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Old 07-06-2011, 06:23 PM
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flacaltenn flacaltenn is offline
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Cooking the Books -- Public School Style...

I put this under politics because it's not an education story to me. There's a bigger political implication in this weeks education outrage..

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/htm...schools06.html


Quote:
WASHINGTON — Georgia investigators have found evidence of cheating at close to 80 percent of the Atlanta schools where they examined the 2009 administration of state tests.

The result was inflated test scores that led to thousands of children being denied the remedial education they were entitled to, state officials said Tuesday in announcing the results of the investigation. More than 80 educators have so far confessed to misconduct, and investigators said the cheating dated back to at least 2001.

The 48,000-student Atlanta district has been under a cloud for the past two years, ever since an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis found improbably high results on the state's Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, or CRCT. Georgia uses those tests to determine whether schools have made adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Based in part on what appeared to be Atlanta's strong results on standardized tests, Superintendent Beverly Hall has been hailed as a model for urban superintendents. In 2009, she was honored by the American Association of School Administrators as superintendent of the year. But amid the investigations and instability on the school board, she announced that she would not be seeking a contract extension, and left the district this June after 12 years.
Think Beverly Hall didn't know the books were cookin' when she went up to get her award?

See the public schools have been cooking the education books LONG before "no child left behind". They cooked test scores since I've been watching politics.

Which is why I ask my lefty buds again ---

When you malign free market capitalists for not having any morals, ethics or professionalism that can counteract their greed --- what is it that makes Public Service Employees any more reliable, ethical or efficient?

We KNOW that there are PLENTY of constrainsts on business to counter a pure profit motive. What countermeasures are there to just plain apathy and fraud in the PUBLIC sector?

Not only was the cheating widespread -- but there's plenty of evidence to suggest that teachers were BULLIED and HUMILIATED into joining in the fun..

http://www.cbsatlanta.com/story/1503...-investigation


Quote:
According to the report, now former Superintendent Beverly Hall should have known principal Christopher Waller was cheating at Parks because "once he became principal, the school immediately made dramatic gains on the CRCT and other tests." Instead, APS publicly praised the principal and the school for its achievements, the report said.

State investigators said at Fain Elementary, the principal forced a teacher to crawl under a table in a faculty meeting because that teacher's students' test scores were low.

At Gideons Elementary school, according to the report, four educators admitted that they met at a home in Douglas County one weekend for a "changing party," changing students' wrong answers to right.

And at Perkerson Elementary School, one teacher told investigators she was surprised to learn that one student, who sat under a table during the test, then randomly filled in answers, still passed. Investigators learned that several students passed first grade reading at Perkerson but are now struggling to read in the third grade.

Of the 178 educators named in the report, 38 are school principals.

Six of the 38 principals refused to answer investigators' questions, Deal said.
Can't pass a dumbed downed "lowest common denominator" test without cheating. Yeah we should keep ethics and morals to the professionals..
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Old 07-06-2011, 07:32 PM
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Just terrible, I can't imagine anyone using the public schools in this day and age. Maybe if you lived out in the sticks and they had good teachers, but my kids, if I had any, would never see the inside of a public school in an urban area.
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Old 07-06-2011, 08:41 PM
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Originally Posted by Twodogs View Post
Just terrible, I can't imagine anyone using the public schools in this day and age. Maybe if you lived out in the sticks and they had good teachers, but my kids, if I had any, would never see the inside of a public school in an urban area.
all urban schools the same are they?
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Old 07-06-2011, 10:42 PM
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CarlV CarlV is offline
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Maybe we should cut some more tax money from public education and give more tax cuts to corporations, that fixes everything.
And maybe hand out vouchers so the rich can take the edge off their private school tuitions because our public schools can't possibly need the money.



Carl
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Old 07-06-2011, 11:36 PM
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Originally Posted by CarlV View Post
Maybe we should cut some more tax money from public education and give more tax cuts to corporations, that fixes everything.
And maybe hand out vouchers so the rich can take the edge off their private school tuitions because our public schools can't possibly need the money.



Carl

Here are some numbers. Why are we not seeing better results given that expenditures per pupil have tripled since the early 1960s in terms of constant dollars? Why do our students post such dismal scores on standardized tests compared to other countries? Immigrant Asian children do rather well on these tests even with language, culture, and economic handicaps vis-a-vis other minorities and even Caucasians.

