Cheating the System
Monday, July 28th, 2008 By Matthew Carr
So, when is it ok to admit, on the front page of a major newspaper, that you are a cheater? The answer, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, is when you are the principal of a well regarded public school. Last week, columnist Regina Brett recounted the lamentations/accusations of a Rocky River middle school principal about the state’s testing and accountability system. The school he oversees scored well on the state exams, but the principal wants us to know the high cost of that success.
Rocky River Middle School passed the 2008 Ohio Achievement Tests, earned an Excellent rating from the state and met the requirements for Annual Yearly Progress.
For all of those accomplishments, Principal David Root has only one thing to say to the students, staff and citizens of Rocky River: He’s sorry.
Root wants to issue an apology. He sent it to me typed out in two pages, single spaced.
Fortunately, Jay Greene has taken the time to knock down the straw men set out in the column one by one.* I highly recommend taking the time to go through his entire post. In the snippet below, I have noted Greene’s responses (JPG) to the column (CPD).
CPD: He’s sorry that he spent thousands of tax dollars on test materials, practice tests, postage and costs for test administration.
JPG: Actually, he did not spend the money. The taxpayers did when they decided through their elected representatives to adopt a testing and accountability system. They then hired David Root to implement this policy in his capacity as principal at a public school.
CPD: Sorry that he didn’t suspend a student for assaulting another because that student would have missed valuable test days.
JPG: Sounds pretty irresponsible. Would he have made a different decision if the student would have missed valuable instructional days? If so, whose fault is that? Oh yes, I forgot that this is an accusation, not an apology.
CPD: Sorry he didn’t strictly enforce attendance because all absences count against the school on the State Report Card.
JPG: So, is David Root saying that he cheated on the state accountability system? Isn’t this like lying to your boss about your job performance? Will he be fired, sanctioned, or resign to make amends for his infraction?
CPD: He’s sorry for pulling children away from art, music and gym, classes they love, so they could take test-taking strategies.
JPG: Why didn’t he just follow the state curriculum and let the scores show what students knew? The decision to take time away for “test-taking strategies” was completely unnecessary given that more than 90% of Rocky River students have been scoring above the proficient level in reading, math, and writing. It sounds like they would have done just fine on the state test without working on test-taking strategies and having spent more time on art, music, and gym.
As I’ve written ($) with a colleague of mine, the excuse often thrown around by school officials that they have no choice but to cheat on state accountability measures is both misguided and without merit. So long as the state’s standardized exams are designed to capture student knowledge of basic subjects, then teaching to the test and teaching students basic skills are essentially one and the same. As Jay notes, the best way for a school to get high marks on the state’s exams is to have knowledgeable, well-taught students. If officials are spending an inordinate amount of time on test-taking drills, that’s more likely the fault of ill-advised administrators or the last resort for trying to get poorly taught students over the bar.
(*Disclosure: Dr. Greene heads the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas, where I serve as a Doctoral Fellow)
July 30th, 2008 at 9:13 pm
So long as the state’s standardized exams are designed to capture student knowledge of basic subjects, then teaching to the test and teaching students basic skills are essentially one and the same.
But the test also has attendance requirements, and population and subgroup requirements (minimums). These requirements must be met to make AYP, and they are out of the hands of school personell. I have no way, as a teacher, of making sure Johnny comes to school, especially on test day, especially if his parents opted out of the test, which is their right.
So, your quote above is either disingenuous or uninformed. I’m going with disingenuous!
August 1st, 2008 at 8:46 am
Is that quite a fair response? The point that basic skills should be captured by the test is a good one, the essential one, and it’s valid, as you seem to agree.
As to attendance and subgroup measurement, isn’t the point of the test to know what is happening? Based on my experience in public schools, it is no doubt true that you as a teacher do not have the ability to make sure Johnny comes to school.
But that doesn’t say anything about the testing. It says only that the testing has revealed a problem. Now the question is, what to do about that problem. The quote was not disingenuous at all.
Personally, I’d like to see teachers given absolute control over the classroom. Then it would be in the teacher’s control, because they could eject the student. The hand-wringing response is that children can’t be abandoned, but this is the opposite of abandonment. It’s dealing with the problem. Abandonment is when students are allowed to continue attending but the problems that have been identified are not fixed, or we quit identifying the problems, which achieves nothing except making it easier to pretend the problems don’t exist.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:16 am
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