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Where’s The Harm In A Little Cheating?

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It is again news that the Texas Education Agency has been taking a see-no-evil attitude toward testing irregularities. This should not surprise anyone who has anything to do with Texas education. There has been a lot of apathy on everyone's part. So the numbers are a bit skewed, nobody has been hurt, right? Wrong.

When cheaters prosper, honest people suffer.

Some years ago I worked in a middle school that “caused” test scores to drop precipitously. After my principal was chastised for failing to maintain the high test scores that students brought from our feeder elementary schools, he decided to re-give the fifth grade Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills during the first week of school. The average percentile dropped from the 80's the previous April down into the teens. After my principal brought this data to the attention of the central administration, his superiors responded by placing the CTBS under lock and key. At mid-term my principal received a dismissal notice. He successfully fought the dismissal, but he lost his position as principal. For the rest of the year, he did a clerk's work for a principal's pay. The following year he agreed to accept demotion to teacher.

Another acquaintance was told that her contract would not be renewed because the TAAS passing rate for her students was much lower than that of the students of the other fifth grade teachers in her school. She saved her job by pointing out that her grade level had decided to departmentalize. She had taught all of the math classes and none of the reading or language arts classes. All of the fifth grade math TAAS scores and none of the reading scores at her school could be attributed to her instruction.

Houston ISD assistant principal Robert Kimball spent two years being bounced from punitive assignment to punitive assignment because he had the audacity to publicly mouth the obvious truth that his inner-city high school, Sharpstown High, did not truly have the zero drop out rate that it officially claimed. Kimball has since resigned from the district. Kenneth Cuadra, the Sharpstown data specialist who helped bring attention to the problem, is currently awaiting trial for misreporting that data. The most severe punishment given to anyone who actually stood to gain from the misrepresentation was a two-week loss of pay for the principal, who was retiring anyway.

A concerned parent in the Rio Grande Valley told me that she had contacted the Texas Education Agency about testing irregularities reported to her by her son and his friends. She said that a TEA representative told her that she should find a teacher or administrator willing to lodge a complaint, but that that educator might be held responsible for failing to come forward with that information sooner. “No teacher,” she quipped, “is going to volunteer for the firing squad.”

It is difficult to say how many educators have been demoted, transferred, fired or pressured into resigning or retiring early because they would not cheat on tests or play ball with data. Given the small number of educators who have been punished for cheating and data irregularities, it is likely that more have been punished for failing to cheat than for cheating. The TEA should work to assure that it is the cheaters, not the honest educators, who never prosper.

Jesness can be contacted at furnes@yahoo.com . His home page is www.jesness.com .

 

 

Jerry Jesness, EducationNews.org

Date: 06/23/2006