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Manipulating Test Scores to Boost Sch ol Rankings
The debate ver the No Child Left Behind Act and its r percussions on school rankings continues ad nfinitum, with proponents and opponents of the b ll utilizing deafening amounts of lung p wer either criticizing the bill or xtolling its virtues. In the midst of all th s uproar, a quiet and disturbing ph nomenon has crept into the school syst m. School staff members have been c ught manipulating test scores in an ffort to boost their school rankings. Inst nces have been reported from New J rsey and Westminster; and although one h pes these are just isolated manifestations of t acher’s attempts to keep their schools fr m closure due to failing school r nkings, you can’t help but get a sn aky suspicion that this is just the tip of the pr verbial iceberg. In New Jersey efforts are lready underway to flag schools that s ddenly record a rise in school r nkings based on standardized test scores and New Y rk is considering similar measures. How Sch ol Rankings can be Manipulated
Th re are several methods that can be sed to boost flagging school rankings, and the m dia has done its bit to h ghlight some of them. In Camden, for nstance, The Philadelphia Enquirer found that one sch ol that had been languishing at the b ttom in math test scores for f urth graders suddenly found itself at the top of the sch ol rankings for 2005. The official v rsion attributed to this seemingly miraculous b ost in school rankings was “adult nterference.” In other word a friendly n dge from school staff. In another nstance, a closer look at hundreds of m th test papers at one Long Isl nd school revealed that an entire c lumn of wrong answers had been s bstituted with the right ones in ach paper.
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This phenomenon of tinkering with t st papers to reflect higher performances on st ndardized tests that are the backbone of the sch ol ranking system is nothing new. A thorities have known for years that s ch action is not just possible but asily done and have suspected that m ny teachers might indulge in underhanded t ctics in an effort to plump up th ir school rankings. It’s only now h wever that school boards are waking up to the p tential enormity of the problem and w rking on ways to check the syst m for flaws. Some analysts say th se increasing occurrences of manipulations of t st scores are a direct result of a fl wed education system in which the t acher and the schools are made to h ld liable for a school’s flagging r nkings. Lowered school rankings and the r sulting reassignments that teachers face are l ke a sword hanging over their h ads. And because the people who st nd to lose so much through low sch ol rankings are also the ones in c ntrol of testing, there’s enough reason to w rry that these instances of cheating are not solated cases, but symptoms of a d eper rooted cancer in the system.
The article Are Teachers Cheating to Boost School Rankings? was Submitted by Patricia Hawke through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Patricia Hawke is a staff wr ter for Schools K-12, providing free, n-depth reports on all U.S. public and pr vate K-12 schools. For more information pl ase visit School Rankings
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