Texas Elementry Schools Caught Cheating
 

This is what can happen if when incentives based on test scores are put in place. I guess the pressure to have schools with Blue Ribbon and Exemplemplory status got to be too much for a bunch of Texas School Elementary Schools. A Houston Elementary School Teacher has blown the whistle on standard test cheating – I guess the teachers in some cases actually gave out the answers and in other instances they would walk behind the students as they were being tested, stop when the student had a wrong answer and point to the correct one.

This comes as no surprise. The test scores give your school a ranking. The Principle and Superintendent get bonuses for good scores and further more the town benefits from increased property value from having good/great schools. This is most likely the biggest impact on the town’s economic situation. I saw this first hand. We moved into a town 5 years ago that had great schools. Within 2 years they dropped down two ranks – the town had allowed low cost apartments, an influx of non-English speaking families moved in, instead of 3 kindergarten classes, the local elementary school now has 6, 2 being for non-English speaking and one for special needs (emotional). These folks have every right to a good life, and there kids have every right to an education but the fact is the test scores tanked and the housing market stalled in that town. We have moved to a new town with Blue Ribbon Schools and a robust housing market – no apartments allowed. As far as the cheating goes. I can’t say my son’s school does or doesn’t.

Just hope when me boy gets to be bout 12, he gits him one of dem teachers that doles out da answers and is willing to teach’m a little sump’n in the ways of da female form dat I’z been read’n bout…

Here in California, my new gov, Arnold, has "proposed legislation that will tie a teacher\'s pay to their performance, so that we can recognize the best teachers for their hard work and excellence, provide incentives for great teachers to serve where they are needed most and to have schools hire and promote teachers based on performance not seniority. "

This will lead to more exam teaching, more Texas style performance and stifle any creative teaching.

This guy is bad for the state. Cliche answers intsead of really addressing an issue for root cause.

Another unintended consequence might be that it would be harder to get teachers to work in rat hole areas, knowing the poor quality of the pool of students will adversely affect their bottom line.

Please, do you guys really think they are going to CUT pay for bad teachers? Don't make me laugh. If this were actually to go through it would result in good teachers getting extra/incentive pay. But don't worry the teachers union will see to it that we never know the good from the bad, and isn't that what's really important?

The whole point is that teachers will be measured against their peers and that's just not gonna happen, blee dat!

lendaddy
I though you would have agreed with me on this. Tying teacher pay to student performance will only suppress innovative/creative teaching. If I was still teaching, then this would only incentivise me to teach to the exam. No side trips into group theory or non-eculidean geometry to my brightest class in 8th grade math. In fact, this would incentivise me to teach them exactly to the level as my average class. So my brightest would not be stimulated with new ideas at all.

We will dull down the entire process.

I am not sure what the answer, or if there really is a true problem right now.

Steve,

I think we need a way to measure success in our school systems. If you have a better idea than measuring the childrens acquired knowlege then I may be all for that. If you don't know where you started or finished, how do you know what you've done?

Putting on my tinfoil hat for a moment, I think the conservatives want the public system to fail. Ignorant masses are malleable masses. The elite send their kids to expensive private schools (hence the quest for vouchers).

That makes NO sense Thom, we want vouchers so that institutional competition sprouts and poor kids have the same/similar educational options as rich kids. I am a BIG fan of vouchers.

Joel
I think we need to examine down to the root cause of "fixing education".
Measuring the acquired knowledge may be a path that solves nothing.
Is our quest to reduce drop out rate? Raise the level of maths skills? Develop independent thinkers? Not pass a kid who is failing? Eliminate the lower part of the bell curve?
It seeems to me that root cause identification and proper corrective action shold be applied and not some great sounding cliches like "No child left behind" or "Tenure for perfomance".

There is no one that wants a school system to fail - that is plain silly. What you have is different points of veiw trying to figuer out the best way to teach the majority of the students to the highest level. Some say the testing is stupid but maybe it isn't the test that is stupid but the questions asked?

Mutiple guess are easy to grade - heck a card reader can do it in 2 seconds. Essay based questions and math questions that also require proofs take time and know how. At the end of the day, what is really required is to agree on just what it is kids should know in order for them to progress. Easier said than done I'm sure!

