I am shocked-- SHOCKED!-- to find that cheating is going on here!

So apparently, to make sure we don't get shocked, let's just NOT LOOK.

One case accuses a teacher of filling in bubble sheets of her students who should have been taking state exams. Another says administrators called pupils into the office so they could have a second chance at questions they missed.

All told, more than 100 reports of standardized testing irregularities, including cheating, poured into the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education in 2010 and 2011, according to documentation obtained by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
Thirty-two of those were from the St. Louis area.

And yet, the Missouri education department does nothing on its own to seek out cases of test fraud, despite the availability of effective statistical tools that could weed out potential abuses. Of the $8.4 million the state spends to administer the Missouri Assessment Program, nothing is spent on test fraud detection services.

Failure to invest in the integrity of Missouri's test scores has continued even as schools face rising pressure — and in some cases, incentives — to improve under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. And it has continued in the face of test cheating scandals across the nation — from Atlanta to Washington to Philadelphia to Los Angeles.

Critics suggest it's simply easier for states to look the other way. "If you don't look, you don't find," said Bob Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest: National Center for Fair & Open Testing. "You are void of embarrassment by not asking tough questions."

Missouri education officials rely on a system of self-reporting that assumes teachers and administrators will come to the state when they know of possible abuse. Under this approach, even when allegations of testing irregularities are reported — as they were 41 times in 2011 — the state and school districts rarely engage in the kind of rigorous statistical review many say is needed.

The state has also dismantled a program due to funding reductions that had sent inspectors randomly into schools to ensure tests are administered properly.

State education officials say looking for red flags would add thousands of dollars to the testing contract at a time when the state has cut department funding. "There is a cost to that," said Sharon Hoge, an assistant commissioner at the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. "We have tried to rely on self reports in our districts in Missouri. I'm not telling you that means there are not things possibly that are going on that we don't know about."

Read the whole thing. It's fascinating.

I think our state legislators need to realize there's a cost to not checking on reports of cheating. And that is that... excuse me if this is obvious... schools and principals and teachers and students will cheat because there is so much riding on the outcome of these tests.

What can you deduce from these clues?

1. Kid asks if she can start staying after school with me every day of the week so I can personally fix all of her test-taking problems.

2. Work from absences three months ago is just randomly left on my keyboard-- sometimes, along with bribes of my favorite candy.

3. Parents suddenly start checking Precious's grades online every five minutes.

4. Parents have placed a call block on all numbers from the school district.

5. Parents unleash avalanches of emails questioning all 43 grades in the gradebook.

6. Parents and kids claim that they cannot comprehend my classroom website, particularly, that they can't find the list of deadlines ANYWHERE (it is under the tab called, strangely enough, DEADLINES).

7. Parents and kids start asking if kids can retake tests.

8. I start getting emails from aunts and grandmas.



Well? Have you guessed????


It's the end of the semester fast approaching!!!!

There are no words.

That late great author Douglas Adams once said, "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

My colleagues in the special education department were supposed to get me all the IEPs for my students who have one last Friday. I just got another one today, and several were emailed, dated 11:59 pm, on Friday evening.

So, nearly half of the kids in my regular classes have IEPs that allow them to turn in work late.

All their work. All the time.

Some of these kids are seventeen and eighteen years old.

Discuss. I'll be back after I wash my mouth out with soap.

Making us all look like schlemiels

I am sure that every teacher who reads this or other education blogs works in place that has rules. They may be called "expectations," or "behavior markers," or even dopier things like "the Panther Path" or the "Warrior Way" or the "Cardinal Code," but whatever you call 'em, there they are.

Until they're not.

We have a bunch of these behavioral prohibitions ourselves. Some are mandated by state law: no smoking on campus, no gambling, no fencing of stolen merchandise, no assault-- you get the picture. Then there's more minor rules: no use of cell phones or mp3 players, except during lunch. Wear your IDs. Follow the directions of adults on staff. No obscene language.

Now the enforcement of these prohibitions can be spotty. But here's what gets in my craw: During announcements, it was proclaimed that students were not allowed to leave campus once they were on campus-- not even to dash across the street to smoke. This policy was henceforth going to be rigorously enforced! Consequences would be meted out with justice for all!

It lasted one day.

