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Excellence is not a singular act, but a habit.
“ Good habits, once established are just as hard to break as are bad habits.”
Information is the oxygen of the modern age.
The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.
Nine tenths of education is encouragement.
There is nothing better than the encouragement of a good friend. lolstudent is your friend.
Student Club: When Teachers Cheat—And Then Blame the Tests
By KYLE WINGFIELD
Atlanta
Only two years ago, Atlanta Public Schools were the toast of the educational establishment. Scores on standardized tests had been rising—skyrocketing, in some cases—for a decade. In February 2009, schools chief Beverly Hall was feted as national superintendent of the year.
Two months later, dozens of Ms. Hall's teachers and principals engaged in the annual ritual required to produce such success: They cheated on the state standardized test.
The difference between 2009 and previous years of cheating (dating back at least as far as 2006, and perhaps 2001) was that reporters at my newspaper, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, questioned the schools' remarkable scores on Georgia's Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. Those articles prompted an investigation by then-Gov. Sonny Perdue, and this month the devastating final report arrived. It uncovered cheating by adults in 44 schools, covering 1,508 classes—almost all of them serving low-income, minority students.
Many politicians and teachers have responded to the report by blaming the test and accountability measures like No Child Left Behind. This is exactly the wrong reaction: Atlanta shows us why public schools need more, not fewer, accountability measures.
First, a bit about more about the scandal. The probe, led by a former state attorney general and a former district attorney, built upon a testing company's analysis of every 2009 test answer sheet from every Georgia elementary and middle-school student in three subjects. Each answer sheet was reviewed for erasure marks indicating that an incorrect answer had been changed to a correct answer. The company, CTB McGraw Hill, then identified schools with suspiciously high numbers of erasure marks.
Ninety percent of Georgia schools raised minimal or no concern. Of the schools that raised "severe" concern, half were in Atlanta Public Schools even though the system has less than 5% of the state's schools and students.
The report describes a pervasive culture of cheating. At Gideons Elementary School, for example, a teacher hosted several colleagues at her home for a "changing party" to correct their students' answers. The cheating was "so sophisticated," says the report, that "to make changing the test answer sheets easier," teachers created special answer keys on plastic transparency sheets (like those used in overhead projectors).
One teacher at Parks Middle School acted as a James Bond-MacGyver hybrid. According to the report, he "used a razor blade to open the plastic wrapping around the test booklets" before the tests were given, then "copied the tests for each grade, and resealed the wrapping using a lighter to melt the plastic."
Atlanta students face the worst consequences. Some may not have gotten the extra help they needed.
Elsewhere, teachers helped students cheat the old-fashioned way: They arranged desks so that bad students could copy answers from good ones, indicated the correct answers with voice inflections or by pointing, and sometimes simply told students the right answers. "In one classroom," the 413-page report states, "a student sat under his desk and refused to take the test. This child passed."
Punishments are already being dished out. Five of Ms. Hall's lieutenants have resigned or have been removed from their jobs. A sixth, who left Atlanta to be superintendent of a small school system near Dallas, was placed on administrative leave Monday after parents protested her hiring.
Ms. Hall didn't seek an extension of her contract, which expired June 30. But rather than ride off to a cushy position at some foundation, she'll likely spend the next couple of years facing attempts (perhaps lawsuits) by Atlanta Public Schools to reclaim some of the more than $580,000 in bonuses she received. Then there are the federal grants her schools received, thanks to the No Child Left Behind law, for their stellar performance: Ms. Hall may be asked to explain herself as part of an FBI fraud investigation.
Atlanta students face the worst consequences. Some current high schoolers may never have gotten a true appraisal on the state test, and many were denied the extra help they'd have gotten if their real scores were reported properly. "It's honestly sickening that these people who are supposed to look out for kids took advantage of the students' and the parents' trust," Ashley Brown, a 2011 graduate of Atlanta's Grady High School, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
And students of all ages have limited options for moving to untainted schools, thanks to a ruling in May by the Georgia Supreme Court that makes it much more difficult for reformers to open charter schools.
Sadly, Atlanta is not alone in facing cheating allegations. The National Center for Fair and Open Testing reports cheating cases in public school districts in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, the District of Columbia, Florida, Ohio, Texas and California.
