http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,125003,00.html

Not suprising.

"Wait, you mean I am actually responsible for these kids learning?"

"Repeat after me class: A, A, A, C, D, D, A, B.."

Good intentions on their parts, I'm sure, but not a good idea. It's representative of the balancing act our educational system is trying to perform: weighing the need to have a significant percentage of students pass their grades against the need for those students to actually learn the material for that grade.

Very sad but not unexpected. 400 were investigated for suspiscion, 200 found have been cheating. The California teacher's union is 300,000 strong, assuming 2/3 are administrators, subs, or not involved in state testing (Kindie teachers etc.), that leaves 100,000 teachers, 200 of which were found to be cheating... 2 tenths of one percent.

This is not to say there couldn't be more that have given hints or cheated, but it chertainly would be a small percentage of bad apples. Still it's unacceptable, here's the very figure in the classroom that is supposed to ensure kids aren't cheating (and thus cheating themselves), getting caught cheating. geh!!

I always thought standardized tests were a load of crap. First, there's 15% of the students that don't give a rats ass about them -- these students deserve a medal simply for showing up in the morning. This 15% will do shitty regardless, why punish the teachers for it?

HOWEVER, some states got smart! I believe in Virginia you need to pass all these standardized tests or you won't graduate. It would be a nice trend, and make the students accountable for their own learning. I went to public school all my life as did most of us, we all watched a collective of fucktards that didn't care and were looking forward to a life of serving french fries anyway -- ashame that someone else would have to take the blame for them.

No Student Left Behind was a great idea, I just think its a long way from its potential. There needed to be far more funding and better ideas as to how to put this policy into place.

Standardized testing is truly a double-edged blade. While there is a desperate need to insure that teachers are using class time to teach kids what they need, the results of these tests are always tempered by a hundred little personal factors - from the importance parents put on education at home to what kids had for breakfast that morning.

The hard thing for teachers is that, in terms the business community might understand, we're supposed to turn out a high quality product every single time from raw materials (our children) that have an amazing variance in motivation, ability, attitude, and even health. The importance attached to test results puts a tremendous pressure on teachers to get maximum results from the majority, and while that's not necessarily a bad thing, it does have some unfortunate results. It's definitely a balancing act that forces teachers to teach what kids will see on the test and ignore everything else that might be taught. I can understand why teachers would want to do *anything* to have their kids do well for their own personal gain. Where I teach we have had 2 or 3 teachers in the past few years accused of "helping" students with their tests... but it has never resulted in more than a slap on the wrist for the teacher.

Kelraz - We like to call that little plan of Bush's "No Child Gets Ahead."

Haha, my mom calls it that too. She's a vice principle in Haverford Township, one of the lower end Philadelphia suburbs.
However I think the policy could have been a good idea, if it was looked at a little more closely and funded. Its mentioned a lot in the campaign discussions, hopefully Bush'll do what he says and actually put a little umph into it.

Again, this is fox news.... They left out a bit of information.

Some say the new standardized tests are a fair and accurate way to assess learning. But others say they put an enormous amount of pressure on teachers to make sure students pass, because if they don't, the whole school might end up facing consequences.
These consequences include NO FUNDING.... This no child left behind act makes so much sense. You only receive extra money from the government if every child is able to pass these standardized tests. I'm sorry, but how much sense does it make to not give a school the funding it needs to teach these kids what they need to know. Without funding there aren't many options for teachers. Students want something that's interactive and interesting, and reading a book and looking at the chalk board just doesn't cut it for a lot of students. It's no suprise to me that teachers are cheating for these kids that don't care about these tests, or just aren't able to do pass because they're stupid/didn't study/whatever.

If you want a good example of how this works read Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, by Al Franken.

