Texas to Target Standardized-Test Cheats

[Rose Siding]

AUSTIN, Texas -- The state education agency is launching an effort to catch cheating on standardized tests, officials announced Monday.

Officials will hire an outside expert to review security measures and build a tracking system to monitor test scoring irregularities that could signal cheating.

"We have zero tolerance for cheating," Texas Education Agency commissioner Shirley Neeley said in a statement released before a news conference.

The changes are in response to a Dallas Morning News investigation that found strong evidence that educators at nearly 400 schools statewide helped students cheat on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills. The newspaper study identified schools whose test scores swung wildly from poor to stellar.
...
"Texas educators understand that cheating on the test can be a career-ending move," Neeley said in the statement.

Texas education policies on student accountability became the model for the federal No Child Left Behind law enacted after then-Gov. George W. Bush's election as president in 2000.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-texas-school-cheating,0,6151728.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines

[htuttle]

1. Seems to me that the cheaters are just learning...

...how we do things in America nowdays. The end justifies the means, right?

Cheat to win? Sure -- as long as you *win* (or can talk people into believing you've won, regardless of the outcome).

[rainbow4321]

4. The state doesn't help matters...

cuz up very recently, they admitted that they relied on the school districts to report cheating...kinda like the wolf guarding the hen house--it was/is the DISTRICTS allowing the cheating to happen. It improves their numbers/reputation. Hell, there was one teacher here in the Dallas area that handed out $20 to kids who got a good grade on the TAAS <the state test before the TAKS came along>...
Ticks me off to hear the state SUDDENLY being interested in the cheating---it's been going on since my now 12th grader was in elementary school!! The state just turned a blind eye to it all. Doing a Google with the words TAAS, Texas, and cheating would show how long and widespread this problem has been.

[LibDemAlways]

2. "Cheating on the test can be a career ending move,"

for a teacher trying to help students improve their scores, but cheating in a Presidential election is rewarded by a four-year stint in the WH. Go figure.

By the way at my daughter's elementary school in So. Cal the teacher whose class had the highest standardized test scores received a cash bonus. Think that isn't an incentive to get those scores up no matter what?

[rainbow4321]

3. They ignored a Houston teacher trying to report cheating

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/news/010805_APlocal_taks.html

Teacher says HISD wouldn't listen when she reported TAKS cheating


1/08/05 - HOUSTON) — A middle school teacher tried to report cheating on standardized tests last spring but gave up when district officials refused to grant her immunity from punishment, a union official said.

The Key Middle School teacher told union representatives last year that a school administrator had given her and her colleagues advance copies of the 2004 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills for their students to use as practice exams, said Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.
Key is one of 25 Houston Independent School District campuses under investigation because of uncharacteristically high scores on the TAKS.

A union representative approached chief HISD attorney Elneita Hutchins-Taylor and offered to have the teacher give a statement in return for immunity, Fallon said. Hutchins-Taylor declined.

[central scrutinizer]

5. is there a statute of limitations?

If not, they should go after Rod Paige. What a worthless, lying piece of shit.

[MasonJar]

6. And this is the state of Gerge W...I believe they started a little too

late.