Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
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How common is cheating?
Joshua Benton, who used to work at the Toledo Blade in Ohio, has done some great work with his Dallas Morning News colleagues writing about cheating on the state test in Texas.
The Morning News wrote an award-winning series about this a couple years ago, and guess who the cheaters were? Not the kids.
Benton and his colleagues found adults in the schools who were cheating.
Now Benton is back with another story showing cheating is still common in Texas. Through data and computer analysis, the state can discover unlikely patterns, such as a whole class of kids who gave the exact same answer on 15 questions in a row. They can also look at an “erasure study,” which looks for groups of score sheets that have large blocks of answers erased and changed.
This problem, unfortunately, is a natural byproduct of high stakes testing. Principals and teachers know their jobs are on the line and for some the temptation to improve their hand is too great. But the effects for the kids are awful. Kids tell stories of teachers giving them the answers brazenly or handing them score sheets that already are marked. What a horrible lesson to learn from your teacher. Not to mention those phony scores give everyone a false sense of how kids are performing, and may prevent them from getting needed interventions.
If this problem is happening in Texas, it’s certainly happening elsewhere, even Ohio. The question is how widespread is the problem here? Anyone have any thoughts about how much it happens here or personal experience with cheating teachers?
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Testing
Comments
By Oldprof
May 28, 2006 9:23 AM | Link to this
Gosh Rick, do you want me to flip-flop? By the way, does “teacher’s own low standards” sound to you like criticism of teachers and support for standards? That’s the conclusion that a careful reader would draw. BTW, I don’t despise tests, I administer them almost weekly! But I despise poorly-written, poorly-scored tests like the ones our state board of education has adopted.By Rick
May 27, 2006 11:40 AM | Link to this
My goodness, Oldprof, you are so boringly consistent. You despise parents, standards, testing, and demand an almost godlike respect for teachers. Do yo have anything different to say?By Oldprof
May 26, 2006 8:46 PM | Link to this
The problem is with the students also, but it gets distributed differently. The teachers who cheat the standardized tests are doing it because (a) they don’t respect the poor designs of those for-profit testing corporations (b) they know the students don’t take the tests seriously (c) yes, their jobs are on the line [and they look at politicians like our convicted governor and wonder why they should be held to a high standard for far fewer rewards]. Students cheat on the teacher’s tests because they are insanely concerned with high grades, and over-scheduled for activities by their helicopter parents which leaves too little time for study and reflection. We find ourselves in a conundrum; if teachers could be trusted to administer their own tests and grade fairly and rigorously, we wouldn’t need mandatory standardized testing—but we can see that teachers haven’t been trustworthy in that way for perhaps 30 years now. The lack of trust for teachers and the teacher’s own low standards have grown up together by feeding one another, and they’re both now huge problems.By Mary
May 26, 2006 4:27 PM | Link to this
Keep in mind the same lack of integrity can occur in other modes of measurement including class grades. Class grades, GPA, and class rank are used as higher stakes for awards and scholarships than standardized tests in our education system. These teacher given grades can be more easily abused because of the higher level of subjectivity.