Room for Debate posted an excellent forum in July asking, "When Did Cheating Become an Epidemic?" http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/7/12/when-did-cheating-become-an-epidemic
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It was a summer of cheating scandals in public school districts around the country, in Atlanta, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Washington. But here in New York, the issue has been relatively quiet, in part because the state does not do the kinds of systematic checks for cheating on standardized tests that other states routinely do.
Recognizing more should be done, state education officials have formed a working group on test integrity that is scheduled to report recommendations soon. The city, meanwhile, has begun to audit some high schools each year that posted unusual scores; it has not taken the same step for elementary and middle schools.
What should the state and city do to improve safeguards against cheating?
Room for Debate posted an excellent forum in July asking, "When Did Cheating Become an Epidemic?" http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2010/7/12/when-did-cheating-become-an-epidemic
At the high school level, at least, wouldn't it make sense to have an honor committee or court in which students, teachers and administrators hold each other accountable? Integrating the whole testing process with character development- and giving students, teachers and administrators alike skin in the game - would bring a healthy level of democratic transparency to the process.
Have you ever read some of the questions that are on these standardized tests, regardless of grade? They are set up to stump the students rather than test real knowledge or mastery of subjects.
I can't say I blame administrators on cheating, their stakes as well as students are high.
Cheating on standardized test scoring is a natural outgrowth of our obsession with the tests. If retention of staff, teacher salaries and school report cards continue to be linked more and more with "bottom line" academic achievement as measured by standardized tests, the result will be more cheating. See Campbell's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There has been a lot of worry about Regents tests being scored by the teacher for that course (or other teachers in that subject area). But hasn't that always been so in New York?
Mary, it's always been done that way for decades and there never were allegations of cheating. The reason for that is these exams were being properly used for the purpose for which they were established namely to both gauge the depth of student understanding of a specific rigorous curriculum in a certain course of study and to sort of level the playing field. That means that a student getting a grade of 85 in a Liberty NY and a student getting a grade of 85 in a school in the Bronx, should get a grade around 85 on the Regents exam in that subject if the course ended n a regents exam. It served that purpose well but that was the only purpose such exams exsted for the benefit of the student.
These exams were absolutely never meant to evaluate teachers, administrators and schools. Once you add that to these exams, when a teacer's or an administrator's livelihood are at stake, human nature dictates one will do what one has to do to protect that livelihood. And when incompetent chancellors such as Joel Klein start using these results to threaten teachers and administrators, well you see the inevitable results. Stop evaluating teachers and administrators based on the results of these flawed exams and perhaps then they will be restored to their original purpose.
To stop cheating on tests like the regents, abolish the regents.
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