Raising the Bar in Glen Cove: Hard Lesson

[Chris_Wendt]

Cheating Teachers Teaching Cheating to the children of Glen Cove.

There is a easy lesson here, and a hard lesson.

Do I really need to elaborate on the potential effects of raising the performance bar for students who cannot clear the bar at the lower or current standards?

The following year, after the cheating had stopped, Glen Cove City School District had exceptionally miserable results on the bogus 2013 ELA & Math Assessments.
(See BEDS Code 280100010000 on the link to NYSED).

What are we doing, New York?

Chris Wendt

[rr]

Not sure I understand your post completely...are you trying to rationalize this cheating scandal?

I'm seeing the Glen Cove need to raise their bar when it comes to hiring teachers that not only can engage these students but also understand that cheating is not acceptable. So the teachers cheat to help students get good grades so they can keep their jobs and then get caught, then stop cheating and the students do poorly on the test.

Must be the fault of the NYS education system...

C'mon Chris, really? Please tell me you're not drawing conclusions from inept, cheating teachers and the ELA & Math tests.

[Chris_Wendt]

Every one of those teachers and their administrators should lose their license to teach, as well as their jobs in Glen Cove. Those teachers and this scheme had to have been orchestrated by someone in Administration, but below the Superintendent, based on who reported what to whom.

I am not justifying anything. Res ipsa loquitur.

However the operative phrase, "High-Stakes Testing" carries very sinister implications for the credibility of the public education in NY. It also imparts significant financial motivations to school districts and their hapless taxpayers, as well as 'life-and-death' career implications for professional educators.

In Glen Cove, we are seeing actual educational crime, the motivation for which was spawned by what has long been called "High-Stakes Testing".

[rr]

So should we eliminate the testing because a few people can't cut it and cheated? That's like saying we should change laws because so people have a hard time dealing with them. You can't draw these conclusions...

I could take the alternative view of this specific example...thanks to the high stakes testing we weeded out a bunch of people that have no place teaching children or being an administrator in a school....had we just kept the status quo because "it ain't broken" these criminals would still be teaching children ineffectively but the kids would still pass the same old standards...

[Chris_Wendt]

I don't like other people putting their words in my mouth. My words are plain and speak for themselves.

Organized cheating on high stakes testing is a serious concern in that it may be or become widespread. Glen Cove, NY is certainly not the first place it has been detected.

To your credit, you appropriately raised a critical issue, the qualifications of teachers and administrators in the era of high stakes testing, and, prospectively, in the coming new era of the Common Core Curriculum. Not Wantagh teachers, by-and-large, but teachers in Chicago, certainly, and in many other places around the country.

You can raise the bar as high and as often as anyone would care to. But when the height of the bar exceeds the capability of the schools, the qualifications of the teachers and administrators, and of the school board members and right on up to the very State(s) Education Department(s), where should you start upgrading the qualifications and measurements of results? With the kids cramming for tests, with outdated textbooks, sitting in over-crowded classrooms staffed by under-qualified teachers, with little or no educational technology, managed by shady administrators under the policy and budget control of lay school board members who are more concerned about passing their budgets and making nice with the unions working for them. than in kids passing ELA and Math?

That's all rhetorical, of course, and all about someplace else, like Yoknapatawpha County, Mississippi, or Lake Woebegone, Minnesota, but not Wantagh, New York.

Oh, yeah, right?

Tomorrow, watch for the forecast of Wantagh's Performance Indices post 2013 ELA & Math Assessments.

Best regards,

Chris Wendt