The next morning they had moved behind some bushes, so that at least our incompetence was not paraded in front of the entire world. The day after that they were back where they had started. The next day, they were openly standing in front of the main entrance. There they were puffing on their "gaspers" and creating clouds of smoke that could patch the hole in the ozone layer. Our Dear Leader not only shrugged it off, but snapped at those who dared bring it up.

So here's the deal: Listen, toots. I don't care what the rule is, if you are not going to enforce it, then at least don't draw attention to the fact that you cannot handle all aspects of your job. Worse still, I especially hate it when YOU make a big deal about something and then promptly back off.

It makes us look like schmucks. It erodes any sense of authority. It makes it clear that the inmates are running the asylum. It also encourages kids to keep pushing until they finally find out what the boundaries are, if indeed there are any. Now your excuse is that there are bigger problems going on around school. That is true. But, there's this thing called the "broken windows" theory. I'm too annoyed to go into it fully, plus my martini is getting warm, but basically it's this: when you stop enforcing smaller rules, the community begins a death spiral toward major lawlessness.

Your momentary twinge of enforcement merely draws attention to the fact that not much is enforced around here. So you want to know what would make teachers morale improve?

How about this: Pick one rule, no matter how tiny. Something that would actually make a difference around this place.

And then enforce it. Firmly, subtly, consistently.

I dare you.

Finally, a parent question with an easy answer

It is now the middle of the semester, which means parents are suddenly pulling themselves out of their comas and realizing that their kids do not have the grades that the parents desire, no matter how many times we have contacted them about this fact.

So a colleague received a communication from a parent that asked why the kid had so many zeroes in the grade book.

"Because the student did not do the work," was the reply.

Kid told mom that through some vicious campaign, the teacher had never given him the assignments. Then she contradicted herself and said he couldn't find them any more. So where can she get all of the assignments for the entire next unit?

Easy. From your kid. All you've gotta do is ask him for him. Asking every day might do it.

A teacher says no to a bond issue

The district in which I reside is asking for voters to approve a bond issue. "It won't raise your taxes!" the fliers trumpet! Ooooohhhh! We'll be able to get a new football stadium and a new Ceeeement pond (that's "swimmin' pool" to you non-Okies) for the Swim Team and all kinds of wonderful stuff. Of course, the fact the the superintendent's kids are swimmers has nothing to do with these priorities. Of course not.

But nonetheless, I am not voting for it.

Not because I don't think it would be great to have our home swimming matches actually at home--I do. Not because the old football stadium isn't leaky and creepy if structurally sound-- it is.

I oppose this bond issue because of the lies within the list of things that they claim will be done. After all the razzle- dazzle, they claim that they will redo the floors of the classrooms and fix the lighting and buy new air conditioners.

But I have lived in this district for over twenty years. And in that time, I have seen four bond issues passed that promised all of these things before. What almost always happens is that the big-ticket items come first in priority, they go massively over- budget, and then the little things get swept under the rug. After all, what the public will be looking for is the Natatorium and the Stadium-o-dreams. Most people who actually go into a school don't always notice the holes in the wall along the thirty-year-old vinyl floorboards which are exactly the color of baby poop. Or the mismatched tiles on the floor which enterprising teachers have covered over with twenty-year-old rickety furniture through which twenty years of butts have rotated. Or windows that are bolted shut because the hinges are missing and panes of glass would go shattering to the ground if teachers tried to open up the windows and let a little fresh air in. They don't look up and notice the bulging, discolored tiles on the ceiling (probably filled with asbestos) which indicate serious leaking issues on the roof. They don't notice the dead cockroaches in the bathroom which the maintenance staff insists are really "water bugs." They don't notice the broken desks, either. Or the rodent feces on the floors.

But I do. I am a teacher.

It's not that I live in a crumbling, urban district. We are a nice, diverse, middle class, suburban part of town. But this school district is run based on abstract expressionism when it comes to appearances: from a distance, it looks hazy and beautiful, but get up close and it's a blotchy mess. And the supervisors of this district from the superintendent on down like it that way. As long as we have that new swimming pool and flashy stadium, people will assume that this is a well-run, affluent place.

But before I see a new stadium, I would like to see a new heating and cooling system set in place so I don't have to worry about the kids with asthma. I would like to see new roofs on the buildings that can be walked upon to get to those cooling systems without creating waterfalls in the classrooms every time it rains or snows. I would like to see investment in new furniture for students and teachers before any more upgrades to the brand new district offices. I would like to see the ducts cleaned and the mice eradicated and holes in the floorboards replaced. Then, and only then, talk to me of swimming pools and three more weight rooms that only benefit one hundred kids in the entire district.

