(No Child Left Behind) Testing Scandal in Texas Schools

(I had to listen to this story TWICE before I fully understood what was being reported here. Teachers in Houston, Texas are being encourage to HELP their students cheat! so that they DO NOT Lose "No Child Left Behind" Federal Funding.

Is THIS what they are teaching in the Texas schools?)

Testing Scandal in Texas Schools
by Claudio Sanchez

Morning Edition, March 21, 2005 ·

Houston schools have been implicated in a cheating scandal after test scores in some Texas school districts made suspicious leaps. An inspector general is investigating at least 23 schools. Questions arose in 2004 after The Dallas Morning News found strong evidence that educators were helping students cheat at nearly 400 schools statewide.

(I'm going to look for the The Dallas Morning News Story)

They have been doing either this or running the "bad" kids out of school there for a while. Aren't you glad we got this on a national scale?

March 19, 2005, 2:53PM

Expert cautions the decline doesn't prove past cheating
By JASON SPENCER
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Almost all of the Houston elementary schools under scrutiny for possibly cheating to produce high test scores in past years posted significantly weaker results under this year's tightly monitored exams.

Campus passing rates at all but one of the 18 schools with questionable testing histories dropped at a greater clip than the overall Houston Independent School District passing rate on the third-grade Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills reading exam.

The sharp decline is not outright proof of cheating or wrongdoing, but adds to suspicions, said Thomas Haladyna, an Arizona State University professor specializing in standardized test research.

"That's very improbable," Haladyna said. "You wonder about the validity of scores when they jump around like that. All citizens have a right to question the validity of scores when the results are so implausible."

(more at link)

<http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/topstory/3092365>

When shrub regime was in charge it was the TAAS test cheating going on...for some reason it's just recently that everyone <local media, etc..> is acting like this is a NEW scandal. Do a Google using "TAAS" and "cheating" and there will be eighty million results....all occuring on chimp's watch. One Dallas teacher was giving out $20 for "good" TAAS grades, another school had obvious eraser marks on several tests..ALL going from the wrong answer to the correct answer. Weird shit like that. But the Dallas Whoring News did an "investigative" report a month or so ago and tried to make it sound like they uncovered a Texas scandal that no one knew about before they published the article. PUHLEEZE.....like I said, a Google search shows how long this has been going on. It's been going on since my now-12th grader was in 5th/6th grade.

That's horrible. If this was somewhere up north it'd be ALL over the place. But because it's from Texas and Bush's plan it's hardly anywhere. This is so dangerous and could ruin futures. I'm so disgusted. It's always something coming out. Is it just me or does this stuff seem to becoming out really fast now?

http://www.mysanantonio.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D88VQ9GO1.html


The Texas education commissioner has decided to take full control of the beleaguered Wilmer-Hutchins school district following a report confirming extensive cheating on the state's standardized tests.

The impoverished North Texas district's school board will be replaced by a board of managers, and its academic accountability rating is being lowered from academically acceptable to academically unacceptable, according to a report and letter released Monday by the Texas Education Agency.

In a Monday letter to the district, Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley criticizes "the district's extensive history of deficiencies, its recent significant problems, and its current failure to consistently work cooperatively with the assigned management team."

In recent months, the Texas Rangers, two grand juries, the FBI and others have opened multiple criminal investigations on alleged misappropriation of funds and other accusations. Wilmer-Hutchins went from having a $1.6 million fund balance to a deficit in just more than a year, and the district failed to make payroll twice last year. According to the preliminary state report, two-thirds of educators involved in giving the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills last year were involved in "testing irregularities."

-----------
1999 article <under shrub regime>


http://www.austinreview.com/articles/39.html

Fuzzier Math - How Texas Computes School Dropouts

Texas' public school accountability system is based on three performance standards: daily attendance, TAAS test scores, and dropout rates. The system was supposed to prod the education bureaucracy to respond to legislative demands for higher standards.

