Posted on 08/03/2011 8:30:23 AM PDT by flowerplough
An unidentified educator claims that the difficulty of the tests not only puts teachers' jobs in jeopardy, but crushes students' spirits as well.
Is there ever a worthy explanation as to why a teacher would help her students cheat on a test?
According to a veteran Philadelphia teacher, yes, there is.
“I wanted them to succeed, because I believe their continued failure on these terrible tests crushes their spirit,” the unidentified teacher told the Notebook.org, a Philadelphia Public School site that serves as an independent voice for parents, educators and students. The teacher says she regularly provided assistance including definitions to unfamiliar words, comments on writing samples during tests, and says that she even discussed reading passages that they didn’t understand.
“They’d have a hard time, and I’d break it down for them,” she said she did it in response to receiving intense pressure from administrators to raise scores at her former school.
In a city made up of 43.2 percent Blacks and with the possibility of schools being shut down and teachers losing their jobs, she says cheating was “widespread” and “constant” amongst almost all of her students who were “poor and African-American.”
“Math teachers were sitting down in the seat next to the children, with a pencil, actually working out problems with them. I saw that many times,” she said.
In Pennsylvania the annual testing regimen is spread out over weeks involving six sections scheduled to take approximately eight hours to complete. The unidentified teacher came forward amid a publication of a 2009 report that identified dozens of schools across Pennsylvania and Philadelphia having statically suspicious test results on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA).
(Excerpt) Read more at bet.com ...
No, that would be just plain stupid.
It’s not fair to expect black children to pass tests.
I guess that’s what this teacher means (shrug).
The only thing I give a rat’s behind about is that my state tax dollars are being dumped down the government school toilet.
Sorry, no. Most of these erudite ivory tower Phds have never stepped foot in front of students, maybe with the exception of college students when they were grad students. But, they've never been in front of children. That would be beneath them.
You will love it. It’s what Disney’s “The Sword and the Stone” was based on. But it goes much further and deeper. Love the legend of Arthur and Merlin.
I had the same reputation. It was a required course, and students soon learned to take it from me. I would get emails from students, begging to get in, saying that they had friends that told them to take the class from me. In the years since, I’ve had a number of students contact me and tell me what an impact I’ve made on their lives. Some of them are teaching, some have gone on to other paths. I’ll tell you, nothing is more humbling and edifying than to have somebody tell you, “you changed my life.”
Wow! What school?
In the bad old days you were supposed to master the subject matter of your grade. If you didn’t master it you were given another chance, by repeating the grade. This way teachers didn’t have to worry about the students being ready to learn at the higher grade, and the students who were ready didn’t have to be bored stiff bu being required to sit through the same material again. The alternative was the multiple track system. Either way was preferable to what we have now.
I love my students, I really do. They are the sweetest little bunch of goofballs, tasmanian devils, and stilt-legged colts (7th grade). But the sad truth is, if we gave them the grades that would have been appropriate in the midwest even 20 years ago, we’d have whole 4th grade classrooms full of teenagers. I do what I can. We all do what we can. But increasingly, we have a batch of kids who know full well that nothing is going to happen to them via society. Neighborhood maybe; society at large? No.
Perhaps if students who are not able to use an academic education were not in academic classes those who could learn would be able to.
Oh, that would be nice. In every class I have at least three kids who are brainiacs... sparkling, jagged little white branches of lightning. But they are surrounded by ... well ... you know.
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