Shockingly Widespread Standardized Test Cheating in Schools in 39 States

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/education/shockingly-widespread-standardized-test-cheating-schools-39-states



This week in Atlanta, the trial of a dozen former educators and administrators charged with conspiring to manipulate test scores in Atlanta’s public schools got underway in Fulton County Superior Court. Characterized by the prosecuting district attorney, Fani Willis, as “a widespread, cleverly disguised conspiracy to illegally inflate test scores and create a false impression of academic success for many students in the Atlanta Public Schools system,” the case could earn its defendants as many as 35 years behind bars, should they be found guilty of the charges against them.

The Atlanta case has gained national attention in large part because of the scope of the cheating documented and the number of educators implicated (initially, more than 180 educators at 44 schools were involved, according to the Atlantic). But is Atlanta the singular case of a school system gone awry in a sea of otherwise compliant districts? Or is the systemic cheating alleged in this case shockingly prevalent in America’s schools – far beyond what most of us can imagine?

According to the National Center for Fair & Open Testing (FairTest), it’s time to prepare to be shocked. The organization has recently compiled data indicating that the scandal in Atlanta is “just the tip of the iceberg” when it comes to cheating on standardized tests in our nation’s schools. Specifically, FairTest has found documented cases of cheating, and in some cases, systematic manipulation of scores, in 39 states and the District of Columbia, over the last five years alone. The organization has also identified more than 60 methods administrators and teachers have used to alter student scores on these tests, from urging low-scorers to be absent the day of the test, to shouting out and otherwise indicating correct answers during testing.

AlterNet’s education editor, Elizabeth Hines, spoke with FairTest’s director of public dducation, Bob Schaeffer, to dig deeper into the FairTest findings. “It is a very ugly story,” Schaeffer says, one he believes we’ll be talking about long after the jury in Atlanta has reached its verdict.

[leftofcool]

1. Want to prevent this in the future? Let me tell you how.

Stop giving kids meaningless, stupid, standardized tests. Let the teachers teach the kids not the text and let them use whatever creative methods they (teachers) think best. Let the kids have fun learning. And, if you are a politician, standardized test nutbag, old white haired man or woman member of a school board who has never spent one day in the classroom, you're fired!

[Orrex]

6. ^^That

All of that, 100 times over.

[DamnYankeeInHouston]

2. When kids' futures and teachers' jobs are tied to corpoarate money making tests

what do you expect?

[yeoman6987]

3. I expect no cheating from teachers

I guess my expectations are too high.

[Trillo]

4. Instead of prosecuting them, they should be rewarded

They're teaching their kids how to be financially successful.

I hope that someday humans wake up and realize that an education that teaches strict honesty is a severe hobble in life. That we are not prosecuting banksters but are prosecuting teachers means we aren't there yet..

[MineralMan]

5. When so much is riding on test results, I wouldn't expect anything

different. Way back in the 1950s and early 60s, we had standardized testing in the schools I attended. Nobody's job depended on them. Nobody's grades depended on them. We weren't taught to the test. We were just taught the subjects and the tests were used to look into how we were doing. They used the results to shift kids around in the three academic tracks used in my small school system (104 kids in my HS graduating class.)

Today, those tests are used to measure how schools are doing, not how individual students are doing. Jobs depend on the results, not the academic achievement of students. So, yes, there are people cheating on them and school officials helping them to do just that. Why anyone would be surprised I cannot understand.

Standardized tests can be very useful. The information they provide can be used to improve education. When they are used to determine hiring and firing practices, rather than to measure how students are doing and helping students to do better, they are being misused.

It's not the tests. It's how they are being used that is the problem.