Widespread Schoolteacher Cheating

I've seen this all too often although it was more prevalent with the special education students. Give them the passing grade and everyone's happy! Well except the special education students that are being left on the sidelines. I've chatted with a few of them while I was in high school and not a single one of them liked getting the test answers handed to them. Successes mean so much more to those that grow up being told they can't do this or that! Teachers that strive to thicken their wallets are not doing it for the right reasons. :C

4 words...

No
Child
Left
Behind


...and it's true enough if the test is what they're supposed to be teaching to. It's sure as heck about the only thing they have time for now, given how high stakes and specific it is for dictating material. Not good....any of it. Whatever it started as, it's become crap on a cracker, IMHO.

I'm a little surprised that no one is picking up on the lead from the first page on Common Core. That seems to be "No Child Left Behind," quadrupled. All of the standards written and funded by the government and Bill Gates' organizations. Standards will be applied to every state in the country, even more detailed lesson plans, and data about the children and parents (including opinions) shared with the Feds through their data system. The criticisms of it have been breathtaking.

Our area has a $54,000 average for teachers (no big cities). I looked at the 12 school districts closest to mine for a different project. The differences in proficiency went from 60% to 20% with no significant difference in salaries. That may mean it is administration causing the problem.

As an aside, I saw a study about 5 years ago in which a University looked at the college entrance exam scores for their students, and broke them down by which department the students were in. The top two departments (out of about 19) were hard sciences. The lowest average was in education.

reply to post by charles1952

Brother Charles!!

Teachers who can't teach and children who can't learn ... prime candidates for Obamarama's shovel-ready-jobs programs.

Regards from Seoul,
Snarl

There is no more "no child left behind," Charles is correct. What has replaced it is much worse. Common Core Standards written by Non profit organizations, CCSSO and National Governor's Association and is in all but 5 states. In order to get the new(er) "Race to the Top" money, the states had to agree to adopt these standards BLIND. They have never been tested and at the time most of the states took the money, they weren't even completed yet and the states didn't even know what they were.

Common Core is a joke and it is turning our children into jokes.

pheonix358
reply to post by Hoosierdaddy71

 

Throwing more money at schools will not help the children learn.

Yes it can.

At the rates quoted that school gets 7.7 million

At 30 to a class you need 24 teachers, costing 1.128 million. What the hell is the other 6.5 million spent on!

Halve the class sizes / double the number of teachers and watch the results.

Apparently you are spending enough on the education system, you are just not spending it on education.

P

Your making my point for me, you don't fix an alcoholic by giving him more alcohol. The money is already there, the administration is just wasting it. Let's double the amount we spend on schools, they will still waste the money and nothing will improve.

My uncle is a teacher in Florida and I work as a SRO at a high school in Florida. I have been told by both my uncle and teachers/administrators at the school I work at that even if a student gets a zero the lowest score they are allowed to receive is a 49.

So basically a student can slack off and do practically nothing the entire year, pass the exam/final project (by cheating in some cases), and still land a D or a C for their final grade.

I have no personal proof that this is standard practice except for what I have been told. However, I trust my uncle with my life and know he is not lying.

If this is true I wonder if there are any legit reasons as to why this is practiced. I sure can't think of anything except to help the slackers graduate, which obviously reflects on the graduation statistics.

reply to post by CoherentlyConfused

There is no more "no child left behind," Charles is correct.

Whatever someone wants to call it or it's origins, it comes down to the same thing and it's ignorance with pride being taught as a value is what it comes down to in real impact. In intent, I really think the ideas ON PAPER are good ones. Just like full blown and true communism is a fantastic idea ...on paper. Stuff doesn't seem to work near as well in the real world with real humans involved.

I'm dealing with this crap regularly with my son who is special needs in a district they'd love to just pretend special needs didn't even exist within and force mainstreaming as hard as humanly possible for stats and scores as much as anything. Schools live and die by funding...funding is determined by scores and need which in turn comes from the standardized testing given at least once and sometimes 3 times a year (depending on location).

