<p>Our HS is supposed to be exceptional, too. Every year several graduates go to very prestigious colleges. It has been on that meaningless Newsweek top 100 HS list. There are some wonderful teachers and administrators. But the reality is that the constraints posed by state mandates (don't get me started on NY Math A/B), discipline problems, ambitious parents and their grade-grubbing children, and teachers' unions make the education far from optimal.</p>
<p>The PS system in Texas is horrendous. It teaches to pass the TAKS test. The A-P courses are not A-P, well the system is broke.</p>
<p>blairt, you're probably thinking of the state and national tests like the CAT9s, which are multiple-choice reading, grammar, and math, and are usually administered in April or May. I believe what they are talking about is something different, where students take tests different from the CAT9s and state tests (we have a test called a MAC test for math, a "final exam" that doesn't go into kids' grades but the distrinct administers to see how it's doing, two essay tests a year, and occasionally others. They are administered at different times of the year, and there aren't necessarily versions for every grade.). The teachers of that subject all leave the school on a particular day and go and grade the tests (they do not know which tests they are grading or if it is one of their own students'). It isn't cheating; they are correcting and grading them because they are supposed to. They are then returned to the students, and the teachers make observations about what they need to teach more. Sometimes these tests go into students' real classroom grades, and sometimes not.</p>
<p>I'm sure there are individual teachers who find a way cheat on the tests, as there are dishonest people in every profession. I have never seen it, and in my state you can lose your teacher's license for breaking test security in any kind of way. The idea of an entire district scheduling a professional day to cheat together is just ridiculous.</p>
<p>I don't believe that any teacher or administrator in our district would cheat or condone cheating. The tests that I am talking about are NY State exams in ELA (English Language Arts) and math. The ELA exam is given mid-year, and the math exam in the spring. Until the ELA exam, the children have homework packets with practice problems to work on each week, and there is much in-class preparation. After the ELA exam is over, the test prep switches to math packets and preparation. Each child's grades (scored on a 1-4 scale) are sent to the parents the following year, but are not really used to evaluate the child. Aggregate scores are used to evaluate the schools. They are published each year, and pored over and compared by one and all. They drive real estate prices, for one thing.</p>
<p>Teachers grading standardized tests ?</p>
<p>In many public school districts in CA, the teachers are asked to administer prompted essay "writing samples" once a year (in addition to the standardized CAT9 tests, etc. that prettyckitty mentioned.) The students are given a prompt and a limited amount of in-class time to complete a 1-2 page essay. The essay papers are blind-copies (there is no name on the paper, but a numbered sticker is attached to the back that correlates to a master list. The districts will often schedule teacher workday where each writing sample is "read" by three different evaluators (the evaluators are the teachers throughout the district grouped by grade level). Scores follow a defined rubric which outlines the expectations for a particular grade level. There are so many writing samples and teachers at each grade level that it would be rare that a teacher would recognize the work of one of his/her own students during the evaluation workshop. </p>
<p>After the evaulations are recorded, the essays are sorted and returned to the classroom teacher so they can use the information to help focus on improving areas in writing that need to be addressed. The writing samples are placed in the students' portfolios which follow them throughout their K-12 education in the district. Generally these writing samples do not impact the students' classroom grades. They are used to measure how the students' writing skills measure up to the grade level expectations and goals. It is difficult to measure students' writing skills from regular classroom assignments without these in-class writing samples because in this highly competive academic environment, the work that students do outside of class for grades has often been edited and reviewed by parents or even other professional tutors before they are handed in.</p>
<p>Financial impact of NCLB</p>
<p>In addition to the good information given in the posts by BurbParent, sabooks, NYMomof2, et.al., another thing to realize is that with NCLB the federal government has created educational mandates without providing the necessary funding to implement the plan. This is also true with the CA Class Size Reduction plan where the state provides money for additional teacher salaries to reduce class size, but does not provide any funding for the additional classroom buildings, furnishings or other infrastructure needed for the smaller classes. Districts who implement class size reduction have to take funds from other programs to cover these costs. Since class size reduction is generally for grades K-3, the older students are often the ones who are deprived to achieve this. </p>
<p>Teachers/Schools Manipulating Test Results/Statistics</p>
<p>Yes, I have actually heard of this being done legally by teachers and districts. In CA, a child can be exempt from taking the standardized tests if the parent requests the exemption in writing. Parents of students who are low achievers, special needs students, and limited English proficiency (LEP) students, have told me that some teachers or administrators have called them in for conferencing before the standardized testing period and counseled them to "opt-out" of the testing of their children. If a parent does this, the student is not tested and their score would not impact the school's overall average test score.</p>
<p>(BTW this is completely legal even if the motivation may not be agreeable.)</p>
<p>Grouping students by ability</p>
<p>As sabooks mentioned, it is illegal to group students by ability in the public elementary school because this is considered discrimination. With public school classrooms pushing 32+ students per teacher, it is impossible for the teacher to be as effective when the ability range in his/her 4th grade classroom might range from the LEP non-reader to the gifted GATE student who has read an entire encyclopedia.</p>
<p>Private schools are not governed by the same rules as public schools (i.e. the CA Ed Code) since they do not receive any public funding. They do not have to adhere to the "right to equal education for all."</p>
<p>Wow. That's taking "only the same treatment is equal" to a whole new level. </p>
<p>The constant standarized testing is crazy, at least in my school district. I took the Iowa Test of Basic Skills a few weeks ago, will be taking the Benchmark next week, and the Alegebra End of Course test the week after the Benchmark. It seems like I go through more testing than learning in school.</p>
<p>I was at a Blair crew event today and had a conversation with a Blair admissions officer. He said that this year they had a 20% increase in applications. Wow!</p>
<p>Regarding cheating by teachers on standardized state tests, that is the subject of a chapter in Freakenomics that made for interesting reading.</p>
<p>Oh! Same here! It's the chapter on how school teachers and sumo wrestlers are the same....very interesting read.</p>
<p>prepparent, not all PS in Texas are horrendous. Our public high school has an average SAT of 1200 and we have around 20 national merit semi-finalists. Average TX SAT is 997; average nat'l SAT is 1021. However, I agree that there is too much teaching to the TAKS.</p>
<p>TX Teen, overall the Texas Public school system is broken. I'm glad to hear that your school is an exception. I employ students from our local top school on a part time basis and I got to tell you, they can't spell, have difficulty with filing and lack the math skills necessary for entrance to college. This school is ranked in the top 100 in the States.</p>
<p>About six months ago, the Washington Post had an article on Texas schools. I believe it was Goliedad who mentioned the article. They called the A-P course work in Texas HS a fraud. </p>
<p>I'm sure there a isolated schools in Texas that are probably very good but, this is the exception. And yes, they spend way to much time teaching how to pass a test. </p>
<p>It sounds like your school does much better than the average bear. Do you by chance go to Westlake in Austin?</p>
<p>Yes. I go to Westlake. Our school ranked number one in the world for students passing the AP Physics exam. Overall, I agree with your assessment of Tx public schools.</p>
<p>Not knowing much about Westlake, can I take a wild guess an say there are probably a lot of kids there whose parents have highly technical jobs in the computer industry? A little family educational background always makes for a head start.</p>
<p>I know in my part of the south, Oak Ridge (home of the A-bomb) has the highest percentage of its students passing the AP Physics exam of any school in the region. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree.</p>
<p>And yes, I do remember posting that article a while back. Good memory prepparent.</p>
<p>Tx Teen - I hope you can take advantage of the oppotunities presented at your school.</p>