Education

[Bean]

On a related note, a study just came out the poverty affects kids' brain development from an early age. Here's a link to the a Scientific American report on this.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/poverty-shrinks-brains-from-birth1/

You can't win, poverty shrinks the brain while affluence leads to affluenza...

[spookini]

a test the American Statistical Association officially declared invalid.

That's only true half the time.  The other 60% of times, it's completely valid.
Just like the old "80/30" rule. 

[eastbound]

ok---affluenza is the fault of teachers also.

so is influenza, for that matter.

did that help, icky spoon?

try to keep the faith that you have to have always had, that you are reaching kids in good ways.

[Ichabod Spoonbill]

Thanks, Eastbound. It's been a rough couple of days. My student teacher is coming over today for a bitch-fest. She's afraid her career will be over before it even starts.

[TallDude]

There are bad doctors, bad contractors, bad engineers, and http://www.ajc.com/news/news/eleven-former-teachers-and-administrators-guilty-i/nkkFX/   
This seems like a egotistical rogue district administrator set unrealistic goals, and asked or forced teachers to cheat for kids to meet those goals.

[Ichabod Spoonbill]

TallDude, I definitely don't want to support cheating of any kind, but unfortunately when you give tests too much value, then this kind of thing happens.

The goals on the whole were unrealistic. The initial No Child Left Behind law stated by 2014 all kids would be on grade level. And look where we are now. After over ten years emphasis on testing, math scores have gone up about 0.1%. and English grades not at all. That's enough to tell you this isn't working. If it were working, the grades would be improving a lot.

That's the point of all the protest against excessive testing. It it really was leading to improvements, that would be another story, but it isn't! It's just a bludgeon being used against schools, teachers, and students. Kids who do poorly on these tests get to fail over and over again. Often that's because of poverty, sometimes aptitude, sometimes a kid's just a lousy test taker or divergent thinker. What does that do to a kid's self-esteem? Consider this too: the passing rate of the ELA exams in New York State is about 30% — it used to be much higher until the powers that be made the tests more difficult. That means we are failing 70% of our kids.

I know some of you might be thinking that the failure rates are the result of bad teaching, and there is some of that, but mostly those tests are terrible. If you have any doubt, go here to check out example questions:

https://www.engageny.org/resource/new-york-state-common-core-sample-questions

BTW, even at my school, which got national blue ribbon status a few years ago and was recognized by the state as a “School of Excellence”, had a 52% passing rate last year. What kind of test is it that will fail even about 50% of kids in the best schools?

[SUPcheat]

When I was in professional school, I talked with a girl in the sociology department.  She said a grad student had sent out a research poll anonymously to students in the medical and dental schools.  As it turned out, anonymously, 40 percent admitted that successful cheating was part of their pattern to become admitted.

The deans suppressed the study because it pointed to the idea that admissions process and competition at least on some level bred a better set of cheaters rather than selecting for personal merit and academic achievement.  The deans did not want the image of the professional schools tarnished.

However, knowing over the years what I do of many individual stories, I believe the study. I have known some real whoppers that I never discuss because people just wouldn’t believe it, or they edge toward political incorrectness and that barrel of monkeys.  Forged credentials are not that rare. And yes, the rich can buy their way in, often with said impeccable forgeries.

  One guy who had been accepted to my school on forged credentials would go over the hospital, put on a white coat, swipe some Rx pads, and was masquerade as a doctor on the wards. He wrote orders on charts, flirted with nurses etc. etc   He was in the school for two years before he was caught , investigated and expelled.

  Another woman basically screwed everybody of importance in the school to become admitted to a top, coveted surgery program even though she was unqualified.  She had booty blackmail on a couple of department heads. She never showed up for the program because she managed to beguile and marry a wealthy TV director.  The surgery program she didn’t show up for was enraged, but my thought was they should have counted their blessings, they were lucky she didn't. I heard she was found dead a few years later in the bottom of a swimming pool.  Suicide or murder? Nobody knew.  When I read Scott Turow's novel, "Presumed Innocent", I thought the female murder victim could have been based on this woman.

Isn’t that reassuring to know about your professionals?  I came to believe in my twenties that life was an Vonnegut/Heller tragicomedy that didn’t make any sense. It also made me regard institutions and their credentialing processes as suspect in many instances.

[Ichabod Spoonbill]

The best way to evaluate a teacher is to see him/her in action. I didn't get much out of my certification either. The first five years of teaching was where I learned the most.

[eastbound]

starting as a teen, read all the vonneguts and hellers--love that black humor, cheat

[stoneaxe]

BTW, even at my school, which got national blue ribbon status a few years ago and was recognized by the state as a “School of Excellence”, had a 52% passing rate last year. What kind of test is it that will fail even about 50% of kids in the best schools?

It would be interesting to see if kids in other countries that are noted for their education systems would fail at that same rate.

[PonoBill]

Certainly some countries are renowned for cheating. China and India pop to mind, but other places as well. The prep mills for SAT and ACT are billion dollar businesses, and the most prominent have been sued for stealing tests to teach the answers. Teaching students to pass the gaokao (entrance exam for chinese universities) is a huge business, and the prep begins in elementary school. Kids routinely study 16 hours a day to pass the test--from childhood. There's a picture somewhere of students studying for gaokao with IVs in their arms.

There's a huge cultural difference. The kids want it, the parents demand it. Failing to get into a university means manual labor for life.

I doubt that testing is a solution for our educational challenges. It's just politically easy. But it's also not the prime problem with education, both here and internationally. I'd put the issues of relevance, antiquated methods, reliance on a system meant to serve factories and hordes of clerical workers, and teacher quality to be more important.

[OUTSIDEWAVE]

my youngest son is on a quest to change the schools  he feels that what is being tught done't prepare the  kids for the world. nothing about industry   what to expect in your job    and on and on.    he wants to set up a non profit organization to change the world  at least the schools

[eastbound]

admittedly very long piece from last summer that offers some depth on the atlanta "cheating" scandal. 
youve likely seen this, ickyspoon.

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/07/21/wrong-answer

[feet]

Bill - just pickin' your brain - what would your ideal classroom look like on a daily basis? What would your end goal be for a high school history or english class?  how about chem or geometry?  What would those students leave the classroom with at the end of the course? 

Thanks in advance.

[Ichabod Spoonbill]

These teachers involved with cheating are also being charged under RICO, which is usually invoked for organized crime. They could get twenty years each.

That's for cheating on tests. Wow.