Teach to the test and test what is taught .... a hell of a fall from the 3 R's and totally gone from anything like teaching life skills. Home Economics, Wood/Metal Shop and Drivers Ed used to find plenty of time....with students performing much higher in academic standards than we see now. Imagine that ... Now they can't find time outside test prep for virtually anything.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


The high school that I work at has about 1700 students. We do not have home economics, wood shop, or drivers education.

It is all about preparing for the standardized tests.

reply to post by xuenchen


The two things I am greatest at in my life came from being completely self taught. I have a BA of science and just about everything I learned in college could have been learned at home from reading books. What is nice is the use of expensive labs and materials. Otherwise ive never been impressed with our education system at all.

reply to post by TorqueyThePig


Same with the Middle School my son just moved up to. Everything is about the testing and preparing for it, almost from day 1 of the semester. Of course the lessons are geared to the state tests, so in that way it is from day 1. Nothing almost about it.

You know what really gets me the most, and I think you'll relate from what I've seen of your posting in the past. Even true life/death critical life skills are gone now, like the drivers ed. I didn't realize this until I went back to college myself, but I'm living around no fewer than 6 major college/university campuses in this area. They're so well blended and set back from being the center of attention, it's easy to miss outside MSU. (They are the center of that area and make sure no one can miss it.. lol)

I bring all that up because it wasn't until I realized the real college kid : local resident ratio that the driving insanity began to get more perspective and I started to really watch WHO seemed to have no concept of traffic laws vs. personal opinions of what they ought to be. It's not the 'little old lady from Pasadena' these days ...It's the 20 something with a smart phone and fiddling with a DVD player while sitting on a Yield on Green as if it were a red light without a special arrow to give permission.

Drivers Ed... Such a simple thing...but they spend billions for 'smart car' tech, as another thread details...instead of simply not producing dumber drivers by what seems to be deliberate design these days.

reply to post by cosmicexplorer

just about everything I learned in college could have been learned at home from reading books.

Well put and what I'm finding myself. College has benefits and in careers that require the degree, it simply has to be...but knowledge wise? Indeed. Most of what I've learned so far literally was supported with Youtube video and reading list. Nothing I couldn't have done outside the classroom if the degree in it's own right wasn't the important thing for my focus.

I am an elementary school teacher. I don't think I could ever change test answers for my kids, but I do see where these teachers are coming from. It is also very likely the admin instructed them to do this. Of course, my district doesn't use test scores to hire/fire teachers. YET!

The entire idea that the ability of a teacher can be seen from test scores is asinine. Nor can you see the true ability of a student from their test scores. It is one test on one day. Do you know how often I have seen kids just get plain bored and start randomly circling answers?

We have just implemented the Common Core. However, the state has not yet caught up with the testing portion of the Common Core, so we are still going to be using the old test this spring. The standards have changed quiet a bit from what we were teaching years before. So we are currently teaching standards that won't even be on our state tests. Make sense to anyone here? It sure doesn't to me.

We won't even be able to take the new tests when we do get them because we won't have enough computer access. The new ones are all online. As far as I know, no one has this all figured out yet so who knows what next year will bring.

As far as teaching common core, so far it has been somewhat of a nightmare. It will get better in 2-3 years, at least I hope. The main issue is the math. The standards have been shoved forward. So things we have always taught in 4th grade are now being taught in 3rd grade. Which means our math series expects that the kids already know most topics and it builds on them. Yet, the kids were never taught those topics and it is impossible to expect them to move forward. There has been a lot of trying to teach background skills with no resources. The math has gotten so in depth that I have intelligent parents calling because they can't help their 9 year old with their homework anymore.

I don't know that the solution is to throw more money at it. I mean, yes, it would be nice to get paid more. I get about 30k now and I'll never make more than about 45k. Teachers didn't go into the profession expecting to become millionaires. I think more accountability on who is spending the money and where it is going would help wonders. I would also like to see ACTUAL classroom teachers creating the standards. Often times they will tell you they used teachers to help devise this stuff but it is really just people who taught 2-3 years and moved up the ladder after they found out the classroom wasn't for them.

The common core is destroying our education system. Plain and simple. I wish teachers would stand up to it but in my district they all turned into robotic drones reading from a script when confronted. If I hear that word "rigorous" one more time my head is going to explode.