Having test scores tied to funding has had a devastating effect on the quality of education in Texas (where we've had it since we had the Dubya here), and before you place sole blame for the teachers on this, be aware that this system encourages and feeds corruption from the top down. No Child Left Behind has been corrosive to education across the board, as comprehensive/immersive teaching of subject matter has been abandoned in favor of 'teaching to the test' (or sometimes, teaching *the* test - in other words, copies of the tests have been leaked to school districts and the teachers then teach the subject material that they know will be on it, including the exact questions). Their administrations *encourage* them to do this - because what they care about is their ranking and their bottom line. We've had this discussion before some time back on this board, and I'll say it again: You cannot apply a business model to education - it's short-sighted, cynical, and in the long run, impossible to produce educated adults capable of critical thinking and analysis of a subject if all you do is force them to memorize and regurgitate disconnected bits of 'information' for their entire childhood. Since we've had this model in Texas for some time, I see the effects of this type of 'education' every day in the college classroom; by the time these young people get to me, they don't even know *how* to think broadly about a topic anymore, or to ask questions. They whine and try to cajole me out of the 'answers' to their lab reports, asking me what they're 'supposed' to see, when the point of the exercise is for them to hone their observation skills and understand how what they saw relates to what actually happened...

The worst part: When these kids fail or drop from my classes, it's recorded as 'failure of instruction', and affects *my* career, so consequently we in higher education are also being squeezed in this same vise (pass your students or lose your job, whether they were able to master the material or not). At the same time, the community college's directive is towards 'student-centered learning' (which, while valuable, is not easily meaurable by the standardized tests required of us).

While I obviously don't condone what those teachers did, it does seem to me to be the inevitable outgrowth of a system with such high stakes and with all the consequences laid upon the teacher (and the district), and none upon the student, who regards them as just another tedious part of their 'education'.

BTW, we got several new elementary schools here in Laredo this year; as I drove by one, which looked like a long, low-slung factory, I noticed something odd about it, that I couldn't quite place my finger on. It took a few incidental drive-bys over the next couple of weeks for me to figure it out; when I did so, I was shocked, but not surprised. What was it? There was *no* playground, not even a concrete or blacktop area. Just the building, parking lot, and the security fence. Seeing that our elementary schools don't have recess and some don't even have P.E. anymore (eliminated for more 'subject material' time, and I'm sure those 6 year olds are capable of concentrating allll day - does *your* child have ADD? ;) ), I guess it was an unnecessary, space wasting, expense...

Oh dear, I'd better stop before I have a seizure ;). No Child Left Behind is a cynical, reductionist approach to education that cannot succeed in producing well-rounded, educated adults, and needs to be gotten rid of. Furthermore, it's one thing to assess students using standardized tests when the consequences apply mainly to the student (which encourages a genuine desire to succeed in at least some students) and another thing entirely to have those tests be virtually meaningless to the student, but to have dire consequences both for the teacher and for the administration (which is okay too up to a point). Tying test scores to money only makes the problem of trying to improve underperforming schools worse by *forcing* reductionist teaching; schools no longer have the time or money to take an honest look at how they are doing things, and to try creative solutions - all pretense is abandoned in favor of cranking out that percent 'success' rate.

Regards,
Nydia Ywalmoriel
Past Coercer - Autonomous Collective

Good intentions on their parts

Excuse me?

Where can you POSSIBLY get that these teachers had good intentions when they are helping their students cheat?


This no child left behind act makes so much sense.

While you're trying to get us to read Al Franken about this evil of the conservatives keep in mind the democratic presidential ticket, that's right, Kerry/Edwards, voted FOR the law.

Both of them.

This kind of thing happened in New Zealand at Cambridge High School. Different background, sure, because our new education system has some fucking huge flaws in it.

Basically, Cambridge High School has boasted a 100% pass rate, and the principal has been going to asian countries and advertising this pass rate, "the top school in new zealand"

But. What was happening inside the school was this very thing, if a student failed an exam, the teachers were bullied and threatened with "competancy checks" - supposedly a frightening ordeal for a teacher. If they were found to be "incompetant" (this check was performed by the senior management of the school) they were fired.

So, to make up for this, using the flaws in our education system, the teachers would make sure that the students pass the exam - either by writing the answers on the board, having the students simply fill in forms, etc. In our education system you have to get a number of "credits" to pass the certificate at the end of the year. The thing they weer doing, was inventing "Unit Standards" (which are perfectly legal in themselves) which focused on things like picking up rubbish, or letter writing (wherein the student copies a letter from the blackboard and passes that standard) which gave students perfectly valid credits towards their end of year certificate. You need 80 to pass, and some students claimed they had gained 32 credits in 3 hours - more than a whole year's work of mathematics, for example, which, if you passed all the standards, would give you 24 credits.

