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[TheSeks]

Ten states now use test scores as the main criterion in teacher evaluations. Other states reward high-scoring teachers with up to $25,000 bonuses – while low scores could result in principals losing their jobs or entire schools closing. Even as the number of scandals grows, experts say it remains fairly easy for teachers and principals to get away with ethical lapses.

And this is the issue, along with cutting funding/closing failing schools instead of attempting to correct the course. There's this high pressure to do well to get a pay raise and more funding otherwise you lose your job. So stupid.

NCLB probably screwed more things up for standardized tests in general than standardized tests did themselves.

 

[Tim the Wiz]

American obsession with standardized testing as the vanguard of systemic progress and teaching is weird and delusional; frankly, pretty much insane in that it's pushed regardless of the paucity of its positive impact or the damage it has been established to commit. A case of easy solutions constructed by lazy politicians for a justifiably angry populace then implemented by an overworked, underpaid and cynical bureaucracy.

There is a place for standardized testing, but not in the way currently acted upon by certain means within the US.

 

[Dead Man]

TOO BAD SHE WON'T LIVE

 

[BobTheFork]

"Georgia Public Schools, because someone has to make the cars"

 

[Dead Man]

"Georgia Public Schools, because someone has to pick the fruit"

Fixed?

 

[Kosmo]

Thank you standardized testing for rooting out teachers who don't care about the students.

 

[giga]

I lived in the suburbs. All clean baby!

Adamsville Elementary
Beecher Hills Elementary
Benjamin S. Carson Prep (closed)
Benteen Elementary
Bethune Elementary
Blalock Elementary (closed)
Bolton Academy
Boyd Elementary
C.W. Hill Elementary (closed)
Capitol View Elementary
Cascade Elementary
Cleveland Elementary
Coan Middle
Connally Elementary
Cook Elementary
Crim High (8th grade only)
D.H. Stanton Elementary
Deerwood Academy
Dobbs Elementary
Dunbar Elementary
East Lake Elementary
F.L. Stanton Elementary
Fain Elementary
Fickett Elementary
Finch Elementary
Gideons Elementary
Grove Park Elementary
Harper-Archer Middle
Heritage Academy
Herndon Elementary
Humphries Elementary
Hutchinson Elementary
Imagine Wesley International Academy K8 (charter school)
Jackson Elementary
Kennedy Middle
Kimberly Elementary
Long Middle
M.A. Jones Elementary
Miles Elementary
Morningside Elementary
Morris Brandon Elementary
Parks Middle
Parkside Elementary
Perkerson Elementary
Peyton Forest Elementary
Scott Elemementary
Slater Elementary
The Bridge (closed)
Thomasville Heights Elementary
Toomer Elementary
Towns Elementary
Turner Middle (closed)
University Community Academy K8 (charter school)
Usher-Collier Heights Elementary (closed)
Venetian Hills Elementary
West Manor Elementary
White Elementary
Whitefoord Elementary
Williams Elementary (closed)
Woodson Elementary
Young Middle

http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/ajc/_projects_and_planning_group/APS_investigations/APS.html

 

[AndyD]

Bush administration yes/no?

Don't worry if you get the wrong answer, someone will erase and circle the correct one.

 

[tokkun]

I don't understand why people are blaming standardized testing for this. You may disagree with school funding being tied to test scores (NCLB), but that is not a problem of standardized tests themselves.

There are many positive aspects to standardized tests. They are typically much more valid and reliable than any test that a teacher could design on their own for their class. They also provide a method of assessing different parts of the educational system by giving a metric for comparison between different schools. If the detractors of standardized testing in this thread have a better method of making such an assessment, I'd like to hear it.

But, again - the decisions you choose to take after you see the results is an entirely separate policy issue from standardized testing.

 

[Mammoth Jones]

This is pretty much what's wrong with America's schools these days...

 

[Sol..]

I wonder if they cheated because they could get some cash or because if the scores were as bad as they probably were. Some schools could be closed or staff could be cut.

 

[TheExodu5]

 

[Binabik15]

well tell me a better way to see if the students know something you have just tought them

and the last part is bullshit, you can get students to know why something hapened by asking them about it, hell as an example history test are full of "so X hapened at Y explain the conditions in Z that lead to X"

In Germany teachers make up their own tests, subject is of course the material actually taught in class. Grades it. Happens 2, 4 or 6 times a school year. 2 for "Nebenfächer" that you usually have 2 hours per week. 4-6 for "Hauptfächer" with 4+ hours/week, depending on the grade you´re in.

There´s only a few tests that are "state" (Bundesland) wide, including all degrees (Realschulabschluss, Abitur).

Seems reasonable to me, but that´s what I´m used to. /bias

The idea is that there´s a better teacher/student/test connection, the teacher has more freedom than teaching for a test, the students know what they´re tested.

 

[Timbuktu]

Sorry for the bump. Just read a fantastic New Yorker article on the scandal.

Wrong Answer

ANNALS OF EDUCATION
In an era of high-stakes testing, a struggling school made a shocking choice.
BY RACHEL AVIV
JULY 21, 2014

One afternoon in the spring of 2006, Damany Lewis, a math teacher at Parks Middle School, in Atlanta, unlocked the room where standardized tests were kept. It was the week before his students took the Criterion-Referenced Competency Test, which determined whether schools in Georgia had met federal standards of achievement. The tests were wrapped in cellophane and stacked in cardboard boxes. Lewis, a slim twenty-nine-year-old with dreadlocks, contemplated opening the test with scissors, but he thought his cut marks would be too obvious. Instead, he left the school, walked to the corner store, and bought a razor blade. When he returned, he slit open the cellophane and gently pulled a test book from its wrapping. Then he used a lighter to warm the razor, which he wedged under the adhesive sealing the booklet, and peeled back the tab...

The article looks at the events from the POV of Lewis and reads very much like watching a season of The Wire, somewhere between season 4 and 5, individuals lying and cheating trying to cope with a systems that itself cheats.

 

[Escape Goat]

I like how we get details like his hairstyle. Suddenly I am there...