Ahhh education. The last un-reformed sphere of American life. Throwing money at it does not help, so change is needed. At least lets be honest.

What gets me is that schools in the USA are under local control - no national curriculum, no State Boards of Ed. Why cant we test a few things here and there and see what works best??

We have 50 States and a zillion school districts - lets see if vouchers work, if performace pay works, if school uniforms/ single sex education works, Phonics -vs- Whole language.. A million debatable issues, lets try a few things and see the data that comes in...

Never happen - makes too much sense! The way you discribe is exactly how we built a biz from $8M to over $100M in 5 short years! Takin biz from ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and Shell like it was the easiest thing in the world - near 100% success in doing so. We did it by trying different things and seeing what sticks and eliminating what doesn't. Big oil companies can't do these things nor can big gov, it takes serious leadership that is willing to allow underlings the freedom to move yet provide the vision to keep the eye on the prize. You also have to have creativity and good people but we could go on and on...

A great example of a company that does this is Gore (the guys that make Goretex), they do well becuase they understand that at some point a critical mass is formed that actually stifles advancement and is counter productive. Government is no different as are School Boards.

I still am at a loss at what we are trying to fix, help, or change.

???? Are you of the opinion that public schools do an excellent job of teaching our children?

I still am at a loss at what we are trying to fix, help, or change.

???? Are you of the opinion that public schools do an excellent job of teaching our children?

"My car won't run"

Will it turn over? Does it have spark? Does it have gas? Do you remember where you parked it?

Cheating? In Texas?

How droll....They learn from the best....

SteveP - I do not know about San Jose, but here in the Big City we have a few problems...

Fix - a dyfunctional educational system that works on few levels. The drop-out rate here in NYC is appalling. Of those that remain, too many read below grade level and are unprepared for higher education or the modern workplace.

Help - parents that have less money that the average Porsche owner find a decent, basic education for their children. $13,000 a a year, per year in NYC... Want a voucher for $6,500? I am all for it. (Will pay for Catholic schools that are closing even during a classroon shortage - with $$ left over for uniforms, books and transportation).

Change - a system that benifits those in control of the teachers union, the non-teaching staff and beauracrats. They have too much say in how the schools are run at the expense of new teachers and students.

So drop out rate is an issue. Symptom of something. What is the drop out rate history over the last 50 years? Relationship to family income, parental education? Family displacement, movement? Is the root cause something that happens in the classroom?

D we know if Catholica schools have better performance? If they do, why? My children go to a Catholic college prep high school. Most of the students have high self esteem, are very education driven, very smart and come from deeply involved and usually highly educated parents. None of this comes from the classroom.

What exactly has been done by the union at the expense of new teachers and students?

You need to understand that I taught 3 years of math and science and saw all sorts of kids, very smart to very dumb and all sorts of parents, from very involved to those who couldn't give a damn. You can guess which parents tended to have kids with problems in school.

Wouldn't vouchers fulfill the "faith based initiative" philosophy of the Prez?

gaij: One of the reasons what you say re: "They have too much to say" is so true is the abdication of responsibility on the part of many parents who just "go along" or do not, because of lack of interest or simple inability do not involve themselves.And, the willingness of the unions to take advantage of this,

Case in point...One school district that I monitored submitted a budget that included a considerable increase. The board cut the requested increase but not totally, so there was still increased funding. The School Superintendent and the Union went public to the media and screamed that their budget was being cut. Parents wrote letters to the school board, letter to the editor, some recommending violence. Interestingly, the majority of the teaching staff refused to get involved. In 27 years of fiscal monitoring of public entities, I saw one "strike" by teachers, and that was in a district that had not received any increase in over five years.

In all of the "public sector", schools are the least understood and most emotional in nature.

Yep. They want gubmint to fail also, and work actively toward that goal as I have reported here. See, if gumbint fails, then we privatize stuff. Doesn't exactly save money (consider telephone dereguation), but it does open up a whole new world of profits for some folks. And then there is the best of all worlds....where corporations are also in charge of oversight. Let them audit theri own gubmint contracts. The raping of America has never moved forward so quickly as it has these past few years.

Actually, this is indeed a budget device. Teachers who score highest will get performance raises, teacher who score lowest will not. In other words, one of these groups will be getting cost of living raises, and the other group's buying power will fall each year.

