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How To Get In Front Of A Cheating Issue

PR lessons from Baltimore. Here’s my take on the larger issues from a few months ago.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 24th, 2011 at 5:27 pm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

One Response to “How To Get In Front Of A Cheating Issue”

  1. Linda/RetiredTeacher Says:
    June 24th, 2011 at 6:00 pm

    Actually I found from my many years of teaching that the cheating comes from above. The usual method is to tell the teachers that it’s OK to “familiarize yourself” with the test and “prepare the children.” After that the administrator often “helps” the teacher by preparing test materials that essentially have the same or nearly the same items as the real test. One assistant superintendent, a very nice man, actually told us that he had been to a testing conference and was told that it is OK to drill children on exact test items. Did he believe this? I think he did. Teachers and administrators who have not studied Measurement and Evaluation in college often do not realize that there is something wrong with teaching to the test or teaching the exact test. Naturally this practice invalidates a standardized test. The practice of teaching to the test and teaching the actual test is widespread and has been used to support “miraculous reforms” in our schools. I’m glad the truth is finally being reported by the media. It certainly took them a long time to catch on.

    If we really want to know how much children are learning, we’d have to have a new test each year. It would have to be wide range in order to measure the progress of children who are years below grade level, and it would have to be professionally administered and proctored. Sound expensive? Yes, and that’s just one of the problems.

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