I talked to a principal about the fact that students were sitting in broken desks last year in one of the schools my own kids attend. In response, the maintenance staff threw out all the broken desks over the center. But, as a perfect example of the disconnect, nobody thougt to buy new ones. So the school year started out with massive desk shortages. I guess that was my fault for not just leaving well enough alone.

What does it say about our concern for students that we are not willing to invest in desks for them to sit in and learn in that are actually in one piece? What does it say when we expect teachers and students with asthma to come into buildings where day after day they are exposed to mold and mildew and black gunk blowing out of the overhead vents? What does it say that a stadium that will be used perhaps forty times a year means more than the daily experience of our students in classrooms that are clean and at least as lovingly maintained as the artificial turf in that same stadium?

New desks and cooling systems aren't sexy. But those are the things that should come first, if we stop behaving like kids who want to eat candy all the time. Why aren't these things taken care of in the regular budget process? And don't tell me it's because of the perks the teachers' union negotiates for those lazy teachers, because I KNOW my kids' teachers roll back a hefty portion of their pay buying kleenex and markers and folders and hole-punches and other things that should be provided for them without reams of red tape to discourage them from getting what they and the students need.

But here's the other secret: The stadium and the natatorium will make the older residents of the district happy because it will remind them that they get something from the school district even though their kids are grown. But does it have to be this way? How about if we remind them that a good school district helps maintain their property values? School are more than just community centers. They are supposed to be places of learning for the children of our community.

Why can't we remember that? Why must the real needs of the kids always come in last in the list of priorities?

You can tune a piano, but you can't tune a fish.

Young man approaches me before class and stands next to me as I peruse the traffic for any signs of malfeasance. He stands there a while. Finally, I ask, "hey bud, what can I do for you?"

He: "Ms. Cornelius, I gotta get my grade up in your class. I gotta be able to play tonight!"

Me: "Okay, do you have any of the work you owe me that's already due?" (He has a an IEP with extended deadlines.)

He: "No...."

Me: "Okay, well, did you get ready for the extra credit quiz I am giving on places in the news?"

He: "But I don't WATCH the news!"

Me: "Right, so that's why I told you about it on Monday and repeated it every day this week. So you could earn extra credit by watching the news."

He: But I gotta get my grade up so I can play tonight! What should I do?"

Me: (sighhhhhhhhhhhh.......)

Banning basketball teams from post-season play for lacking enough students

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, former professional basketball player in Australia, has suggested that NCAA men's basketball team that do not graduate at least 40% of their players should be banned from post-season play. From the New York Daily News: (And here's a link to his actual statement.)

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is urging the NCAA to ban from the Big Dance teams from schools that fail to graduate 40% of their basketball players. That's the right call.

According to a study released this week, 12 of the 64 schools in this year's tournament fail to meet that minimal benchmark - and many have an even more abysmal record on helping black players toward degrees.

At Maryland, No. 4 Midwest seed, just 8% of players graduate. Among black players, the number is a beyond-scandalous 0%.

At Baylor, No. 3 seed in the South regional, 36% graduate. Among black players, just 29%.

At Kentucky, many people's pick - including President Obama's - to get to the Final Four, 31% graduate. Among black players, just 18%.

With numbers like those, Kentucky wouldn't be in the tourney at all, if the President's own secretary of education has his way. And he should. These programs owe their players far better.

An institution of higher education's job is to prepare young people for the global workforce, not the neighborhood playground.

Yet, as NAACP President Benjamin Jealous pointed out in joining Duncan yesterday, the likes of Maryland (0% black basketball player graduation rate) and California (0%) and UNLV (13%) appear happy to exploit talented young people to generate a month-long bonanza of ratings and school spirit and revenue - but care far less that they complete their educations.

Some schools get it right. Marquette graduates all its white and black basketball players. So do Notre Dame and Wake Forest.

But others, to use Duncan's term, "use and dump" players. The result is that a tiny fraction make the NBA - and hundreds leave school without the skills necessary to build careers.

So turn on the tournament. Enjoy the upsets and last-second finishes. Good luck in your office pool. And just think, for a minute, about what happens to the kids when they leave the court.

