Under the "No Child Left Behind Act," public schools whose
students consistently fail standardized tests can be shut down.
To protect their jobs, teachers and principals are now under
intense pressure to cheat — to fudge test scores and report
cards to fool parents and school administrators.
Myron Lieberman, author and former high-school teacher, listed
some of the ways public schools can “cheat” in his book “Public
Education: an Autopsy”:
1. Poor students were excluded or discouraged from taking the
tests
2. Teachers assigned tests as homework or taught test items in
class
3. Test security was minimal or even nonexistent
4. Students were allowed more time than prescribed by test
regulations
5. Unrealistic, highly improbable improvements from test to test
were not audited or investigated
6. Teachers and administrators were not punished for flagrant
violations of test procedures
7. Test results were reported in ways that exaggerated
achievement levels
In December 1999, a special investigation of New York City
schools revealed that two principals and dozens of teachers and
assistant teachers were helping students cheat on standardized
math and reading tests.
Andrew J. Coulson, in his brilliant book, "Market Education: The
Unknown History," sites an example of how public schools
deliberately lie to parents about their children’s academic
abilities:
“Consistently greeted by A’s and B’s on their children’s report
cards, the parents of Zavala Elementary School had been lulled
into complacency, believing that both the school and its
students were performing well. In fact, Zavala was one of the
worst schools in the district, and its students ranked near the
bottom on statewide standardized tests. When a new principal
took over the helm and requested that the statewide scores be
read out at a PTA meeting, parents were dismayed by their
children’s abysmal showing, and furious with teachers and school
officials for misleading them with inflated grades.”
In 1990, three academics, Harold Stevenson, Chuansheng Chen, and
David Uttal did a study of the attitudes and academic
achievement of black, white, and hispanic children in Chicago.
They found a disturbing gap between what parents thought their
children were learning and the children’s actual performance.
Teachers in high-poverty schools had given A’s to students for
work that would have earned them C’s or D’s in affluent suburban
schools. In the study, black mothers of Chicago elementary
school students rated their child’s skills and abilities quite
high and thought their kids were doing well in reading and math.
The children thought the same thing.
Unfortunately, the researchers found that the parents’ and
children’s self-evaluations of their math and reading skills
were way above their actual achievement levels. There was a big
gap between their optimistic self-evaluations and their dismal
academic performance on independent tests. Public schools were
giving these children a false idea of their academic skill
levels. In other words, these children were heading towards
failure and no one bothered to tell them.
Parents, it would not be wise to trust any claims by teachers or
school authorities about your children’s alleged academic
abilities, even in so-called “good” schools in suburban
neighborhoods. To find out how your child is really doing, have
an outside independent company test your child’s reading and
math skills.
If you find that your child’s academic skills are far below what
your local public-school led you to believe, you might want to
take your child out of public school and look for better
education alternatives. There is a complete Resource section in
“Public Schools, Public Menace” that explores many of these
quality, low-cost education alternatives.
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