If there is any one indication that standardized testing in our schools to determine how well our students are doing is a miserable failure (other than the problems of massive numbers of student dropping out of urban high schools, teachers teaching to the test -- which means the teachers teach students strategies to pass the test rather than content, contra claims of test supporters) is the high level of cheating which occurs. In Dallas the assistant principal at Skyline school was caught changing grades and throwing away scores by a teacher. The result? The teacher was fired and the assistant principal still has his job. Such an incident should result in a few things: 1) the principal should be investigated, as an accomplice to fraud, 2) the board should be investigated to learn why they are protecting this assistant principal, who 3) should have been fired on the spot. The fact is that this kind of fraud is no uncommon in Dallas schools or, quite frankly, anywhere else in the country. Why isn't this level of corruption being rooted out? Why aren't principals, assistant principals, and teachers who do this being fired? Why aren't school boards who refuse to fire such people -- let alone allow those who expose fraud to be fired -- themselves investigated. These people need to be in prison. Certainly they have no business being involved in the education of our children.
In the meantime, another teacher in the La Joya school system in Texas may not have her contract renewed for next year because she "stole" tangerine peels from the school lunch room trash for use in a citrus contest. Apparently taking trash that will be thrown away is a fireable offense in our schools, but making test scores trash doesn't. So after forcing a resignation, the school district retracted the resignation and has (pretty obviously) made up a bunch of other charges to justify firing her. And her best defender said that what she did was "wrong." How on earth can you say that what she did was wrong? It is neither wrong nor should it be illegal -- let alone a fireable offense.
If you want to be appalled about something, I recommend you look into the laws surrounding school food. There's some pretty bizarre stuff there. And this is no doubt part of that bizarre set of laws. Still, law or no law, this is a clear example of someone exercising power for the sake of exercising power. Such people should not be allowed to have any. I'm not going to hold by breath that this board will face anything but reelection, though.
I guess the common rule in our schools is to make up whatever you want to get rid of people who aren't doing anything wrong -- and in fact are doing what is right and just and good.
4 comments:
In addition, people who are not cheating (i.e. myself and my students) are being penalized in various ways, such as having our kids tested on crucial testing days by other teachers (akin to having a sub coach on the day of the Superbowl...) because other people have cheated. Ugh.
Exactly. If you get away with cheating, you get rewarded. If you don't get away with it, you're not punished. But if you don't cheat, then you get punished because your students aren't "doing as well" as the students of those teachers who are cheating.
3 exclamation marks? I think I heard that all the way over on my blog.
The tangerine thing is pretty common at any job--not people getting fired for stealing garbage, but getting fired on technicalities because their superiors were waiting for a reason. I think it's unfair, though, to pressure her for her resignation over some tangerine peels and then, after people raise a fuss, to say, "Well, it was really about her job performance anyway." If her job performance was bad enough to justify making disparaging remarks about her to the media, why not make a case on those grounds in the first place? The whole thing is sneaky, underhanded and unprofessional, which pretty much sums up the administrative climate in a lot of public schools these days.
That's the thing: she actually was fired over the tangerine peels. In Texas all "leftover food" has to be thrown in the trash. It cannot be taken out of the lunch room to be eaten later -- even as a snack in the school. The peels were considered food. Now, this is so obviously ridiculous that there was an outcry, so the board decided to invent charges against her to justify the unjust firing.
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