Houston Miracle: all children left behind?

[gargoyle]

Did anyone see the CNN presents show on saturday about the no child left behind program also known as the houston miracle?

The NCLB program uses mandatory testing in grades 3 and 10 and 12 in order to ensure that all student meet minimum mandatory standards before moving on to the next grade.

The people promoting it say they have achieved dramatic improvements in student performance, graduation rates and drop out rates.

CNN noted:

1) teachers helps students cheat - to keep jobs, under presure from adminstration or to earn bonuses.

2) administrators encouraged cheating, falsified documents and failed to report drop outs - to keep jobs, underpressure from superintendants, or to earn bonuses

3) schools reporting drop out rates of less that 1% actually had drop out rates in excess of 40%

4) dramatic rise in student performance on standardised testing in houston did not translate to improvements in university preparidnes test (going back 40 years the students performance was exactly the same). Nor did it increase texas' perfomance in national testing standards (still below average)

5) students were being retained despite research that indicates 50% of students who are retained once drop out and 90% of students who are retained twice drop out. added to the fact that 90% of prison inmates in texas were school drop outs...

6) students were made to repeat grade 9 (to avoid the test in grade 10 to improve student performance so the superintendant, school admin and teachers could earn bonuses) until they droped out of school (which was not recorded as such)

WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH THESE PEOPLE????

Now the federal government is going nation wide with this program.

why are american students and parents not marching in the streets?

[Matt the Medic]

I wasn't on the boards at the time, but this is why my wife and I threw such a large fit over Paige's election to Sec of Education. We KNEW all of this in 2000 because NCLB had been what HISD had been implementing for a few years. On another sour note, at my wife's graduation yesterday the school gave the superintendent after Paige who screwed the system up even more an honorary doctorate.

[Loren Pechtel]

And this is supposed to be news???

[gargoyle]

i am an educator and the "houston miracle" and the standardized testing model has swept across not only the US but also Canada and the world ( i live in Alberta and your average alberta is more american that your average minnesotan...). I have never seen what amounts to educational fraud so clearly outlined in the media before. My understanding was that the testing, while controversial was somewhat effective in improving education results - i was shocked that not one single arguement was advanced by the promoters of this system that held any water when placed next to the detractors.

[something_fell]

Hi gargoyle,

Just curious, what is your opinion of the standardized testing model per se - as it is implemented here in Alberta, for instance? Are the goings-on in Houston an aberration, or do you think this happens more often than not? (Is it an inherent fault within the model, or can standardized testing work as long as there are safeguards against cheating?)

As far as I can recall, we haven't had any reports of fraud in our system; the only complaints have been from the teachers' unions, who seem to be against the philosophy of standardized testing. Our students appear to do well compared to the rest of the world, though, for what it's worth.

[Mageth]

Are the goings-on in Houston an aberration, or do you think this happens more often than not? (Is it an inherent fault within the model, or can standardized testing work as long as there are safeguards against cheating?)

On the following list, see article 253, "OPINION: Texas public education reform: More mirage than miracle" (David Hartman, 12/25/2000)

http://www.lonestarreport.org/search.asp?topic=42

In 1998, some Austin ISD schools were caught manipulating TAAS test scores. Corpus Christi ISD has also been caught. Several other smaller school districts have also had similar problems.

As Loren says, this (fraud and other problems in standardized testing) is not exactly new news.

[Loren Pechtel]

Hi gargoyle,

Just curious, what is your opinion of the standardized testing model per se - as it is implemented here in Alberta, for instance? Are the goings-on in Houston an aberration, or do you think this happens more often than not? (Is it an inherent fault within the model, or can standardized testing work as long as there are safeguards against cheating?)

As far as I can recall, we haven't had any reports of fraud in our system; the only complaints have been from the teachers' unions, who seem to be against the philosophy of standardized testing. Our students appear to do well compared to the rest of the world, though, for what it's worth.

In general this sort of problem is to be expected when standards are set higher than reality.

The teachers etc know that it's impossible to meet the expected standards and thus they cheat because they don't want to be the ones at the bottom of the pile who get the axe.

[gargoyle]

Something Fell:

In alberta the teacers unions have managed to keep two very important things out of the system:

1) Performance pay/performance firings - this creates the incentive to cheat, is not reflective of the vast number of uncontrollable variables in student learning, and take vital resources out of the system and gives them to teachers who get the "best results". As a k-8 administrator i can assure you had there been performance pay for results at my school i could have easily stacked the deck so the teachers i prefered and myself would recieve bonuses! When i was admin at the high school it would have been easy to bully students into lower level academic streams and fail/force students into dropping out so that they would not impact our test results negatively (this does happen to some degree presently in alberta - especially if a school is under performance review)

2) Pass or fail exams - This is perhaps the most disturbing part of standardized testing. children should not be reduced to being measured by the lowest common denominator. think of the bell curve. now think of every human ability. now understand that each person is on that curve somewhere for each ability that they possess. Now eliminate 98% of those abilities and test them on the 2% that standardized testing can demonstrate. Now rank them by their performance on that one day. School performance is but one factor in an individuals success in life and pass or fail raises the bar too high at too low an age (pre college/university).

accurate reporting is also essential - in alberta the government tracks drop out rates and reports them accuratly.

In my experience (i have administered many provincial tests) i have never personally nor had knowlege of another teacher helping students cheat on a test. I have experienced presure to improve test results so that our school would look better in provincial rankings. Students have been know to use the internet to cheat on the tests - there was a english exam that was hacked from Alberta ed a few years ago)

The key to using the test effectively in my opinion is to use them to measure student performance against the curriculum. The goal would be to answer the question how well did our students learn what we were trying to teach them?

Analysis of results in our district has led to early literacy intervention programs which have had a dramatic impact on students learning to read.

Also teachers who teach the "to the test" are realizing that this is simply not an effective way to improve results (counter intuitive though this may be)

Alberta education system in the last OECD internation testing of 15 year old student in math, science, reading and writing performed 1st in the world in reading, 1st in the world in writing, 3rd in math, and 3rd in science. Canada overall performed Fourth. The united states 17th. Texas was below the united states national average - this is why it is so shocking to me that this "high stakes" model is being duplicated across the USA.