Another miraculous educational turnaround, another example of rampant cheating. I think we’ve seen enough of a pattern now of school districts doing a quick turnaround only for the numbers to be fishy that now when a politician starts claiming “miracle!” the assumption should be that they fiddled with the numbers and we just have to look for it.
And here’s why I feel that way. School districts, small and large alike, are like container ships–they take a lot of time and effort to turn onto a new course. So when someone throws test scores up and claims huge jumps in student performance when there was no indication before that they were coming, well, hold on to your wallet is all I’m saying. Something stinks.
Read the article, by the way. There were teachers who tried to tell the district that there was cheating going on, but the district didn’t want to hear it. And why not? Because of the huge sums of money at stake, and because of the nation’s over-reliance on standardized testing. When you put together a system as dysfunctional as the one we have in this country, it’s no wonder you get teachers and administrators faking results. I’m surprised it doesn’t happen more often.
Hat tip to whoever it was on Twitter who came up with that title. I wish I could come up with jokes that good.