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

The system has changed from teaching children how to think to teaching children what to think. Where the ideal is to engender curiosity and a yearning for knowledge, our system attempts the exact opposite.
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Old 07-07-2011, 07:30 AM
noonereal noonereal is offline
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Originally Posted by bhunter View Post
Here are some numbers. Why are we not seeing better results given that expenditures per pupil have tripled since the early 1960s in terms of constant dollars? Why do our students post such dismal scores on standardized tests compared to other countries? Immigrant Asian children do rather well on these tests even with language, culture, and economic handicaps vis-a-vis other minorities and even Caucasians.

http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66

The system has changed from teaching children how to think to teaching children what to think. Where the ideal is to engender curiosity and a yearning for knowledge, our system attempts the exact opposite.
I think our problems with education are more about social direction than how or what our teachers teach.

Sure giving tenure to teachers is a very big problem and also the pay and benefits are now insane.


"The system has changed from teaching children how to think to teaching children what to think. Where the ideal is to engender curiosity and a yearning for knowledge, our system attempts the exact opposite"

This is not my experience at all. I find that teachers today are much much better than teachers in the 60's. Can you offer more insight for the opinion?
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Old 07-07-2011, 11:52 AM
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flacaltenn flacaltenn is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by CarlV View Post
Maybe we should cut some more tax money from public education and give more tax cuts to corporations, that fixes everything.
And maybe hand out vouchers so the rich can take the edge off their private school tuitions because our public schools can't possibly need the money.

Carl
Real helpful Carl.. My uncle/aunt in the NYC school system (retired) will tell you how much those Fed funds meant to them. The compliance cost was at least HALF of what the Feds kick in. And what the FEDs kick in is actually miniscule anyway. It all just vaporizes somewhere..

Forget the rich.. How about we just REFUND the tuition money to those Atlantans and let THEM decide where they want their kids to go? Why can't they PUNISH this kind of incompetence with their tuition?

It's not a game to those parents whogiveashit.. They don't have YEARS to debate and tinker with the system. For them it's a TODAY kind of problem. And you're horseshitting around with politics...
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Old 07-06-2011, 11:40 PM
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bhunter bhunter is offline
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Originally Posted by noonereal View Post
all urban schools the same are they?
No, but the good ones tend to be the exception not the rule.
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Old 07-07-2011, 12:22 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by flacaltenn View Post

When you malign free market capitalists for not having any morals, ethics or professionalism that can counteract their greed --- what is it that makes Public Service Employees any more reliable, ethical or efficient?
Excellent question. One could also transpose the monikers, "free market capitalists" and "Public Service Employees" and still have asked an excellent question.

Dave
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Old 07-07-2011, 11:44 AM
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flacaltenn flacaltenn is offline
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Originally Posted by BlueStreak View Post
Excellent question. One could also transpose the monikers, "free market capitalists" and "Public Service Employees" and still have asked an excellent question.

Dave
That was the whole point of picking this topic.. I've actually given a list of all the motivators that prevent profit and selfish motives from dominating private enterprise. But here are some again..

1) Public Relations.
2) Competition for market share.
3) Customer Confidence
4) Liability and litigation by customers, suppliers, and innocent bystanders
5) Stakeholder Interests and direction.
6) Contractual obligations.

Think you can get a REFUND from the Atlanta school system?
Think they care about competition?
Think the stakeholders can actually dictate the punishment for the guilty?
Think there any contract that will cost them funding because they fudged the scores?

There MAY be lawsuits but they will have to brought by politicized entities in the govt that are favorable to the established school interests.

Meanwhile the kids are doomed. Because it's NOT the silly wimpy proficiency tests that are the problem. The problem is that the curricula doesn't emphasize INDIVIDUAL competence of any kind. The public schools have long shifted from INDIVIDUAL performance to group and communal performance.

I can't tell you how many times my daughter claimed she couldn't do her homework because it was a GROUP assignment. Almost EVERY project involves several students partitioning the work amongst them. Because my daughter has some artistic talent -- she was always picked to be the illustrator. NEVER saw her doing any research and rarely contributed to the written or calculated report. Makes it easier on the teachers to grade. Teaches that valuable socialist village mentality. What's not to like? That was until we moved to Tenn. Still saw it -- but it wasn't the exclusive methodology.

No wonder they have to teach to the test.. The INDIVIDUAL student gets to float thru otherwise...

Last edited by flacaltenn; 07-07-2011 at 11:47 AM.
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