It turns out that miracle test-score gains were actually the result of making students "disappear" from testing records: 9th graders were held back before they could take the 10th grade test, 10th graders were skipped ahead to 11th grade, and low-performing students were "counseled out" of showing up to school on testing day:
State education data showed that 381 students were enrolled as freshmen at Bowie in the fall of 2007. The following fall, the sophomore class was 170 students. Dozens of the missing students had “disappeared” through Mr. Garcia’s program, said Eliot Shapleigh, a lawyer and former state senator who began his own investigation into testing misconduct and was credited with bringing the case to light. Mr. Shapleigh said he believed that hundreds of students were affected and that district leaders had failed to do enough to locate and help them.
“Desaparecidos is by far the worst education scandal in the country,” Mr. Shapleigh said. “In Atlanta, the students were helped on tests by teachers. The next day, the students were in class. Here, the students were disappeared right out of the classroom.”
High-stakes standardized testing has shifted our schools' focus away from educating students and towards meeting benchmarks, even if those benchmarks are achieved through juking the stats.
But even if there were no scandal in El Paso--even if all the kids who were supposed to take the test did--the focus on TAKS "results" would have infected their education anyway. Obsession over the test would have narrowed the curriculum to only what's tested, warped teachers' and students' vision of what education is for and what's possible in schools, and made many students who are capable and full of potential feel like failures.
No comments:
Post a Comment