Academic Fraud: Does Anyone Care?
Dear Deborah,
Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and state funds are now being spent to build so-called data warehouses to track students from their earliest years through postsecondary education. Standardized test scores are a key feature of the tracking systems, especially when they are attributed to individual teachers. In time, enthusiasts of the data-is-great school of thought believe we will have the information we need to identify "effective" teachers and make sure that there is an effective teacher in every classroom. With the data comes a tight focus on targets: higher test scores and higher graduation rates.
As the pressure to reach the targets get tougher, many districts are devising ways to raise their graduation rates that have nothing to do with thinking and learning. A prime suspect is credit recovery. I became suspicious when I first learned about credit recovery several years ago. That is when I discovered that some high schools were allowing students who had failed a course to obtain full credit by submitting an essay or a project that was written without any oversight or attending a workshop for several days.
It turns out that the academic fraud goes even deeper than I suspected.
I received a series of emails from someone who works for a major national organization and who reviews the
Hundreds of millions of dollars in federal and state funds are now being spent to build so-called data warehouses to track students from their earliest years through postsecondary education. Standardized test scores are a key feature of the tracking systems, especially when they are attributed to individual teachers. In time, enthusiasts of the data-is-great school of thought believe we will have the information we need to identify "effective" teachers and make sure that there is an effective teacher in every classroom. With the data comes a tight focus on targets: higher test scores and higher graduation rates.
As the pressure to reach the targets get tougher, many districts are devising ways to raise their graduation rates that have nothing to do with thinking and learning. A prime suspect is credit recovery. I became suspicious when I first learned about credit recovery several years ago. That is when I discovered that some high schools were allowing students who had failed a course to obtain full credit by submitting an essay or a project that was written without any oversight or attending a workshop for several days.
It turns out that the academic fraud goes even deeper than I suspected.
I received a series of emails from someone who works for a major national organization and who reviews the
