Cheating in Missouri Schools! But it's Not from the Students! The Sunday Education Weekly Reader 3.18.12

Welcome to the Sunday Education Weekly Reader for 03.18.12.  Instead of twitter tidbits, we are linking a story (Missouri Fails to Check for Standardized Cheating) published this morning in the St. Louis Post Dispatch.

Missouri has its own version of teacher cheating recently discovered in other states...tests being changed, students given answers by teachers before the tests were given, etc.  The state spends $8.4 Million to administer the MAP test to schools, however, none of that money is spend on test fraud detection services.  A familiar refrain is in this article....Missouri conducts no such investigations (fraud detection), giving school districts that sole responsibility.  

In other words, it's not DESE's fault.  Nope.  It's the fault of the school district.  If the district doesn't catch the cheating, DESE should not be implicated.  Here is DESE's response on the cheating:

Regardless of whether a district investigation confirms test fraud, Missouri education officials take the district's response as the final word. And when cheating is confirmed, the state issues no penalties, other than invalidating the affected students' scores. But the numbers of tests, the grade level and subject area involved are not easily available to the public.

"I know that feels to you like that's not really a penalty," Hoge said. But, "I would rather partner with districts in trying to take care of this than try to become the police."

What exact purpose does DESE serve?  It washes its hands of possible cheating scandals, citing budget restraints, yet DESE signs districts onto federal mandates that are severely underfunded and never brought to the taxpayer for a vote:

• signed proposals for Race to the Top estimated by DESE to cost the state $400,000,000 in 2010 
• just recently signed onto a Pre-K Race to the Top program estimated to cost $1,600,000,000.  

So while DESE is putting districts and taxpayers into more and more debt and foisting onto them unfunded financial burdens, DESE defends itself in not providing test analyses made available by the vendor, McGraw-Hill because of budget woes:

State education officials say looking for red flags would add thousands of dollars to the testing contract at a time when the state has cut department funding.

"There is a cost to that," said Sharon Hoge, an assistant commissioner at the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. "We have tried to rely on self reports in our districts in Missouri. I'm not telling you that means there are not things possibly that are going on that we don't know about."

DESE uses the argument it can't fund the observers in the schools (which it had in the past), so perhaps The Missouri Association of School Administrators (MASA) should use the same argument with DESE and refuse to give the tests for MAP (and perhaps the assessments mandated by Common Core).  Districts shouldn't have to give tests for which there is no funding to fully administer and ensure testing integrity.

It's insulting and criminal  to parents, taxpayers and students when school districts, the state educational agency, teachers and administrators cheat and/or pass the blame of ineffectiveness of education on other agencies.  The article doesn't have one individual or agency accepting any blame for this problem.   If the ineffectiveness stems from

• the sheer amount of control from the Federal and/or state mandates, then MASA should refuse to comply with the mandates
• poor teaching, the teachers should be fired
• lack of oversight from DESE, priority of funding to protect the integrity of the testing should be implemented immediately, and RTTT type of programming should be shelved due to the enormous amount of money needed to implement and fund testing oversight

With the increased scrutiny on teachers and teacher accountability determined by test scores, there will be many more stories in Missouri and other states about teacher cheating.  Is this the legacy of NCLB and RTTT?  Teachers cheating to save their jobs?  State agencies washing their hands of any complicity in cheating scandals?  

The bottom line is if this is what public education has been reduced to...assessments to determine accountability for students, teachers and administrators, set by the Federal Government, it's time to take your child out of this system.  It's a system that exists only to sustain the system, not your child. If no agency takes the credit for teacher cheating, what lesson is that teaching you?  Are these "professionals" in education the type of individuals who should be trusted to provide your child with a "quality education"?

More cheating scandal in St. Louis schools can be found here. 

 

Is the Massive Atlanta Teacher Cheating Scandal a Harbinger of Education Practices?

Here's a glimpse into the possible future for public education.

Massive cheating and test scores changing by teachers and administrators apparently are common in the Atlanta school district. Investigators identified 178 principal and teachers who they say were involved in cheating. The cheating included teachers having parties on the weekends in teachers' homes to change test answers so students would score more favorably and the school's results would improve. If the Atlanta public education system is indicative of how teachers and administrators respond to bad test scores from their students, will this become an accepted practice as Race to the Top mandates are enforced?

Arne Duncan, President Obama and Bill Gates believe more federal control and money are the answers to the failing public education system. Common core standards and federal mandates strangle and eradicate any semblance of local control. Parents and districts have no input in the education of students in public school even as they are forced to pay for this educational delivery.

Teachers and administrators are held accountable for their students to achieve certain benchmarks thanks to No Child Left Behind, otherwise, their schools may be considered failing and their jobs may be in jeopardy. Most educators and writers believe NCLB was a good idea, but has failed in its mission of raising national test scores, and has become a bureaucratic nightmare.

Duncan, Obama and Gates extol Race to the Top and Common Core standards as the tickets to ensure our students are "globally competitive". More and more mandates and more and more testing will make our kids smarter. Can you foresee ultimate disaster? Many schools can't "make the grade" now, what's going to happen when the controls are turned even tighter?

The administrators and teachers performed illegal activities and should be prosecuted. but here is a questions: do you think the test results are going to be any different when RTTT and backdoor RTTT mandates are implemented ? Is implementing even more standardized testing based on common core standards and assessments the answer to reduce current poor test scores? Could the problems of education be more involved than not having the same standards nationwide?

Heck, you could have the same standards and still have people clueless on why we celebrate the Fourth of July. If you have kids who don't care about school, no amount of mandates or teachers changing scores will change the knowledge that student possesses.

What's happened in education? We have students who can't/won't learn, teachers and administrators who change tests to save their jobs, and politicians who demand even more mandates and controls. Will other districts fudge results so funding can keep coming in and all students will be deemed "college ready"?

“In sum, a culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation permeated the APS system from the highest ranks down,” the investigators wrote. “Cheating was allowed to proliferate until, in the words of one former APS principal, ‘it became intertwined in Atlanta Public Schools ... a part of what the culture is all about.’ ”

From this piece "The George Bush-Ted Kennedy Chickens Come Home to Roost in Atlanta":

Why did this happen? Well it seems it all started out for fame and glory. Then No Child Left Behind came in with its adequate yearly progress goals. Teachers were more and more forced to give up teaching subject matter and start teaching tests. If students did badly, teachers were punished. If whole classes did badly, schools were punished. If whole schools did badly, districts were punished.

George Bush and Ted Kennedy, along with school officials at the state and local level, had decided to give financial incentive to success in public education. For many schools dealing with kids whose fathers are in jail and mothers are addicted to drugs, the kids are coming to school hungry and unable to read or concentrate. The only way to get ahead was to cheat.

And cheat they did. And cheat they do. Atlanta just got caught. But the odds that Atlanta is the only system involved are slim to none.

Perversely, instead of using the standardized tests to measure a student’s progress and place the child with similar performing students in the next year’s grade to help the student, the tests track the teachers’ progress and punishes or rewards the teacher based on how well the student does on the test.

We are no longer teaching a nation of children how to think. We are no longer teaching a nation of children how to read and write and add and subtract and understand American history and balance chemical equations. We are teaching our children how to take a standardized test. And then, when they fail, we use the result to punish the teacher, not help the child.

Can we now have a serious discussion in the state and national legislatures about stopping this educational plan that is nothing short of a disaster?