Some go on to great things; others get hung out to dry. It doesn't have to be that way.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/03/18/2010-03-18_march_sanity.html#ixzz0ikfGpg5H

I read an article which included responses from some of the coaches who might suffer the most under this policy. One of my favorite responses by a coach BLAMED SECONDARY SCHOOLS in this country for the problem. Look, pal, you're the one who offered a college scholarship to a kid who was obviously unqualified to actually be a student on your campus, and you didn't care. All you wanted to do was win. This attitude would be fine if this was the minor leagues of the NBA and the athletes were getting paid. But that's not how it works. The NBA is spared the expense of running a developmental league on its own dime, and so they're happy. But colleges are, first of all, schools, and they should seek to accept the students who will actually be able to attend class and benefit from that experience by being able to earn a degree.

But it's not just college coaches who have things backwards. Someone I know was given a permission slip for a tournament by a student who was failing his class horribly. The teacher has a public policy of not signing permission slips for students who are failing. Now let's remember that usually it doesn't seem to matter what policies teachers actually have if they are inconvenient, and the teacher figured that probably the student would go to the tournament anyway. Instead, my colleague got a long email fusillade from this student's track coach, vehemently attacking him for denying this student a "chance at a college scholarship."

Let's get real: with a GPA of 1.5-- the required (and horrifyingly low) GPA to participate in sporting activities in the area-- and with the student failing not one but TWO classes required for graduation, the idea of a college scholarship at all seemed about as unlikely being struck on the head by a meteorite. What the coach was probably really mad about was that, if his athlete didn't go to the tournament, the coach might not have as many chances to win.

Did the coach care that the athlete was failing? Did the coach care that the student obviously wasn't preparing himself for this hypothetical college scholarship to be put to good use? No. And that is a real travesty.

So Secretary Duncan's proposal is a small but significant step in the right direction. Of course he's spitting into the wind of the money tree that is March Madness, but give him points for trying on this issue.

How do you keep your job as a teacher without actually showing up?

So there's this teacher who claims that she has all kinds of esoteric, bizarre health issues. She has been out of the classroom eight times as much as she has been in the classroom. Her students have been in the hands of short-term subs and permanent subs for the LAST FOUR YEARS.

She basically shows up for a couple of weeks each year and then disappears with symptoms of scurvy or trench foot or whatnot.

She has written no lesson plans, done no grading, done no teaching for nearly her entire tenure in our district. She has also discriminated against students who do not share her ethnicity.

By the way, while claiming to be so incapacitated that she cannot possibly come to work, she has been seen in the mall and has been in texting contact with some of her students. During the school day, even. It's really good to know that her thumbs are apparently the only working body parts she possesses, along with a very active VISA account filled with a salary she has not earned.

Needless to say, this is her tenure year, and she realizes that this pattern may impede her chance at receiving what is called a "permanent teaching contract."

So what strategy has she devised now?

Apparently, now she is claiming racial bias and a hostile work environment from her fellow teachers and colleagues who have been left to put a bright face on a bad situation for four... long... years. Right now, all that has been promised is that she won't return to this building next year.

Really? I guess I shouldn't be surprised if she ends up being an administrator three or four years from now. I mean, the last time we had a totally incompetent teacher on this team, she was promoted to principal and then moved to a neighboring school district as an assistant superintendent faster than you can say, "Nincompoop."

This kind of situation develops due to poor hiring decisions, refusal to admit that a mistake has been made, and laziness on the part of... everyone. I will be ABSOLUTELY FURIOUS if the administration doesn't do the grunt work and get the documentation to make sure students get the teacher they deserve.

This space for rent

Note: This is my 1,000th post! Whoa!

Here's the situation: You're a classroom teacher, and you do not have enough supplies provided to you for your classroom. In particular, you don't have enough paper. So what do you do?

Many of us face this situation every day. I remember when I taught in the parochial school, and we were all given one box of paper to use all year long. A teacher resigned in midyear. Before her car had even pulled out of the parking lot, I slunk into her room and nabbed the three-quarters of a ream of paper she had neglected to use. Score!

But there's another reality that needs to be acknowledged. Sadly, many of us dip into our own meager, threadbare pockets and buy the paper ourselves, recompense being a starry-eyed dream that died with belief in the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, and the fantasy that Viggo Mortensen would someday see you across a crowded room and realize you were the realization of his every dream and the woman for whom he's been looking all of his life.

Or, there's another option some teachers have decided to try. How about selling ad space on tests, quizzes, and handouts?

