Monday, May 2, 2011

Testing Fraud in School?!!! Is It Even Imaginable?!!!

If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all. -- Thumper’s Mommy
I won’t mention any names or locations, lest enthusiastic casino owners with enthusiastic hair-dos label me a terrorist, but I read recently in my local papers that accusations have been tendered that standard test results in a local school district have been “adjusted” to raise the averages.

Of course, school officials deny any such manipulations, invoking Brotherly Love to attest to their righteousness. That doesn’t impress me, you see, since I, personally, witnessed, on several occasions during my career in that school district, the “reconfiguration” of data to avoid “negative interpretation” by “outsiders.”

More than one principal has recounted to me how their appointments and promotions were contingent upon “re-evaluations” that satisfied their superiors. Teachers, too, told how they were instructed to fill blackboards with test-relevant information in the very rooms where standardized tests were given.

But, of course, I and my confreres might have been mistaken: it’s hard to keep your head clear when alarms go off at random during the school day and fluorescent bulbs buzz, blink and wriggle incessantly, year in, year out.


If you wish to pursue these delusions further, see CONTRACTING A REAL PERFORMANCE


Cordially
--- EGR

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