Oh and the average pay for the teachers here is 56,000 a year, and that's what the kindergarten teacher gets. Not one teacher is lower then that. I know this because we can look it up if we want.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Yeah I agree with you. It is like there are no social skills taught anymore.

As a SRO I like to lay low and not bother the kids. However, I cannot avoid listening to their conversations and interactions with each other. Now I realize they are still developing, but if I was to judge our future by the way they interact among themselves, I would be very scared.

When I have to interact with them and ask them questions it is like talking to a tree stump. When I ask for their signature they print. I had a 15 year old the other day that did not know the meaning of the word disturbance. This kid was not handicapped or disabled in anyway. It is very alarming!

They just seem to be so foul mouthed and violent. I swear I don't remember being like that when I was in high school which was only about 14 years ago. Maybe I am just getting old....

reply to post by xuenchen


Boy, this is a big problem - seems like teachers and administrators are
taking cues from the top down; when leadership is a sham and
full of lies it is a signal that everyone else might get away with it
and benefit too.

The Common Core is the breeding ground for spectacular educational failure
- the leaders in the county have sown the "I dont know" and "what difference
does it make" along with passing the buck and apathy.

On a conspiratorial note: I wonder too if this is paving the road for
a de-industrialized America - where they know the jobs just wont be there.

reply to post by burntheships

On a conspiratorial note: I wonder too if this is paving the road for
a de-industrialized America - where they know the jobs just wont be there.

I agree with that 100%.

I also think it's well beyond conspiracy because we have been seeing these results for years already.

I think Common.Core might be amplifying an Agenda21 style global goal.

It seems to me that this whole thing is creating a "competition" within the education system.

K thru 8 and then 9thru12.

I also wonder about this "extra" money for better test scores?

Where is that cash actually going?

How would less money and more money help or hurt the school systems?

And I find it amazing how teachers would actually do this on such a large scale.

Very dangerous when the schools can't be trusted.

reply to post by benrl

benrl
We have a system that produces functioning illiterates.

In any budget shortfall Education is cut first.

Yet we continue to expend on foreign aid, ridiculous military budgets, all while our children end up cannon fodder for either the military or cogs for minimum wage corporations.

How long will we as Americans Allow our Children to be last in the western world in every measurable category?

The problem is that the system is DESIGNED to make children uneducated, near-illiterate, and uninformed. The American public school "education" system is based off the Prussian model, which is designed to churn out slave-workers who don't have the requisite functional grasp of real learning to ever question or resist the system.

Try reading Silent Weapons for Quiet Wars, a treatise that essentially lays out the government's plan to wage war against we the people.

Diversion Summary
Media: Keep the adult public attention diverted away from the real social issues, and captivated by matters of no real importance.

Schools: Keep the young public ignorant of real mathematics, real economics, real law, and real history.

Entertainment: Keep the public entertainment below a sixth-grade level.

Work: Keep the public busy, busy, busy, with no time to think; back on the farm with the other animals.

And even if you think Silent Weapons is a fake document... you've got to admit that pretty much everything it calls for has come true.

The sad truth is, the public school "education" model is a weapon being used against our children to keep them in states of ignorant apathy. It trains them to be good enough to push buttons and pull levers to keep the system going, but in no way provides them with the critical thinking abilities requires to ever break free from this broken paradigm TPTB would have us call "reality."

reply to post by therealguyfawkes


I am well aware.

"In our dreams, we have limitless resources and the people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present education conventions fade from their minds, and unhampered by tradition, we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning, or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, editors, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have an ample supply…The task we set before ourselves is very simple as well as a very beautiful one, to train these people as we find them to a perfectly ideal life just where they are. So we will organize our children and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way, in the homes, in the shops and on the farm."

- General Education Board, Occasional Papers

Rockefeller Education group primarily responsible for the birth of public education.

Whats needed is a complete tear down, root and stem, and a RE examination on Education in America in general needs to happen.

Maybe Obama ordered them to? They do it for the funding, that, and some schools' test scores are so low that it's mind-boggling.