Also, because they cannot give the answers to external examinations, they would pull students out of the externals that they did not believe would pass.

Aside from all that jargon, in summary the teachers were forced to maintain a 100% pass rate for the sake of the reputation of the school, and as a result, it made a mockery of the entire new zealand education system where the qualifications students obtain are now in doubt in terms of employers.

NCLB is good in some ways, in others it sucks.

accountability is a great thing, there SHOULD be checks and teachers SHOULD be held accountable for their students learning.

but...
The 100% standards are foolish.

The problem is that the resources of a school can get tied up devoting inordinate amounts of time to kids who have zero interest in learning and who's parents couldnt give a shit less.

While all these resources are tied up, the upper end of the spectrum is held back, the minimal standards become all these kids are getting because so much energy and time is dedicated to reaching this idiotic 100% standard.

So if you have 199 students and 1 student says fuck you to the test and to everything, you are screwed, your board of ed gets taken over, your entire staff can be fired... its idiotic.

NCLB is a good idea that has been fucked up by draconian measures and clueless standards that serve no purpose other than to make neo cons all giddy and get hard ons about "getting tough"

Excuse me?

Where can you POSSIBLY get that these teachers had good intentions when they are helping their students cheat?
If some of the teachers in question were attempting to help their students perform better not for their (the teachers') own sakes, but FOR the students, then their intentions were good. Their methods, however, sucked.

What kind of a teacher believes helping students cheat on a test will help them perform better?

Well here in Washington State the Seattle public school teachers have been trying hard to get rid of the 2.0 gpa requirement for graduation because they say its racist since a disproportionate number of black and latino students are not graduating. Over half according to the article I read.

It seems to me though... that's a racist statement by the teachers isn't it? The only thing that stopped them from getting rid of it this year is that a big fundraising organization threatened for the district threatened to pull out if they did. They did however lower the bar is several other areas.

I have to ask though... what makes us think that we have to lower standards for graduation these days? Are kids dumber than they used to be? It's like saying you know people aren't running as fast as they used to so let's shorten the track.

It seems to me though... that's a racist statement by the teachers isn't it?

Careful what you say, if you try to suggest that it's because of their environment instead of their ethnic background Lleauaric and Halo will call you a racist!

I know, it doesn't make any sense to me either.

Public school teachers want more pay, no tests to assess how well they're doing their job, lower and lower graduation requirements for their students, fewer students, less in class time, less out of class work... The way I look at it, the real battle is the teacher's union versus the students.

Public school teachers want more pay, no tests to assess how well they're doing their job, lower and lower graduation requirements for their students, fewer students, less in class time, less out of class work... The way I look at it, the real battle is the teacher's union versus the students.


1. Yes, they want more pay...SOME are grossly underpaid for how important their job is.

2. no tests to assess how well they're doing their job - That's crap, show me a teacher that doesn't use tests to assess students (okay there are some, but they're freaks :) )

3. Some in Seattle seem towant lower grad standards, any evidence that all do?

4. Well they all want that, smaller class sizes are well proven to increase performance...you shoyuld want that too.

5. Have never heard they want less class time...have any proof of this assertion?

6. Same as above, in my experience my kids have much more homework than I ever had in grade school. So I know it's not true for my district.

Conclusion:

Bad information, leads to bad conclusions.

Public school teachers want more pay, no tests to assess how well they're doing their job, lower and lower graduation requirements for their students, fewer students, less in class time, less out of class work...

You mean, sort of the way it was before the mid-70s when we churned out some of the best engineering, hard science, and social science classes in the world?

It doesn't take in-depth analysis metrics to see that SOMETHING has seriously impeded the ability of good students to get good educations in the last 30 years. One of the major trends during that period was the "industrialization" of the educational process, including large-scale implementation of standardized performance tests. At the very least, this sort of educational management methodology and its flagship, the standardized achievement test, has done nothing positive for students.

