Now the scandal has reached Maine. On Saturday, August 6th, the Bangor Daily News ran a front page article on a Newport teacher who resigned after a state probe into cheating on standardized tests. The resigning teacher is alleged to have reviewed MEA Science Test answers with his students before the test, which in turn allowed the students to score better. This is only the latest shocker.
The widespread scandal on standardized tests from the Atlanta Public Schools (and Baltimore, Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington, and other cities) shows the failure of the system. Rather than simply teach the test, these educators changed answers to cover up their academic failure. Cheating took place in 44 of the 56 schools examined in Atlanta. Apparently some 178 educators, including 38 principals, were involved. What incredible widespread corruption. It's understandable that families would flee from that kind of system.
What was to blame for this scandal? Why, the standards, of course. That's what we were told. It put undue pressure on the schools to perform better. It was, "No Child Left Behind," which tied federal subsidies to performance. This is the reason given by Diane Ravitch, research professor of education at New York University.
Seems to me this is the same reason kids give for cheating. The test is too hard. It must be too hard to teach competency in reading, writing, math, science, and history. So rather than work to improve performance of the students, many of the educators cheated to raise test scores.
If we looked at performance, indeed the standards do seem too high, until one examines the facts. Education Secretary Anne Duncan states that by next year as many as 82% of all public schools could be failing. She writes,
"When a child is meeting the state standards, they are in fact barely able to graduate from high school. And they are absolutely inadequately prepared to go to a competitive university, let alone graduate."Apparently the standards aren't really that high. Yet, turning out an educated student is too much to expect. That's why some educators had to cheat.
As I've written before, the focus of public education is wrong. Our President's friend Bill Ayers, Weather Underground founder and former professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was an influential thinker formulating the modern philosophy of education. Mr. Ayers has written that subject mastery isn't necessary for teaching. In other words, your child's math teacher doesn't have to know math. Rather, Ayers and his cohorts who have hijacked education advocate that teacher colleges train teachers to engage in "social justice," and even teach subjects like math and science in the context of social consciousness. Little Johnny can't read, but he can learn to be a leftist activist.
Quoting Marybeth Hicks,
"When teachers don't view their role as imparting information, knowledge, and skills, but rather as preparing students to be 'agents of social change' through 'critical; thinking,' it's no wonder that the kids aren't capable of passing standardized tests."She concludes,
"It must be said: we aren't training our teachers to do the job we say we want done in our classrooms."
What is the answer? Parents need to reclaim their right to determine the education of their children, not bureaucrats. Part of the answer has to be competition. Charter Schools are a start, but just a start. Give parents vouchers that they can use in whatever way they deem best to educate their children - public, charter, private, Christian, or home school. It should be a parent's choice where the money is spent to educate their child. Unfortunately, this is the one answer that the educational establishment resists with a passion.
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