Teachers and Principals Regularly Clash

over issues of cheating, and this case is no exception at all:

Last week’s column, full of practical suggestions on how to limit cheating, did not seem controversial to me. Many teachers sent their own ideas. Many recommended small adjustments, such as having the questions in different order for different students, to hinder copying.

So I was surprised to hear from Erich Martel, an Advanced Placement U.S. History teacher at Wilson High School in the District, that his principal, Peter Cahall, was critical of him doing that.

...

During one post-evaluation conference Martel told Cahall what he did to frustrate cheating when students are so close together. He created two versions of the same test by putting the pages in different sequences, a method many teachers endorse. He showed Cahall a quiz on which he printed the questions in a smaller font, making them harder to read from the next chair over.

These struck Martel as useful methods in a high school--like nearly all high schools--where many students will cheat if given a chance. He was startled when Cahall expressed a different view.

“You are creating an expectation that students will cheat,” Martel recalls Cahall saying. “By creating that expectation, they will rise to your expectation.”

Par for the course for dipshit principals.

The comments following the article are worth reading.

Here is one worth noting from writer Jay Mathews:

For edlharris: Here is Erich Martel's account of how he got his AP classes back. (He did lose them for a year. I forgot that part.)------

The principal would not change his mind. Supt. Janey refused to intervene,
thus distancing himself from what was "the principal's decision" - even
though he had authorized the IG investigation that ultimately confirmed my
reports, when finally released in April 2007. As a result, I did not
teach AP courses for the school year 2006-07. It was widely understood to
be retaliation, though that was denied. It felt like a public slap in the
face.

Most of my colleagues viewed this as an attempt to humiliate me and force
me to resign/retire. Since I am a teacher first and an AP teacher second,
and since my reports of manipulated records were made with the intention of
correcting management abuses, which I intended to see through to
resolution, it would have set a very bad example, if I had just quit when
the going got a bit rough. And there was no way I could betray the
tremendous moral support I received from my colleagues and from many
parents and students.

It created a division in the school and department. Worst of all, it made
it impossible to establish the collaboration that would have existed, had
the sections been shared. The teacher who replaced me, nonetheless, did an excellent job. In June
2007, Dr. Tarason suddenly announced his retirement. Jackie Williams was
appointed Interim Principal as Wilson entered its year of restructuring
planning. She assigned me to teach two AP US History sections, which I
have continued to teach along with other social studies subjects since then.

Erich

It's amazing this teacher has lasted 41 years in the system.

The Education Wars III

Another teacher wins a case, and of course the asshole school board is going to appeal:

A retired city school teacher who alleged she was forced to retire after blowing the whistle on testing improprieties at the elementary-middle school where she worked has been awarded $293,000 by a Baltimore Circuit Court jury.

The award for Joyce V. Dunston was reduced to $210,000 because of a limit. The defendant, the city school board, is expected to appeal the decision, according to Howard J. Needle, an attorney representing Dunston. The school system had no comment about the verdict delivered Friday.

"Friday made me feel it is good to be an American. I got an opportunity for other citizens to hear what goes on in city schools. I felt as though I did justice to the school kids in the city," said Dunston, a teacher for 37 years.

Dunston, 62, alleged that during the 2006-2007 school year, teachers at Rognel Heights Elementary/Middle School were told by their instructional support staff to use improper and unethical testing procedures, including giving students test questions in advance.

Being ethical is surely the way to ruin your teaching career.

The Education Wars

Why should ANYBODY be surprised a principal would go around and change grades?

This stuff, including forcing teachers to change grades or risk termination, goes on all the time:

Long considered to be one of the city's best remaining behemoth high schools, Lehman has had a checkered past. At the end of the 2007-08 school year, Lehman's veteran principal Leder resigned [3] after investigators found that he had paid two assistant football coaches overtime wages while they were at home.