Back when I was in school, students as young as 10 realized the statewide achievement tests were a load of bullshit. It was ridiculously easy for the smart kids, and in order to maintain pre-determined pass/fail targets all the remedial classes ended up teaching the test itself instead of trying to get the students to comprehend the material. Keep in mind, these are 10 year olds, seeing the obvious conclusions it takes groupthink business management to ignore.

By the time I left high school, one of the best funded districts in my city had cut almost all of its advanced courses in intermediate schools and about a half of them in high school. I don't think there was anything in the water making the classes that came after me dumber, the teachers were for the most part the same, the neighborhoods remained equally affluent, the budget likely increased. So tell me, where is the large scale educational failure we're seeing if it's NOT in the new management psychosis?

When I got to college, the first classes my peers were taking were courses that were considered firmly in the realm of high school and middle school not 10 and 20 years ago. Not only that, easily half of the students there were focused on worthless business degrees designed to get their foot in the door at some job, not an actual education -- another easily observable effect of check-box standards on the educational process.

Here's a little test for some of you. Look into trends in private and homeschooling. Aside from the normal religiously inspired cases, which have remained relatively constant and generally regional for years and years, there are some very interesting trends going on, and what groups are getting their kids the hell out of public education is particularly telling.

I have no problem whatsoever either being assessed (teaching evaluation, examination of my drop/fail rates in relation to the rest of the department, student evaluations, state mandated tests of core competencies - I submit to all of these now) or assessing my students, *as long as* 1) We aren't held to a rediculous 100% standard (I'm sorry, but some students just *aren't* cut out for college) and 2) it isn't tied to funding. Taking away, or threatening to take away, a school's budget is *not* going to help fix their problems - it's just going to result in the most cosmetic, and most corrupt 'fixes' possible. By the way, might I remind you that NCLB was an unfunded mandate? I've seen what happens to 'underperforming' schools under the NCLB gun - the schools scramble to 'fix' their performance by becoming little boot camps, where there is no time for curiosity, no time for 'developing' the students (despite ample evidence that art, music, and even PE classes improve student performance in the classical 'academic' areas, these are long gone from many elementary and jr. high schools here in Texas), not even to do justice to the subject matter - just weeks and weeks spent preparing for those noxious tests, because so much is on the line. The more intelligent students actually suffer the most from this process, because their developmental needs are ignored in the frantic scramble to 'lift all boats', and they are allowed to languish and disconnect from their education.

I'm guessing those teachers in Seattle want the GPA requirement relaxed for graduation because they're 1) sick of the pressure to inflate grades (and not going to do it - yay them :) ) and 2) under pressure to get their graduation rates up. At least they're being honest about the situation, and truthfully, since a 'D' is a 'passing' (but not transferrable) grade, I don't know what is so heinous about letting some of these obviously *non* college bound students out with their diploma with slightly under a 2.0 GPA (they're going to be assessed and tossed into remediation should they apply to community college anyway, and no 4-year college will take them). Let me tell you what happened here in Dallas, where they weren't so forthright:

In the mid 1990s, a scandal broke here at Sunset High School, a school in a majority Hispanic (new immigrant) area. Their dropout rate was nearly 50% (in many cases, kids were being dragged north to work with their families in the spring, south to Mexico for a month in the winter, or they were working while in high school to help support the family). The school was getting hammered by the state for this, so they came up with a rather 'creative' solution. In order to get the students enough credit hours to graduate, they enrolled over 600 students in a class labelled 'Study Hall' that supposedly met in the auditorium (and they all got As ;) ). The problem? The 'class' didn't actually exist.

The big problem is, as Zashira said earlier, that if we use a manufacturing model for education, this puts us under mandate to turn out identical widgets from highly diverse raw material. Human beings are *not* identical (throwing out completely the race/culture arguments for the moment), and we're fools to treat them as if they are. Furthermore, the 'memorize and regurgitate' method is one of the least effective methods of teaching out there, and doesn't produce well rounded, functional adults.
The fixes don't require a lot of money, but they *do* require thinking about education differently.