This, say some politicians and teachers, is more reason to de-emphasize standardized testing. But that makes as much sense as saying the Tour de France should de-emphasize racing times this summer, or not keep them at all, because some cyclists have been caught doping.
Still, there may well be better ways to use tests to measure teachers' effectiveness while reducing the temptation to cheat. One possibility that's already being tried by a number of school systems, including the one in nearby Decatur, Ga.: so-called value-added tests, which gauge a student's progress over the course of a school year rather than merely determining whether the student is performing at grade level. A teacher who brings a fifth grader from a second-grade reading level to a fourth-grade level, for instance, has helped him make up a lot of ground in one year. She shouldn't be punished because he's still behind.
Other states would be well advised to order erasure analyses of student answer sheets periodically, and to arrange for more independent monitoring on test days. One possible, albeit expensive, solution would be to have teachers swap schools on test days to proctor the exams.
But watering down accountability measures because a lot of adults broke the rules? That's just another way to cheat students.
Mr. Wingfield is an opinion columnist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Student Club: The Battle Over Iraq
The Battle Over Iraq
Tehran kills American GIs and undermines Iraqi democracy.
New Pentagon chief Leon Panetta's maiden journey to America's conflict zones this week garnered attention for his alleged misstatements about the pace of the Afghan troop drawdown and the rationale for the Iraq war. We came away more concerned by his incomplete answers to Iran's designs on Iraq and America's future role there.
Five months before a planned final withdrawal, Iran's proxies in Iraq are putting the squeeze on the U.S. and its allies. Three senior U.S. officials, including Mr. Panetta, say "forensic proof" shows that Iran is funding, arming and training Shiite militias, among them remnants of pro-Iranian cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army. These groups are behind the recent escalation in violence. Fifteen GIs were killed in June, the highest monthly toll in three years, including nine in rocket attacks that carry a Tehran return address.
A public diagnosis of Iran's role is clarifying, but the next step has to be a coherent response to this provocation. The U.S. needs to protect its troops as well as the nearly decade-long investment in a secure and democratic Iraq. The gains made since the success of the 2007 surge aren't in immediate danger, yet they're reversible.
We doubt many of the troops in his audience in Iraq found reassuring Mr. Panetta's promise to "push the Iraqis to take on the responsibility" and lead a crackdown on the Shiite militias. The U.S. has chosen not to go after the militias directly to shield the government of Nouri al-Maliki from the domestic political fallout of unilateral American military action. Such considerations are cold comfort to soldiers under attack. The U.S. has a legal and moral responsibility to respond. We ought to go after the militias in Iraq as well as their backers in Iran who've decided to make Iraq a proxy war.
Iraqi domestic politics complicate American options. Mr. Maliki proved a brave and able leader during the hardest days of the 2007 surge, and he helped turn Iraq around. But his nationalist politics have boxed him in. Last year Mr. Maliki made political peace with the Sadr party, bringing them into his unwieldy coalition government. He won't fight Shiite militias with the same resolve he showed against Sunni extremists.
More recently Mr. Maliki has banked his political future on a U.S. withdrawal, proclaiming last year that "the last American soldier will leave" in December and that the decision "is sealed." Now Iraqi leaders quietly say they want some U.S. troops to stay beyond December, perhaps 10,000 or more, but they're too paralyzed by internal squabbling to put in the request. One can appreciate Mr. Panetta's frustration in saying, "Dammit, make a decision."
America's continued troop presence can fill in security gaps and provide a stabilizing influence in Iraq and the region. The U.S. has kept troops in South Korea and Japan for six decades after the end of the wars there, and a similar presence in Iraq might be as salutary. But it should only do so as long as the troops can protect themselves and have a good partner in Baghdad. They can't be sitting ducks.
As much as al Qaeda, Iran wants to rekindle sectarian tensions and undermine democratic politics in Iraq. Their model is Lebanon. The U.S. can help the Iraqis push back. The proposed multibillion dollar sale of up to two F-16 squadrons, which the Journal reported yesterday was back on track, is one step forward. A long-term security relationship with Iraq can best ensure that the sacrifices made in the last decade aren't squandered.
Resource From WSJ Opinion
Q: What do you think about the battle?You may be interested in Student Club: Facebook VS Blog (Facebook is Stinks)
Student Club: Facebook VS Blog (Facebook is Stinks)
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Question: What do you think about Blog and Facebook, do you have any suggestion?
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