One of the things President George W. Bush campaigned on was the implementation of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). This was before I was politically awake, but it gives you an idea about the evolution of the Republican Party. Twenty years prior to that, President Ronald Reagan campaigned on abolishing the Department of Education. Now Republicans campaign on expanding it.
NCLB was passed and signed into law on January 8, 2002.
Here are a few of the supposed accomplishments:
- More progress was made by nine-year-olds in reading in the last five years than in the previous 28 years combined.
- America’s nine-year-olds posted the best scores in reading (since 1971) and math (since 1973) in the history of the report. America’s 13-year-olds earned the highest math scores the test ever recorded.
- Reading and math scores for black and Hispanic nine-year-olds reached an all-time high.
- Achievement gaps in reading and math between white and black nine-year-olds and between white and Hispanic nine-year-olds are at an all-time low.
- Forty-three states and the District of Columbia either improved academically or held steady in all categories (fourth- and eighth-grade reading and fourth- and eighth-grade math)..
These accomplishments revolve around test scores, which is one of the most often mentioned problems people have with NCLB. Too often, teachers and schools “teach to the test,” meaning they teach students what they need to know in order to pass the test, but not succeed in life.
But now, some teachers have even stopped doing that and have simply resorted to cheating:
Both the OSA [Office of Student Achievement] and the state Board of Education have ordered investigations at the 191 schools statewide — more than half of them in metro Atlanta — where an audit found erasure marks on 2008 standardized tests unusual enough to suggest the possibility of cheating.
It was Georgia’s Office of Student Achievement that shined the spotlight on this corruption. They audited the 2009 Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. Why? Because the scores were too good to be true:
The OAS audit of 2009’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test followed more than a year of stories in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution about statistically improbable test scores.
The OAS looked at erasures where answers changed from wrong to right.
It found that more than half of Georgia’s elementary and middle schools had at least one classroom where erasure marks were unusual enough to suggest cheating.
The 191 schools singled out for further investigation were classified as either moderate or severe concerns.
Schools marked moderate had unusual erasure patterns in 11 percent to 24 percent of classrooms. Those marked severe had suspicious test results in 25 percent or more of classrooms.
Forty-three of the 74 schools marked severe were in the Atlanta district.
They included 21 schools where suspicious erasure patterns were found in tests for more than half of the schools’ classrooms.
This isn’t just going on in Georgia. The Christian Science Monitor noted back in 2005:
- Earlier this month, an Indiana third-grade teacher was suspended after being accused of tapping students on the shoulder when they marked wrong answers – the state’s third alleged incident in as many years.
- In September, Mississippi threw out portions of test scores at nine schools after discovering more than two dozen cases of alleged cheating. One fifth-grade teacher was fired after allegedly helping students on the writing portion of the test.
- And in July, nine Arizona school districts invalidated portions of their test scores after teachers allegedly either read sections of the test to students or gave students extra time to finish. It was the state’s 21st case of cheating since 2002.
And as far back as 2003, just a year after NCLB was passed, CBS uncovered at least 21 instances of teachers cheating in New York:
New York’s teachers are not alone.
- A Reston, Va., teacher was placed on paid leave in June 2000 and 18 eighth-graders were retested after they allegedly were prepped with questions that showed up on their state social studies exam.
- Students at a Columbus, Ohio, school praised for its test scores by President Clinton said earlier in 2000 that adult tutors guided their pencils to the correct answers or calculated math problems while they took the mandatory state test.
- In 1999, a report by the New York City School District found similar incidents of teacher cheating, including finishing sentences in essays.
- A grand jury in Austin, Texas, indicted 18 school officials in April 2000 for altering student tests.
In New York, Deputy Education Commissioner James Kadamus said the state started monitoring teachers because it believed they would have more incentive to cheat to meet the new standards.
(Emphasis mine.)
It makes a person wonder if progress is actually being made in the public schools or if there are even more teachers who are better at cheating than others.
The good news is an investigation into the allegations is going to be performed. The bad news is it is going to be performed by the accused school district:
“There’s really no strong incentive for the locals to do a searching investigation,” said Gregory Cizek, of the University of North Carolina. “It really would be best for everybody if the state was able to assign some independent agency to look into this.”
Both the OSA and state Professional Standards Commission, which licenses educators, said the state will insist on rigorous investigations by districts.
Gary Walker, the director of educator ethics at the PSC, said his phone was already ringing the morning after the state released its audit results.
Superintendents “were calling looking for suggestions on how to best investigate their schools,” he said, adding that he advised them to hire outside experts.
Perhaps they could hire a group of homeschool moms to look into it.
Photo Credit: Elsie esq.
