Can High Poverty Schools Beat the Odds?
Part II: An Analysis of School Performance Related to Family Poverty.
Does the grading of schools based on student test scores produce higher student performance?
My analysis reveals that the evidence is building each successive year that such pressure produces more negative consequences than positive ones.
I suggest readers spend a few minutes reading the two recent articles by Danielle Dreilinger at nola.com here and here, to examine the rise of rampant cheating on state tests caused by the intense pressure to produce higher test scores. In addition, here is another article about alleged cheating at SciTech Academy. These are exactly the kind of cheating by educators that resulted in educators going to jail in Atlanta Georgia.
Time after time, it has been found that charter schools in the New Orleans Recovery District have used various forms of cheating and test question teaching to artificially raise their school performance scores. Time after time school performance scores in the RSD have dropped like a rock the year after instances of cheating are exposed. The graduation rate of the RSD dropped by almost ten percentage points when the LDOE clamped down on the misreporting of dropouts as transfers.
Here is a study by Stanford University that shows that grading and closing schools in New Orleans neglects and underserves the students that are most at risk.
Yes, it is very clear that one of the major outcomes of grading schools and evaluation of educators using student test scores produces cheating! The articles above show that cheating includes educators changing student test answers and educators making copies of test questions so that the answers can be taught to students before they take the state tests.
The problem of cheating is compounded by the long-standing policy of the Department of Education that allows school districts or charter groups to investigate themselves when allegations of cheating arise. Such a policy probably makes it more hazardous for whistleblowers reporting cheating than for the propagators of cheating.
To better understand the pressure that produces cheating, let’s Louisiana Educator: Can High Poverty Schools Beat the Odds?:
