong answers to right. One of the students had 26 erasures (on a test with 64 items), all changing the wrong answers to right.
The cheating allowed the school to move into an "improving" category and keep itself off a list of schools facing state takeover.
Memphis Education Association president Charles New said the cheating was the fallout of a law and culture that pins school success to test scores alone.
"It's a byproduct of the mandated testing under NCLB (the federal No Child Left Behind law), which forces a one size fits all test to judge every school," he said. "(Riverview's cheating) will make everybody doubt any scores that come out now. It casts a bad light."
Copyright 2006, commercialappeal.com - Memphis, TN. All Rights Reserved.
NEA is silent? Local union?
"No one left behind" concept.
The city of Memphis (operationally) is a complete laughing stock. Please browse the Tennessee forum for reference.
If the teachers had cheated "just a little" they might not have been caught, short of somebody blowing the whistle.
Instead they fabricated results that would have been virtually impossible.
Wonder what's going on in "other" schools.
They must not have the same security that we do on the state wide testing.
The booklets are locked up until the test date and then each section (four part test, language, reading, math & science) are separately sealed. The seal is broken the day of the test.
Directly after each test is taken they are collected and placed in a locked cabinet.
Teachers are not even permitted to read the test questions, even over the kids shoulders.
BTW our school has a very large portion of conservative teachers. 100% of the 7th grade staff and 75% of the 8th grade staff.
The only problem I see with the story is that it's hard to believe the teachers in Memphis would even know the right answers in order to correct them in the first place. I also wouldn't be surprised to see the teachers get off the hook by saying they didn't know the anwers so, therefore, they couldn't have done it.
What a crock of crap! This is a direct result of dishonest teachers who don't give a crap about the education they provide their students. Great teachers: cheaters and losers.
Lord, thank you for letting me be able to take my kids out of public school. Homeschooling is the answer!
This isn't a problem unique to Memphis. There have been a number of stories of systemic cheating from public school systems across the country. Memphis has its share of problems, but this one is not unique.
Even in "good" school districts, the quality of teaching is often poor. I live in one of the "best" school districts in the country. It is "good" despite the teachers and administrators, NOT because of them. The tutoring business flourishes here because of parents trying to make up for where the schools are failing. The district is rated so highly because it is has so many extremely bright kids whose parents care enough to teach them at home and/or send them to tutors. The good teachers are being driven out of the system, and those good teachers who stay are hamstrung by the bureaucracy and by the crappy textbooks that the superintendant got a HUGE kickback from the textbook publishers for choosing.
We need more teachers like mware and more schools like the one where mware teaches. Not because they are conservative, but because they are honest. (Now why is it that we seem to find those two attributes linked together?)
I have never liked NCLB. On the surface, it sounds like a good thing, but with just a little thought and understanding of human nature you would realize that:
1. Not every child has the same potential. Some kids, no matter what, are going to be left behind.
2. When you have a system of rewards and penalties, someone is going to try to get around the system.
----
Cheating can happen in many ways, some more serious that others. These include:
1. Teaching to the test.
2. Allowing extra time for students to finish the test.
3. Allowing the students to see the test in advance.
4. Giving students the answers to the test questions.
5. Changing or adding answers to students' test forms.
One of the really sad things to find out when a scandal like this comes to light is that the teachers often don't know the correct answers! Sometimes they change a right answer to a wrong one.
"The more we kept digging, the more we found"
From a person recently moving away from Memphis ... keep digging in Memphis and you'll find New Orleans/
Then what if the teacher-watchers are corrupt
Before I had children, I always used to vote for the school bond issues because I believe that education is very important. Since the time when my oldest child was in first grade, I have always voted against the school bond issues. My belief in the importance of education has not changed. If anything, it's stronger. The difference is that I have now seen how the schools squander my tax dollars.
I believe that the government should get out of the "education business." I'm still undecided on whether education should be required or paid for by the government, but it definitely should not be provided by the government.
What would you expect the NEA to say about the matter?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.