Surprise, Surprise

TUESDAY, JULY 5, 2011

Headlines today, the Anthony debacle aside, focus on a report that investigators in Atlanta found professional educators guilty of cheating on the state standardized test. Seems that about 80% of the 54 schools they looked at engaged in some effort on the part of the adults in the school to help students in the school score better on a state test.

Teachers abhor cheating. Teachers abhor standardized, high-stakes tests. Which do you abhor more? If your job was on the line based on the performance of kids, what would you do? Moral dilemma.

I do not think what the teachers and principals did was right. I do not think administering a multiple choice high stakes standardized test on any given day to a bunch of 10 to 18 year-olds, the results of which are labels used to judge the kids, the staff, the school and school district is right either. The imposed culture destroys schools and what they value most. If we ever needed evidence that high-stakes tests destroy the good people who gravitate to public schools to help kids learn, then look at Atlanta, or Houston, or Baltimore, or anywhere where teachers really want their kids to do well and are scared to death they won't.

That's likely not what the pundits will say. They will add this to the burning fire of school reform, more evidence of the downfall of public schools. This will serve as motivation to hire more auditors, more test manufacturers, implement more security procedures - make the high stakes testing more high stakes - rather than looking at the real problem: high stakes testing in a culture that can end careers, close neighborhood schools, and drain everything out of the educational experience save test taking skills is immoral. Pathetic.

But, I am not surprised. Someone needs to tell the Emperor he is naked rather than punishing the kid who points it out and the adults who stand by him or her. If one works in an immorally imposed climate, is there really such a thing as immoral behavior?

If so, don't be surprised when you see it.

POSTED BY EILEEN GOOD AT 6:47 PM


1 COMMENTS:



Anonymous said...

Stress on students, stress on teachers, stress on schools, stress on districts.....who and what does all of this testing benefit? Morality forces touch decisions, obviously so does accountability!