Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Test Scores • Hacker News Board

Re: Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Test Scores

#21

Post by count » Fri, Jun 11, 2010, 1:55 PM UTC

Cheating is wrong - I don't see any justification otherwise. With that said, the NCLB and standardized tests are destroying school - the only focus now is to learn to answer those multiple choice questions at the end of the year.

In Norfolk (one of the cities in the NYT article), the 'SOL' annual standardized test is a sole determining factor in pupil promotion. If you come out of 4th grade with a 100% average, but you fail your SOL for whatever reason (you're nervous and didn't do well, you were sick that day, etc.) - YOU FAIL 4TH GRADE. That seems ridiculous.

Re: Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Test Scores

#22

Post by tptacek » Fri, Jun 11, 2010, 2:07 PM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #3

“Educators feel that their schools’ reputation, their livelihoods, their psychic meaning in life is at stake,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, a nonprofit group critical of standardized testing. “That ends up pushing more and more of them over the line.” There is a certain strain of teacher who never felt their reputation, livelihood, or psychic essence was at danger when they were mere…

Not so sure about your logic. Were they motivated by fear of exposure, or were they motivated by enhanced financial incentive to cheat? The answer to that question has implications.

Re: Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Test Scores

#23

Post by tansey » Fri, Jun 11, 2010, 2:09 PM UTC

Seems like there is a need for an independent third-party group to monitor the tests. Since that is likely prohibitively expensive, here's an idea:

1) Have schools partner with each other, where each school is matched to another school of similar size.

2) Extend the testing into twice as long periods (e.g., if it was a 1-day test, now the test period is 2 days).

3) Have partner schools test on opposite period halves.

4) Have partner schools give students the day(s) off on the non-test half.

5) Have schools send their teachers to their partner schools to monitor all the tests.

Now, this isn't fool-proof. It's possible that teachers across multiple schools could collude. It would be crucial to mix teacher pairs up so that if A monitors B then B does not monitor A, thus requiring a multi-way collusion that involves many participants.

Re: Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Test Scores

#24

Post by jerf » Fri, Jun 11, 2010, 5:37 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #15

Natsu wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one place where cheaters can really ruin a system. Once cheaters invade, they can hurt everyone by raising expectations of what can be done. Worse, too often, the natural tendency is to raise the standards if some cheating is uncovered. If you raise your standards high enough, those who were formerly honest will be forced into cheating while those who remain honest are forced out. If you raise standards high…

If you raise standards high enough, you end up with only cheaters, because past some threshold, it's no longer possible to meet expectations honestly. Evidence for this empirical statement?

That statement as written is trivially true. The question is whether it is what is occurring, which isn't going to be possible to ascertain. I don't think anyone really has a firm grasp on what it is possible for an average child to learn, which would be a prerequisite to answering the question.

(There is some idea what an average child can learn in our current system but that's such a small part of the possible state space of educational systems I don't pay much attention to it.)

Re: Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Test Scores

#25

Post by Dove » Fri, Jun 11, 2010, 5:37 PM UTC

count wrote: post #18

patio11 wrote: post #3

“Educators feel that their schools’ reputation, their livelihoods, their psychic meaning in life is at stake,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, a nonprofit group critical of standardized testing. “That ends up pushing more and more of them over the line.” There is a certain strain of teacher who never felt their reputation, livelihood, or psychic essence was at danger when they were mere…

While completely true, it also glosses over the bigger problem. Not All Kids Can Learn The Same. Every single child is completely different, and has a different learning capacity and developmental time line. A child who can barely read in 3rd grade may be left behind his peers for ever, OR, he may suddenly 'get it' in 4th grade, and rapidly catch up. K-3, however, he's going to fail those standardized tests, and ther…

> Not All Kids Can Learn The Same

Supporting reference: Your Child's Growing Mind http://books.google.com/books?id=V1wfk_l2Ch4C

This is the classic practical book on brain development in children and adolescents. One of its main themes is that children mature in different areas at different rates, and that teaching them something before they're ready is fruitless, emotionally risky, and actually damages their later ability to reason naturally.

Re: Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Test Scores

#26

Post by yummyfajitas » Fri, Jun 11, 2010, 5:42 PM UTC

count wrote: post #18

patio11 wrote: post #3

“Educators feel that their schools’ reputation, their livelihoods, their psychic meaning in life is at stake,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, a nonprofit group critical of standardized testing. “That ends up pushing more and more of them over the line.” There is a certain strain of teacher who never felt their reputation, livelihood, or psychic essence was at danger when they were mere…

While completely true, it also glosses over the bigger problem. Not All Kids Can Learn The Same. Every single child is completely different, and has a different learning capacity and developmental time line. A child who can barely read in 3rd grade may be left behind his peers for ever, OR, he may suddenly 'get it' in 4th grade, and rapidly catch up. K-3, however, he's going to fail those standardized tests, and ther…

Every single child is completely different, and has a different learning capacity and developmental time line.

