Congratulations to my home state of Pennsylvania for adding itself to the growing list of states filed under educational cheaters. The New York Times reported today that 89 schools in Pennsylvania (28 from Philly) have thrown up red flags for “questionable gains” and questionable numbers of erasure marks.
The information that led to this discovery was collecting e-dust for more than a year before a reporter from a Philadelphia outlet called The Notebook had time to dig deeper. The state put out a study of red flagged schools and then did nothing with the information – nothing that is until The Notebook ran an article with the information from that study.
It’s frustrating that a state study went widely unnoticed for so long. It’s even more frustrating that I doubt much more will be done with the information. The article paralleled the Atlanta cheating scandal, where 10 months of investigations led to the identification of 44 shady schools. Those schools account for half of Atlanta’s district. In Pennsylvania, there are 3,300 schools to sift through.
So far, no teachers or administrators have gone on record about cheating at their schools. Additionally, there are political ties that will further complicate an investigation. One of the schools that had the most flagrant violations reported is run by the biggest donor to Governor Tom Corbitt’s last campaign.
It always comes back to leadership, doesn’t it? Crooked politicians. Crooked Administrators. Maybe that is the key. We need more Geoffrey Canada’s out there. How do we change the whole system? How do we create an educational climate where schools don’t resort to cheating?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/01/education/01winerip.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&ref=education
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Beka, you asked “how do we create an educational climate where schools don’t resort to cheating?” and I think the answer to this is to stop putting such high stakes on tests. It is not necessarily that tests are the problem but rather what the results of these tests mean for schools. I doubt these teachers and administrators in Pennsylvania would have felt the need to cheat if they knew the consequence for poor scores was an influx of support and constructive criticism in order to improve rather than a punitive punishment. While this is obviously not an excuse, I think it can be a start to understanding why this happened.
It is unfortunate that such a cover-up seems to be happening, and I agree that the fact there is such a link between politics and the accused schools will make it even more difficult for the truth to come out. It’s funny that we preach honesty to our students yet when reporters at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution wrote articles about suspected cheating they were criticized by city leaders for “damaging Atlanta’s image”. So which is more damaging to Atlanta- - being honest about low test scores or cheating to look better?
Post a Comment