The drop-out rate is very politically incorrect to talk about. Income, parental education & family movement - and you start talking about immigration issues which are whole new topic..

The schools cannot be blamed for that 100%. But over-crowding, crappy bilingual-ed programs, and a move them along - but dont teach them anything mentality does not help..

As for Catholic schools - I say give the parents choice. If they have the inclination and the vouchers - it is something worth trying..

The unions in NYC are all about retirement benifits (you cant match them in the free world) and pay for senior teachers. At the expense of new teacher pay scales and sucking the system dry of funds that could be spent elsewhere..

I spent K-13 in the same world - I have seen a few things myself...

I can't see blaming schools where root cause is somewhere else. It means just throwing bad money after good. It is unrealistic to ignore family values, and here I mean real practicing family values of nurturing achievement, encouraging learning, etc. It is unreal to ignore social and economic issues in the community.

Overcrowding is a money-tax issue. Crappy bi-lingual is probably money related also.

Move them along-don't teach them attitude should be addressed.

If vouchers for kids to go to Catholic schools is a good idea, then if we turned the public schools completely over to the Catholics we would expect a grand improvement. If so, what specifically would anyone attribute it to?


What are the published salary schedules and benefits? I posted what we provide in my local district on a different thread, and they were not extraordinary.

Steve, I think we are looking at this from two different sides...

- $13,000 a head, and there should be no overcrowding issues. Not to mention dirty schools, no toilet paper and a lack of supplies..

- I think it is unreal to ignore social and economic issues - at the border. The unreal thing is to think you are going to solve such problems at the community level.

- Bi-linual ed is just crap. Lets all call it what it is. Nothing to do with money - just bad in theory and practice that does not work and holds kids back.

- Vouchers to give low-income folks the same choices you have made for your own kids. Choice, competition - you know the usual red-blooded all-American stuff works everywhere else but in K-12 education..

- As for salary - here in NYC, the newer teachers know that the pay raises (for time served and graduate degrees) and retirement benifits will not be there for them in the future...

I guess we are talking past one another.

Is $13K what the Catholic schools charge? What is the equivalent in the PS?

Yes, Bi-lingual is not working. Begs the question of what was it supposed to do.

On vouchers, I suggest that if they are good , then turning over the schools completely to the Catholics is the best answer for all the students. Would you think that would really make a difference? And why?

What do you mean by "not be there for them in the future"?

I'm talking at you now, Steve baby, hang in there with me....

The Catholic schools charge about $5,000. But there are significant breaks for the 2nd and 3rd kid.. Compared to $13,000 per head for NYC public schools, they are a bargain.

If you were to turn over all schools to ANY group you will only (in time) create another unresponsive beaucracy. I am not a proponent of the "Catholic" model - but rather for choice, competition, and saying no to any monopoly. Like you and your family have done.

"Not there for the future" means as the bills roll in for longer lived retirees - who retire with a pension and benifits not matched in the private world - this is going to force changes on younger teachers now in the system - who realize the system is being bled dry and the same package will not be available for them...

Okay, that $5k is a little low. Here it is $10k at the high school level.

There is no guarantee that giving a voucher to a student will get him/her into a Catholic school or that there is any requirement of the Catholic school to keep him/her. They bounce them out and they fall back into the PS.

My oldest went to Catholic the first year, felt left out, then went to local public school and excelled and just finished college. I went to all public schools in California. My wife's family went to Catholic schools back east. Our decision was mostly religious.

A voucher would probably get them into a private for-profit school. So if we turned over the PS to private enterprise completely, do you believe this would solve the issues? What factor in the private enterprise would you ascribe such success too?

On benefits, do you have actual data to look at. As indicated, the benefits here are not extraordinary.

Also there are entrance exams to the Catholic schools, so they do not really accept the kids we really need to help anyhow.

Steve - that $5,000 is for very moderate inner-city schools. They are cheap, they do a good job, and inspite of "overcrowding" in city schools, many are closing.. I know the expensive ones you are talking about, but those are in the 'burbs with the Italian/Irish diaspora...

I dont care where a voucher is used, as long as it is accredited by the State Ed dept.. As Mao said, "Let a hundred flowers bloom". Many ways to skin this cat, most of which have not been thought of. Profit, non-profit, religious - anything to shake up the status quo.

