Rick Scott's Education Adviser Caught Up in Cheating Scandal

[FayeforCure]

Our Fraudster Governor appointed a Fraudster Advisor to Defraud Florida Public Education!!!

And local media remained SILENT!!!!!!

Rick Scott's Education Adviser Caught Up in Cheating Scandal
By Michael Cohen, Fri., Apr. 8 2011 @ 4:12PM
Comments (13) Categories: Education, Politics

​Despite the rising contempt for Gov. Rick Scott, this one kind of flew under the radar. With the exception of the Florida Center for Investigative Reporting, our local media outlets seem determined not to notice that the credibility of Gov. Scott's education adviser has been grossly undermined by a cheating scandal.

Michelle Rhee, the nationally adored star of the documentary Waiting for Superman and staunch proponent of corporatized education reform, built her reputation by lifting test scores at low-performing D.C. schools while she served as chancellor. Now, the scores that built Rhee's credibility appear to be part of widespread test fraud that occurred during her tenure, according to USA Today.        



Rhee's theory, which essentially moves schools toward privatization, became immensely popular among politicians and bodes well with Scott's privatizing zealotry.  
 
As D.C. chancellor, Rhee doled out about $1.5 million in bonuses to principals and teachers of schools that showed significant improvements in student test scores. But the USA Today piece revealed that scores from these schools had tremendously high levels of "erasures," basically meaning that the wrong answer was frequently erased and changed to the correct answer.

Amid the revelations, education expert Diane Ravitch blasted Rhee in a column on the Daily Beast.


Her theory seemed to be that if she pushed incentives and sanctions hard enough, the scores would rise. Her theory was right, the scores did rise, but they didn't represent genuine learning. She incentivized desperate behavior in principals and teachers trying to save their jobs and meet their targets and comply with their boss' demands.


And it was only a few weeks ago that Scott signed SB 736, which ties teachers' pay to students' performance on standardized tests.

http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/juice/2011/04/rick_scott_education_adviser_michelle_rhee_cheating_scandal.php

[wsansewjs]

Ouch! Voldemort does it... again!

-Josh

[urbanlibertarian]

From USAToday:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-03-31-rhee-test-scores_N.htm

Ex-D.C. schools chief '100%' behind test scores probe
By Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello, USA TODAY

Updated 3/31/2011 10:27:35 PM |


Former District of Columbia Public Schools chancellor Michelle Rhee says she is "100% supportive" of a broader investigation into standardized test scores in the school district she used to oversee, just days after she dismissed a USA TODAY investigation that showed high rates of corrected answers on student test sheets.In a taped interview to air this weekend on Bloomberg Radio, Rhee, a national figure in education reform, said she "absolutely" supports the decision to investigate high rates of answer changes on standardized tests during her tenure. "If there were isolated instances of this, those should be dealt with properly and we should actually discount those scores in those classrooms," Rhee said in the interview, according to a press release issued by Bloomberg.

The USA TODAY investigation, part of a national examination of standardized testing, found that D.C. public schools showed statistically improbable rates of changed answersâ€" from wrong answers to right ones â€" on student tests from 2008 to 2010, during Rhee's time as schools chief. The high test scores earned Rhee and the school system national recognition, but some teachers and parents interviewed by USA TODAY said the abilities of students didn't always match their high test scores.

On Monday, when USA TODAY published its investigation, Rhee released a statement that USA TODAY's story was "an insult to the dedicated teachers and schoolchildren who worked hard to improve their academic achievement levels."

[urbanlibertarian]

From original article:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/education/2011-03-28-1Aschooltesting28_CV_N.htm

When standardized test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real?
By Jack Gillum and Marisol Bello, USA TODAY

Updated 3/30/2011 12:17:10 AM |


WASHINGTON â€" In just two years, Crosby S. Noyes Education Campus went from a school deemed in need of improvement to a place that the District of Columbia Public Schools called one of its "shining stars."Standardized test scores improved dramatically. In 2006, only 10% of Noyes' students scored "proficient" or "advanced" in math on the standardized tests required by the federal No Child Left Behind law. Two years later, 58% achieved that level. The school showed similar gains in reading.

Because of the remarkable turnaround, the U.S. Department of Education named the school in northeast Washington a National Blue Ribbon School. Noyes was one of 264 public schools nationwide given that award in 2009.