True, but most groups of 30-40 children are roughly the same. There will be a few smarties, a few morons, and a multitude of people in the middle. It's called the law of large numbers.

Re: Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Test Scores

#27

Post by potatolicious » Fri, Jun 11, 2010, 5:53 PM UTC

count wrote: post #18

patio11 wrote: post #3

“Educators feel that their schools’ reputation, their livelihoods, their psychic meaning in life is at stake,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, a nonprofit group critical of standardized testing. “That ends up pushing more and more of them over the line.” There is a certain strain of teacher who never felt their reputation, livelihood, or psychic essence was at danger when they were mere…

While completely true, it also glosses over the bigger problem. Not All Kids Can Learn The Same. Every single child is completely different, and has a different learning capacity and developmental time line. A child who can barely read in 3rd grade may be left behind his peers for ever, OR, he may suddenly 'get it' in 4th grade, and rapidly catch up. K-3, however, he's going to fail those standardized tests, and ther…

The bigger problem is that Not All Teachers Are Competent, or ever will be. We've really shot ourselves in the foot here - being a teacher is an absolutely thankless job, both financially and otherwise. This greatly limits your talent pool to the following:

- people who can't do any better in life

- people who love teaching so much that they are willing to forgo much more lucrative careers

Not only is this pool rather small, it also selects poorly for talent. This places the poor black kids (as you put it) at an even greater disadvantage, since their teachers lack either the talent or the inclination to pull them forward.

Re: Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Test Scores

#28

Post by nooneelse » Fri, Jun 11, 2010, 5:55 PM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #26

count wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While completely true, it also glosses over the bigger problem. Not All Kids Can Learn The Same. Every single child is completely different, and has a different learning capacity and developmental time line. A child who can barely read in 3rd grade may be left behind his peers for ever, OR, he may suddenly 'get it' in 4th grade, and rapidly catch up. K-3, however, he's going to fail those standardized tests, and ther…

Every single child is completely different, and has a different learning capacity and developmental time line. True, but most groups of 30-40 children are roughly the same. There will be a few smarties, a few morons, and a multitude of people in the middle. It's called the law of large numbers.

This presupposes that classrooms can be thought of as random samples of the child population. We know that they are actually geographically localized samples, so that presupposition is somewhat strained and needs a bit of defending, preferably by empirical means.

Re: Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Test Scores

#29

Post by RiderOfGiraffes » Fri, Jun 11, 2010, 5:58 PM UTC

tokenadult wrote: post #16

RiderOfGiraffes wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most teacher and school assessments in the UK are based exactly on that - achieved improvement versus expected improvement. Schools in underpriveleged areas and which perform poorly on standardised tests still themselves score well if the results are "good given the context and circumstances." The tragedy is that teachers who don't teach to the test and provide an excellent education that is tailored to the children…

The tragedy is that teachers who don't teach to the test and provide an excellent education that is tailored to the children they have are starting to worry about the security of their jobs, whereas poor teachers who have no real ability except to regurgitate the texts and drill the kids on process and recitation are relatively safe. Evidence for this empirical statement? I have my doubts about this, because the best…

I only have the information based on talking to perhaps 100 or 150 different teachers over the course of each and every year, and the conference I was just at raised this very question during a question and answer session.

Re: Under Pressure, Teachers Tamper With Test Scores

#30

Post by kwantam » Fri, Jun 11, 2010, 6:02 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #11

patio11 wrote: post #3

“Educators feel that their schools’ reputation, their livelihoods, their psychic meaning in life is at stake,” said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for FairTest, a nonprofit group critical of standardized testing. “That ends up pushing more and more of them over the line.” There is a certain strain of teacher who never felt their reputation, livelihood, or psychic essence was at danger when they were mere…

This is one place where cheaters can really ruin a system. Once cheaters invade, they can hurt everyone by raising expectations of what can be done. Worse, too often, the natural tendency is to raise the standards if some cheating is uncovered. If you raise your standards high enough, those who were formerly honest will be forced into cheating while those who remain honest are forced out. If you raise standards high…

This is similar to the argument against allowing steroid use in various professional sports. If you can't compete unless you compete dishonestly (I'm not taking a side here on the question of whether steroids are actually bad, but if they're banned then their use is certainly cheating), eventually everyone cheats.

The obvious difference is that in the case of steroids in sports, it's an arbitrary system designed primarily to entertain people and make money; the outcomes are completely irrelevant to the success of the enterprise as such. In the case of child education, if everyone cheats, no one learns, and we've just raised a generation of dishonest, ignorant children.