Education, especially early education, is all about expanding and forming connections in that fabulous piece of wetware, the human brain (or it should be). The neural plasticity window in many areas of human cognition (such as language acquisition)closes at about age 10, and focusing on cramming disconnected bits of 'information' into students heads, in the sterile, prison-like environment that most public schools have become, is a sure-fire way to produce *less* intelligent adults. The solution is not a further narrowing of the educational focus, a tightening of the angle on the blinders (which is what has been systematically done over the past 20 years in this country), but a broadening of it, a return to small class sizes, a diverse curriculum, the freedom to place students into classes based on their aptitudes, a re-implementation of vocational/technical classes in the high schools for the non-college bound, and yes, the freedom to *fail* students, and/or place them into remediation if they can't master the class material, without fear of repercussions. If every student is passing a meaningless standard, or graduated with a 2.0 GPA that has been inflated out of fear of reprisals from the state, what have we accomplished, really?

Regards,
Nydia Ywalmoriel
Past Coercer - Autonomous Collective

Where was that teacher from who almost got fired for failing some students for cheating? Was it in Oklahoma?

I remember thinking "good for her" at the time, but it seems perhaps there were more factors in play.

NCLB is a number. It measures nothing related to learning.

Its the same (HUGE) problem I have with E.D. Hersch. (whom crist0 would probably adore. What is the intent of knowledge and learning? Is it as Hersch suggests to be famialr with a master list of terms as to ensure the ability to communicate in a common set of ideas?
That very idea repulses me. The concept that culture is a set box and the job of education is to churn perfect little boxes to stack neatly in the preset and self continuing incestous cycle of static society is uber repulsive to me.

Careful what you say, if you try to suggest that it's because of their environment instead of their ethnic background Lleauaric and Halo will call you a racist!

I know, it doesn't make any sense to me either.

You cant seperate the two crist0, environment and ethnic background are intertwined to the point of non recognition between the two in many cases. Personal identity is tied up in ones racial and ethnic background.
When you say that its background and you ignore the factors associated with race, the end effect is to ignore the effects of a couple hundred years of racism and oppression. And thats really your ultimate goal isnt it?
Lets all pretend that there is no causual effect between the institutionalized actions of Reconstruction era hate and bigotry and the struggle for blacks to acheive an actual and psychological equality in this country.
Race relations right now are as good as they have ever been. But the past matters, it has an effect, it will eventually be overcome, but for the time being our society and our culture will pay a price. And if we are responsible and moral we will meet that price and help the scars from the past to mend correctly.

Ailwon... These are all issues that are brought up at every teacher strike across the country. Pull your head out of your ass and look around. I'll link an article for you about the Seattle Public School teacher's demands if you want. Exactly what they're asking for is no minimum GPA for graduation. At least know wth you're talking about before you step up.

If you're looking for causality in the decrease in effectiveness of education, you're not going back quite far enough. Go back another 10 years to when the trend began to increase the necessity for 2 income households. The "industrialization" of the education system was necessary because of the decrease in parental involvement in the educational system and lack of free time to supervise their children and attend school functions.

Your bias is always toward the teachers Nydia and that's understandable. "Good for them for wanting to decrease the minimum GPA" you say. And all based on your assumption that its due to the poor teachers having so much pressure to increase their graduation rate. It's funny how their solutions always involve decreasing their responsibility. I get the lowdown on a lot of this stuff from my friends who are teachers. One of my friends eventually left a school he was teaching at because they had a huge discipline problem there and whatever good policies they tried to implement were always put down by all the teachers who would complain behind closed doors how much extra time that would be for them.

If teachers are so grossly underpaid then they should go find other jobs. That's how the world works. Don't give me this philanthropy crap, its bogus.

"Good for them for wanting to decrease the minimum GPA" First of all, Winterworg, that is not what I said. I said 'good for them for refusing to bow to pressure to inflate grades' (paraphrased). However, if the teachers feel that they are truly between a rock and a hard place, that they are being pressured to give these students *unearned* grades, graduate them, or face disciplinary action, I don't blame them (although *no* minimum GPA for graduation sounds as rediculous as requiring 100% graduation). Let me tell you something: the students, by and large, don't give a rat's ass about their performance (with the exception of the high performing students, who have been bored since third grade and have tuned out).