Michelle Rhee, then chancellor of D.C. schools, took a special interest in Noyes. She touted the school, which now serves preschoolers through eighth-graders, as an example of how the sweeping changes she championed could transform even the lowest-performing Washington schools. Twice in three years, she rewarded Noyes' staff for boosting scores: In 2008 and again in 2010, each teacher won an $8,000 bonus, and the principal won $10,000.

A closer look at Noyes, however, raises questions about its test scores from 2006 to 2010. Its proficiency rates rose at a much faster rate than the average for D.C. schools. Then, in 2010, when scores dipped for most of the district's elementary schools, Noyes' proficiency rates fell further than average.

[FayeforCure]

Op-Ed Contributor
The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries
By DAVE EGGERS and NÍNIVE CLEMENTS CALEGARI
Published: April 30, 2011


WHEN we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. We blame the generals, the secretary of defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition.

And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.

Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.

We have a rare chance now, with many teachers near retirement, to prove we’re serious about education. The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates. This will take some doing.

At the moment, the average teacher’s pay is on par with that of a toll taker or bartender. Teachers make 14 percent less than professionals in other occupations that require similar levels of education. In real terms, teachers’ salaries have declined for 30 years. The average starting salary is $39,000; the average ending salary â€" after 25 years in the profession â€" is $67,000. This prices teachers out of home ownership in 32 metropolitan areas, and makes raising a family on one salary near impossible.

So how do teachers cope? Sixty-two percent work outside the classroom to make ends meet. For Erik Benner, an award-winning history teacher in Keller, Tex., money has been a constant struggle. He has two children, and for 15 years has been unable to support them on his salary. Every weekday, he goes directly from Trinity Springs Middle School to drive a forklift at Floor and Décor. He works until 11 every night, then gets up and starts all over again. Does this look like “A Plan,” either on the state or federal level?

We’ve been working with public school teachers for 10 years; every spring, we see many of the best teachers leave the profession. They’re mowed down by the long hours, low pay, the lack of support and respect.

Imagine a novice teacher, thrown into an urban school, told to teach five classes a day, with up to 40 students each. At the year’s end, if test scores haven’t risen enough, he or she is called a bad teacher. For college graduates who have other options, this kind of pressure, for such low pay, doesn’t make much sense. So every year 20 percent of teachers in urban districts quit. Nationwide, 46 percent of teachers quit before their fifth year. The turnover costs the United States $7.34 billion yearly. The effect within schools â€" especially those in urban communities where turnover is highest â€" is devastating.

But we can reverse course. In the next 10 years, over half of the nation’s nearly 3.2 million public school teachers will become eligible for retirement. Who will replace them? How do we attract and keep the best minds in the profession?

People talk about accountability, measurements, tenure, test scores and pay for performance. These questions are worthy of debate, but are secondary to recruiting and training teachers and treating them fairly. There is no silver bullet that will fix every last school in America, but until we solve the problem of teacher turnover, we don’t have a chance.

Can we do better? Can we generate “A Plan”? Of course.

The consulting firm McKinsey recently examined how we might attract and retain a talented teaching force. The study compared the treatment of teachers here and in the three countries that perform best on standardized tests: Finland, Singapore and South Korea.

Turns out these countries have an entirely different approach to the profession. First, the governments in these countries recruit top graduates to the profession. (We don’t.) In Finland and Singapore they pay for training. (We don’t.) In terms of purchasing power, South Korea pays teachers on average 250 percent of what we do.

And most of all, they trust their teachers. They are rightly seen as the solution, not the problem, and when improvement is needed, the school receives support and development, not punishment. Accordingly, turnover in these countries is startlingly low: In South Korea, it’s 1 percent per year. In Finland, it’s 2 percent. In Singapore, 3 percent.

McKinsey polled 900 top-tier American college students and found that 68 percent would consider teaching if salaries started at $65,000 and rose to a minimum of $150,000. Could we do this? If we’re committed to “winning the future,” we should. If any administration is capable of tackling this, it’s the current one. President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan understand the centrality of teachers and have said that improving our education system begins and ends with great teachers. But world-class education costs money.

For those who say, “How do we pay for this?” â€" well, how are we paying for three concurrent wars? How did we pay for the interstate highway system? Or the bailout of the savings and loans in 1989 and that of the investment banks in 2008? How did we pay for the equally ambitious project of sending Americans to the moon? We had the vision and we had the will and we found a way.

Dave Eggers and Nínive Clements Calegari are founders of the 826 National tutoring centers and producers of the documentary “American Teacher.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/01/opinion/01eggers.html