Leder's replacement, Saraceno, arrived the next fall from the High School for Media and Communications, where she was principal. As part of a Department of Education program to lure principals to the city's most challenging schools, she was given a bonus and the title "executive principal." [4] At the time, this perplexed more than a few parents and teachers, who told the city's daily newspapers [5] that they couldn't understand why a school with a "B" on its latest report card needed to offer its new principal an extra $25,000 a year.

According to current and former teachers, Saraceno methodically set about increasing the school's 47 percent graduation rate by changing students' grades from failing to passing over the objections of their teachers and, in some instances, in violation of state regulations.

"Leder was not a perfect human. We had hoped that anybody would have been better," said a current teacher. "It turned out his replacement was much much worse. She has changed Lehman into a diploma mill."

Grade changing is not an entirely foreign phenomenon at Lehman. Teachers who worked under Leder said he sometimes asked them to change student athletes’ grades if their grade point average slipped below the minimum required for them to play, or if a student was mere points away from passing a class. But that process involved conversations with teachers in which Leder persuaded them to sign the paperwork, they said. Today, failing grades disappear from transcripts without warning, teachers said.

"Leder's corruption was at least confined to a cohort of 50 kids," said a former teacher who was one of eight math teachers to leave Lehman last year. Former and current math teachers said their department has borne the brunt of the grade changes, as it has the lowest pass rate within the school.

_____

Los Angeles Unified School District is looking at possibly shortening the school year in order to balance its budget.

The Education Wars

What with the push for raising standardized test scores and the push to tie those scores into teachers' salaries, it should be no surprise there would be cheating going on.

And since it is D.C., one of the very worst, most corrupt districts in the country, it REALLY shouldn't be a shock.

The probe, an analysis of incorrect student answers that were erased and changed to correct answers, found "anomalies" at some of the schools. But the investigation, conducted by the test's manufacturer, CTB McGraw-Hill, recommended that officials "should not draw conclusions about cheating behavior" on the basis of the findings, according to a memo from the company released by the District.

Of course administrators cheated; they want their jobs. They in turn pressure their teachers to cheat, despite the fact principals and teachers both can have their licenses suspended or even revoked.

Nobody should be surprised at all.

The Education Wars

Nobody should be shocked at all teachers in Chicago (and all over the country) are feeling pressure from their principals to change grades.

The public should not be shocked over this. Teachers are NOT professionals; they are NOT treated as professionals, despite the tons of propaganda spewed in teacher training programs and by college professors. Public schools (to say nothing of private schools) are run like the military, and teachers MUST follow orders or face retaliation. Once they are on a principal's shitlist, it is over for their careers. These principals who have no principles and higher-up administrators will target them for termination, and then teachers are forced to go through a stacked deck of a legal system.

But people think it is impossible to fire teachers except for gross misconduct involving children or for criminal offenses. Nothing can be further from the truth.

A snip:

Teachers reported pressure from principals, "upset" parents and even other CPS employees who were parents of their students. They said the squeeze was put on them to pass failing students, to give ill students a break or to help athletes. Some felt prodded to goose up grades to help kids graduate, avoid summer school or get into an elite high school.

Such heat was twice as common among teachers in high schools, where the push is on to reduce failure rates. Several such teachers said they felt pressured to offer last-minute deals to kids so they wouldn't fail. Another said her school lowered its grading scale and "still we are pressured to change grades."

As this passage notes, even if teachers don't change grades, the principals will do the dirty work.

You can thank the "accountability" movement for the wholesale destruction of public education.

By the way, some classroom teachers reported "pressure" from special education staff to change grades. Well, special education students have to be graded on a separate rubric from the regular student population; that has to do with federal law. When I taught life skills and had my kids pushed in for middle school science, for example, they were accommodated and graded on their own abilities and participation. The same was true for their elective classes. One could not expect them to take the regular tests that the general student population took--those kids would fail. Those kids, most of whom with some cognitive deficiencies, could not possibly be expected to be held to the identical standard. These students also can get high school diplomas--I don't remember what the term is whether it's an alternate diploma or adapted diploma or something.* That is NOT cheating or being unethical.

*--I believe they were called "adjusted" diplomas in my district.