Well-publicized cases of TAAS test-cheating have now surfaced in Houston, Dallas, and Austin. In Austin, a Travis County grand jury continues its investigation into the matter. A Houston Press exposé by Shaila Dewan, entitled "The Fix is In," led to the firing of one teacher and the disciplining of a principal. The Houston TAAS situation is also still under investigation.

Now the dropout-rates section of the accountability system has come under a cloud. More serious controversies than TAAS cheating may lie ahead.

Gov. Bush is touting his education record as a central theme in his White House bid, and allegations of fudged numbers by the TEA couldn't come at a worse time. So far, says Garcia, "the silence has been deafening" from the governor's office regarding the under-counting of dropouts.



edited for extra link

...in the rest of the country.

First time I heard of it, was when I started reading Molly Ivens book "Shrub.":evilgrin:

It just gets frustrating down here when stuff like this that has been going on forever suddenly surfaces as new info and people like DMN try to make it look like they are saving the day by breaking this "new story". Then it makes national news and they fool people into thinking this is JUST happening. Just makes some of us wonder who in the TX repuke political world is benefiting by the "new" news and anything follow-up that is done about it...being the right wing rag that it is, the Dallas Whoring News would have no problem helping this along even though they know DAMN WELL this was also happening ALOT under shrub's TX regime.

that we are considered an underperforming school and the kids don't have to go here if they can get accepted in other towns--out of district doesn't matter.
If the kids here pass their testing, they get a trip to Six Flags.
I would almost bet there is cheating as well, but cannot prove it.
All last year, the TEA was required to be at all inservices because the teachers weren't trusted enough to be there.
Its very sad but very representative of small rural school districts in poor areas.

Cheating your way to success is good enough for Bush.

broke last year about the shennanigans pulled to inflate graduation rates, boost test scores, and basically lie their way to become the "Texas Miracle?"

I hope the testing cycle in which this cheating took place was before that scandal - in the sense that if it was after the scandal it suggests that even in light of getting caught the pressure was so high as to take that risk - repeatedly. If it was before the scandal - then it just suggests that the legacy of the former superintendent/and sec of education was that cheating, if it makes you look good, is a viable response to ed policy.

to look during the 2000 election that it was improving by leaps and bounds in education.
Restart classes. If you have a kids who is failing they put them the same class over again and again and again.... Now if a kid fails due to a lack of effort or unexcused absences (skipping) , so be it. This is done in an effort to keep kids who can't pass the test from taking it. But this is an unfunded mandate and there is no money to identify disabilities (social, emotional or learning) so there are some kids who circle the drain because there is no help for them... in other words.... they get left behind!

...our Indiana Democratic Congressman (who was also the Majority Whip) John Brademas and our Democratic Senator Birch Bayh, to write and push through Public Law 94-142, the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, or what is now known as IDEA, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

She took a very aggressive, activist role for me, and as a Learning Disabled Child, and I doubt I would have made it through school without her efforts. She was an Activist, going all the way back to the mid 1960's as one of the "White" members of the NAACP and the Urban League. Most of the help that handicapped children and Learning Disable students received over the last 30 years, could be credited to this Law.

It's just so sad that it sounds like these 30 years of progress are being reversed by these Jerks.

If you want to learn more about how this Law was passed, here's a link:

<http://www.connsensebulletin.com/cs004.html>:pals:

Your mom sounds like a hero.

Some of these kids just have minor reading and concentration problems.... these things are easily taken care of but there has to money and time to do it...
none of this has been forth coming from the winged monkey administration.

EVERYTHING shrub has touched in his life. He is covered with loser dust. Yeah, let's let him "fix" social security.......

They had to throw out all kinds of data in Texas because they caught a janitor changing test scores while "cleaning" on the night shift. The reason the guy was doing it was because the raises in pay for teachers and related personnel in the state were base on test scores. Another thing * has turned to schite!