Do you ever wonder *why* students are being drugged in higher numbers than ever before, why discipline problems are so bad, why performance scores on those precious standardized tests don't go up despite the hours and dollars being shovelled into preparing for, administering them, and the endless, resource sucking vampire, layers of administration being employed to make sure that schools are 'performing'? Did it ever occur to you that, after 25 years of the experimental data *not* supporting the hypothesis (that students can be educated using a manufacturing model), that the students aren't 'performing' because they are not machines, that they are human children, that they are *bored* because of the least-common-denominator, disconnected, tedious, absorb and regurgitate approach to their education and as a result are engaging in counterproductive activity? It's really not hard to figure out.

I'm all for tough standards for teachers (and aware of statistics out there showing the low SAT scores, etc, of students studying to be professional teachers as opposed to other academic majors and support alternative certification for *academically qualified* professionals - too bad these programs are being used just to get bodies in the classroom), ongoing performance reviews, and nowhere in any of my posts on the subject have I said that I support a 'no accountability' standard, nor did I mention pay (although if you want to hear about bad pay, I earn 20% less with my masters degree + 30 here at LCC than starting high school science teachers in Laredo, and have *no* desire to teach there ;) ). However, imposing ludicrous and/or meaningless standards (such as a 100% graduation rate or a 100% pass rate on a standardized test) as the benchmark by which schools will be deemed to be 'worthy' of support undermines legitimate efforts by caring individuals to actually produce educated children.

It's not that the teachers want a lack of accountability; but given the current 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' climate they face in the public schools, *no* accountability on the part of the students or parents (heaven forbid anything ever be the student's fault), and being by and large powerless to actually do anything to change the whole system, I can't blame them for their attempt to make a point for the meaninglessness of the whole exercise, which is what I see the demands of the Seattle teachers as being.

Regards,
Nydia Ywalmoriel
Past Coercer - Autonomous Collective

P.S. Faervas informs me that in several states, including Texas in the past, and Arkansas in the present day, that there was/is no minimum GPA requirement for graduation; but that if one completed the required coursework with a sub 2.0 GPA, one got a 'Certificate of Completion' rather than a diploma.

P.S. Faervas informs me that in several states, including Texas in the past, and Arkansas in the present day, that there was/is no minimum GPA requirement for graduation; but that if one completed the required coursework with a sub 2.0 GPA, one got a 'Certificate of Completion' rather than a diploma.I think that holds true in NC as well. An acquaintance of mine has such a certificate.

This goes hand-in-hand, I think, with the discussion on violence in video games. It's not the student's fault, nor the parents' faults, if the student gets bad grades (to apply analagous reasoning). No, the teachers must be held accountable, and the curriculum must be made easier!

In most cases its not a state requirement, but a district by district policy... as it is here in Washington which is why I keep saying Seattle Public School District rather than the State of Washington.

The "average" teacher salary is over 45,000 per year which isn't too bad really especially considering that in general they get pretty good perks, lots of time off, vacation time, and sick leave.

If kids can't meet the low standards we have already, then why graduate them? I agree with you that the 100percent standards are ridiculous. What's a diploma worth if a chimpanzee can pass.

Nydia I've told you the reasons they've given at least twice in this thread but instead you keep imposing your own reasonings (yay you.) I hope you don't teach reading comprehension. Creative writing I'm guessing. Student don't give a rats ass about their performance and high performing student have been tuned out since the third grade you say... nice characterization. Most teacher's share this opinion? It must be the system's fault though right? If they doubled your pay and gave you free reign to take all the structure out of school I'm sure they would do so much better.

I'll take your whole second paragraph and answer it by saying lack of parental involvement... but of course your answer is underpaid teachers and the "industrialization" of education. Let me tell you something... no matter where people work they look at the administration above them and think they have all the answers and could do it better. Mostly they couldn't.