And no - I dont think private enterprise could solve this problem - and it's never going to happen that way - public education has deep roots in this country, and it is not going away. We just need to stir it up a bit..

As to benifits, I had this conversation with a teacher friend most recently. There is real dissension in the ranks. Not that you will hear about it in the media. The pay and benifit info is out there..

2004 Comparison of SAT Mean Scores of AMHS College-Bound Seniors

Verbal Math
Archbishop Mitty 568 571
California 501 519
Nation 508 518

Part of the reason Catholic schools do well is that they do not have kids that perform poorly to start with. Nothing breeds success like success.

The history so far for charter, voucher, schools does not support them as an alternative. Same results and many closures
http://www.portervillerecorder.com/articles/2005/03/21/news/education/73ed2.txt
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/broward/sfl-ccharter21mar21,0,4372859.story?coll=sfla-news-broward

info onyour NY PS on benefits
http://www.nycenet.edu/offices/dhr/benefits/#11
look the same to me as what I get and what local teachers get

on salaries
http://www.nycenet.edu/offices/dhr/payroll/ssct.aspx
are about 10-20% less than what we pay here up to about 12 years and then they catch up as they get near 20 years.

I would suspect that the only dissension is that the young teachers feel underpaid, just as I did.

So I guess I am still waiting for someone to really point to root causes and propose real corrective action.

I'm a teacher - high school math. Been one for 30 years. I've seen a lot. Teaching is not an easy job. Politicians have made the job harder, and less efficient, and less kid oriented. You can't legislate better schools. "Better teachers" is sort of an oxymoron. I've seen some teachers promote themselves to "look" good. I've seen high school teachers get rid of all of the bad kids in the beginning of the year so they only have the favored ones who will do well. They only want to teach the higher level classes in high school and only want the better kids. They look like "better teachers" because they take the easy road.

Take a group of 30 teachers (or 30 anything) Some will be better, and some will be not as good. You can't really test which teachers are better, have more compassion, have their heart in the job, have more success creating people. There's more to teaching math than just math. Some of the kids do not have very good homelife or family situations. School is the place where they will learn the lessons of life which will carry them farther than doing well on any test. I like to think of myself as a teacher and not just an instructor. I hope to teach some important lessons that carry for a long time.

Teachers need to work to have their unions find retirement plans that are pretty good. The job of teaching is harder than most and less rewarding financially than many jobs. At 30 years into this I can see I do not have the energy I used to have, but I have learned some skills and techniques that help carry me thru. Most parents have difficulty raising 2 or 3 kids for 18+ years. Try working with 30 kids an hour times 5 hrs a day for 30 years. If you want to talk about overpaid jobs - well then lets talk professional athletes!

On this board we have a common passion - P-cars! designed, produced, invented in germany. The german educational system of 60 years ago produced some excellent engineers, mathmaticians, rocket scientists. The best the world has seen. They produced people like machines. What they failed to produce was people who thought about what was right or wrong. Our world does not need to go that direction again. Test scores are important but IMHO the other stuff is more important.

KB

I was a maths teacher and am currently involved in teacher education within a uni over here in oz. One of the most difficult things about 'incentives' based on 'performance' (whether it be at an individual, school or district level) is that you need to have some idea of what you really mean by performance, and then some way of figuring out how to measure that performance. Given that there are a whole bunch of factors involved in the field of education it's a difficult thing to just measure one variable.

In the state that I live in, we have had a succession of govts (from both sides of the political spectrum) who have sprouted certain things in public about the value of the secondary public education system and at the same time eroded the funding of said system. The bottom line is that it's much cheaper for the govt to subsidise a students' education within a private school than it is to fully fund a student in a public school. Naturally these decisions have quite serious consequences for the public system.

On a federal and tertiary level it's even worse. The tertiary sector is the second biggest export industry in oz, yet the per capita funding of students has declined in both real and absolute terms over many years. Further, the current crop of politicians (who all benefited from free tertiary education) are making it more and more expensive for students to attend unis. It would now cost the same for me to do a basic science degree as it did for me to get a science & two masters only 13 yrs ago.

Not a happy time for those in the field at the moment. I truly wonder whether politicians appreciate the importance of quality education for the entire spectrum of society.