In a cash-strapped Idaho high school where signs taped near every light switch remind the staff to save electricity, an enterprising teacher has struck a sponsorship deal with a local pizza shop: Every test, handout and worksheet he passes out to his students reads MOLTO'S PIZZA 14" 1 TOPPING JUST $5 in bright red, inch-high letters printed along the bottom of every page.

"I just wanted to find a way to save money," said Jeb Harrison, who teaches history and economics. "We have to sell ads for our yearbook, for our school newspaper. I don't think this small amount of advertising will change my classroom."

School officials were not wild about the idea, but Pocatello High School Principal Don Cotant relented after Harrison explained the advertisements could help illuminate such topics as the Great Depression.

"I had concerns. I didn't know what this would open up for us," Cotant said. "But we've let this happen because it makes a point about what economic hard times can force people to do."

As school districts across the country face the worst economic outlook in decades, educators who have long reached into their own pockets to buy classroom supplies are finding creative ways to cover expenses. But selling ads on schoolwork is practically unheard of.

The 12,000-student school district in and around Pocatello — an old railroad town of about 55,000, where Idaho State University and a semiconductor plant are among the biggest employers — is looking at a shortfall of up to $10 million next year because of expected cuts in state aid. A tax increase was voted down last month, and school officials have frozen spending on field trips, teacher training and basic supplies such as paper.

Molto Caldo Pizzeria, about a mile from the high school, agreed to supply paper for Harrison's five classes — 10,000 sheets, valued at $315, and imprinted with a pizza ad. That should be enough paper for the rest of this school year and all of the next one.
On a recent day, Harrison handed out photocopies of Dust Bowl images, emblazoned with the pizza ad. The ad also appeared on an economics test he gave last week on the Depression.

"I thought it was a great idea. I mean, the levy didn't pass. We can't get enough money from the state. We've got to find some way to get it," said one of Harrison's students, 17-year-old Benjamin Simms.

Marianne Donnelly, chairwoman of the school board, said the ad apparently violates a district policy barring schools from directly promoting businesses. But she said the board considers the ad harmless and is not making an issue out of it.
"Give the teacher credit for creativity," Donnelly said. "There's no question we're in desperate financial straits."

Elsewhere, nonprofit organizations are helping teachers obtain free or discounted classroom supplies, and Web sites match educators with benefactors willing to buy materials. But Harrison's approach has at least one critic worried the idea will spread.
"It crosses a line," said Susan Linn, a Harvard psychologist and director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. "When teachers start becoming pitchmen for products, children suffer and their education suffers as well."

Earlier this school year in San Diego, Rancho Bernardo High School math instructor Tom Farber allowed students' parents and local businesses to pay $10 to print messages on quizzes, $20 for space on tests and $30 for final exams. Most parents printed inspirational messages, some started plugging their businesses. He raised $625 in one semester.

District administrators expressed concern that the practice could lead to legal problems if an ad were ever rejected, but Farber ended the practice before they could intervene. He sold his last ad in January, after making enough to get through the rest of the year.
"If the district says I can't do it, then they need to provide the money necessary for me to do my job," Farber said.

So how about it? Good old' American ingenuity always finding a way? Or just another slip down the slope to renting out the inside of your eyelids?

On the one hand, school districts are already far from ad-free zones. There are Coke machines, and ads in the school paper, and ads in the yearbook, and ads in the stadium and in the sports programs. Some years ago there was Channel One, which provided free equipment and news programs in exchange for allowing students to watch a couple of minutes of ads.

But on the other hand, why is it acceptable to expect teachers to pay for supplies out of their own pockets? We are already grossly undercompensated in most parts of the world. My husband doesn't buy dozens of pens, staplers, reams of papers, dry-erase markers, or spirals to take to his job at Mega-Defense Corporation, but every year I have to make far less than $100 buy all the supplies, including scantrons, that I will need through the school year. Is selling ad space any more morally appalling than refusing to provide supplies?

What do you think?

Open thread: Sounds "questionable" to me...

A friend of mine has a daughter who is looking for a teaching job next year, partly due to this policy: Teachers in her high school have been instructed to allow students to retake tests repeatedly until they pass them, no matter how many times it takes. The district doesn't want any students failing.

I doubt that ANY district WANTS to see students failing. But where is there ever accountability in this kind of set-up?

What do you think?