The Right Conditions for Cheating

silhouette of a man in window

By now many of you have heard about the recent reports of rampant teacher cheating and unethical practices in the Atlanta public school system.  What kind of world are we living in when the adults responsible for shaping the minds of our future leaders resort to cheating of this magnitude?  Since the reports surfaced, I have been trying to understand why or how this could happen.  Now, I'm not saying that it is implausible for anyone to cheat, after all, it is an element of human nature to cheat.  I also realize that cheating takes place every day in different forms, but isn't there a line somewhere?  Actually, there isn't.

You better believe that this is not the first time the teachers in Atlanta, or teachers all over America for that matter, have cheated.  I believe this cheating is a symptom of a more substantial problem.  So much of our educational system encourages this kind of behavior.  Since the advent of the era of high stakes testing, many school systems have felt the pressure to meet standards with limited or no additional resources including highly qualified teachers. I have personally seen teachers succumb to the pressure to get students to pass the test that they simply "teach the test" in an effort to get higher scores.  This only creates an even bigger problem for the school system in subsequent years which leads to more pressure to cheat. Some public school systems fall in line with similar behavior by constantly manipulating data to satisfy the ever-growing political pressures to meet or exceed standards (often self-imposed standards).  Together, these behaviors seem to suggest that the accountability system, which includes the high stakes testing, data reporting, and a whole host of other political constraints, is what drives public education today and produces the right conditions for cheating on all levels.

Well, that is what I think about this scandal, but I would like to know what you think about the sad state of affairs in the Atlanta Public School System.

Report: Widespread Cheating in Atlanta Schools — by Teachers.

Check out this Get Schooled blog post by Maureen Downey on the cheating scandal in Atlanta Public Schools. I would like to know if you agree.  Set unrealistic test score quotas and people will either fail or cheat | Get Schooled.

Conditions for Change

blackboard business chalkboard concept

There have been many books and articles written on the theory of change but since we live a result oriented world, how do we practically get through it?  The world of education is not immune to the ever-growing pressure to change.  In fact, we may be at the very heart of it.  According to the latest Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) rankings, American students scored 32nd in math ability and 23rd in science achievement.  With more and more rankings, reports, and achievement data pointing to the fact that America's educational system is in decline, one has to ask how can we turn it around.  Currently, the debate is center on education reform.  Some experts speak of the need for broad sweeping reform, while others lean toward shifting the focus to more economic growth and development.  Regardless of where you stand on reform, one thing rings true.  We have to change.  That is not to simplify the magnitude of the needed change.  After all, we have data supporting the need for change in our teacher recruitment & retention, curriculum focus, instructional practice, teacher evaluation, and assessment & accountability.  My goal with this blog post is to begin taking a look at the conditions needed for changing our instructional practices in the classroom.

We have to educate our way to a better economy. We have a 25 percent drop out rate in this country. We're losing about a million children each year from our schools to the streets. That's just economically unsustainable and morally unacceptable and we all have to work together and challenge the status quo.— Arne Duncan

When I am working with teachers to help them improve their effectiveness in the classroom it is easy to underestimate what conditions are necessary for change to take place.  In Jim Knights book Instructional Coaching, he describes two conditions necessary for ideas introduced to survive and be implemented. He states that  (1) the teacher must see that the new choice is more powerful than their current practice; and (2) the new choice must be easier for the teacher to implement.  In addition, I have noticed that when I have been successful at motivating a teacher to try a new practice, I was deliberate about how I demonstrated my support for them while provided implementation the new practice.   After ensuring the conditions for change are in place I had to have a realistic expectation about the time it takes for this process to take place.  Nothing can be taken for granted about the different backgrounds, experiences, and understanding of each individual teacher being asked to change.  Now, this is where the fun begins.

Black Science Teachers' Motivation on Black Students-Part 1

boywithbooks

African-Americans have made many advances socially in the 20th century, from segregated schools to an African-American president of the United States.  Through all of the great accomplishments of African-Americans over the years remain a vast educational and professional chasm to the field of science.

Here, in the 21st century, we continue to see a shortage of African-American science teachers, and consequently an extreme shortage of African-American students going into the hard science courses or science careers. Smaller proportions of African-American students tend to complete advanced science course compared with whites and Asians/Pacific Islanders. (National Science Board 2004)  As a concerned educator, I desired to change the status of black students in the field of science.

The first years of my professional experience as an educator were spent teaching physics and mathematics in the inner city with predominately low socioeconomic, African-American students.  My motivation for teaching in that environment came from my desire to make a difference in black students' achievement in the hard sciences and to give them exposure without turning them away from careers in science or engineering.  Mostly, I wanted to let them know that it was okay to be an African-American and like science. From my personal accounts, I recognized an elevation in student attention but no significant increase in achievement.  I began to wonder if I was making any significant impact. This intrigued me deeply and inspired a study to examine the part a science teacher's ethnicity impacts the motivation of African-American students to take courses in the hard sciences.  My intentions were to identify specific areas of influence African-American science teachers have on African-American science students.  In a future blog entry, I will share some of my findings and their implications.