Politicians do not value education - they are politicians. They speak the words but do not walk the talk.

Our society does not generally value education. I make about the same pay as people working in the local Automobile factories. I would sooner do what I do even if it paid half. I am happy I can finally afford the 71 Porsche I wanted back in 71.

I think this is the root of the education problem, but you'll never get anyone above the rank of Dog Catcher to admit it. American kids have an entitlement mentality and expect it is their right to ditch school and hang out at the mall; any efforts to coerce them into studying gets you in trouble with Child Protective Services.

Steve

#1 most of the charter schools are in very difficult neighborhoods. Do not compare them to the system as a whole, but rather compare them to the schools the students have left. THAT is the untold story..

#2 On benifits - how many people receive full benifits upon retirement?? Not that many. "Health insurance coverage is continued after retirement if a teacher receives a pension from a retirement system maintained by the City".

#3 On pay - I am not against teacher pay - I am just against receiving 50% of your last paycheck (including overtime, the dirty little secret of NY state employees) as a pension up until the day you die. Who else gets this???????

K.B.

I never said overpaid, but to say you make "as much as auto workers" means you make a pretty good living. Those guys got it by the short hairs, owners of 2nd tier suppliers don't make as much as those guys (ask me how I know:)).

Now, unless your school is drastically different from the one I attended, about 40%-50% of the teachers are on cruise control. They simply go through the motions and nothing else. Same tests year after year, same movies, and plenty of em... Dispassionate lectures and few of em. Plenty of "in class reading", etc... (I'm sure you know/work with these people) Now if that sounds like good or even adequate teaching then we simply disagree. Are these teachers bad people? Highly doubtful, their drive and ambition has been crushed by the machine (back to human nature) "No one notices or cares when I do something great, no one cares or notices or cares when I do something poorly, f#@k it!".
How do we go about fixing that? Great question.....but if we don't admit it's a problem how can we ever fix it? I think incentives are an idea worth discussion, I would listen to others, but I refuse to believe there is nothing to fix there.

Joel
It appears to be the attitude of some teachers that you want to fix. What classes were those with lots of movies and in-class reading? Your experience is certainly not like mine in high school in the 60's nor when I was a teacher in the 70's nor as a parent in the 80's and 90's. The way to fix attitude or competency issue is for parents to get involved and get proactive with the principal. It does work. We did it for our kids regarding the competency of one teacher.

On pay, I made half of what I made switching to engineering the first year in 1979. I do not think we pay teachers sufficiently. To be a teacher I had to get a BS plus another full year in a Teacher Credential Program. I would not consider pay as good as auto worker to be good. But again, people do not become teachers because of the pay. And I think you would be hard pressed to find an auto worker who would say that it was his goal in life to work in an auto factory.


Gaijindabe

I think you are clutching at the wind to find data to support voucher programs, charter schools. Do you have any comparison data?

My dad still receives medical benefits from GM. I do not know but would not be surprized if most auto workers receive medical after retirement.
Medical after retirement might be looked at as a means of compensating people for low pay during the working period, and as people die off, it probably is cheaper in the long run than increasing pay now for teachers.

Pension at 50% after 25-30 years is not that unusual. I will get that.

Most of your comments seem to be against benefits that teachers get and not specifically on anything wrong with the education that schools provide. If they are so good in your eyes, why aren't you a teacher?

Steve - I found some good stuff in today's NY Sun: http://www.nysun.com/

They have an op-ed piece about vouchers and charter schools. And another one about GM (funny enough)

(GM's bond rating is turning to junk - mostly due to underfunded pensions.. They have underfunded healthcare obligations of $57 Billion.)

We have a system that rewards those that hang on for the sake of hanging on. You were a darn good teacher I am sure, but when you have had enough - you got out. More should do that..

So therein lies the problem in NYC - there is no more money left to increase teacher pay that is needed. So the teachers coming in dont get the pay - and resent those who control the union who are only look out for themselves..

As I first proposed in this tread - public education is the last unreformed sphere of American life. Not only for teachers (who eveyone else hides behind, for good reason), but for administratiors, staff and retirees too! Something has got to give..

As for your own pension - good luck. I hope its there for you. If your company tanks (or mine) we cannot raise taxes....