Atlanta Schools Created Culture of Cheating, Fear

reply to post by beezzer


Lol, I keep annoying my friends by demanding them to define their terms.

Corporate/socialist are two labels that describe nearly the same thing, with just enough difference to cloud the issue.

Education is tough work for both teacher and student. It doesn't lend itself easily to mass techniques: good education requires patience, nuance, and above all, time.

You can't rush understanding.

reply to post by sakoy


Not the guy who cheated and is now running a company?

Cheating per se doesn't make you homeless; in fact, if you are good enough at it you rise fast.

reply to post by JacKatMtn


This is what happens when Gov't gets involved with the education system. Schools and teachers have to meet their requirements to get their financial aid. Standardized testing/teaching is wrong and isn't helping anyone

Most of my friends are teachers and disprove of the current system.

I'm not really surprised about this. States are pretty hard on the schools. I remember when I was in high school, our school got into serious trouble one year because the exiting senior class basically said "screw it" on the state tests and didn't try at all. The next year we were basically on lockdown. We weren't allowed to leave class (not even for bathroom breaks) or be outside of the classroom at all unless we were eating lunch or on our way to the next class, our 10 minute break was taken away, our soda machines and snack machines were removed, our field trips were taken away, all pep rallies, plays and other such activities that took students out of class were banned, we were assigned more work and our English teacher was fired because apparently the seniors did horrible on the "on demand writing" portion of the tests (probably because it's the part that takes the most effort and they just didn't want to even try, but they blamed our teacher anyway). I'm sure the teachers suffered a lot of consequences that we never knew about as well.

reply to post by JacKatMtn




Well try teaching them science for a change instead of "faith".

damn! so in other words..the kids end up thinking santa clause really exists, and infact, is the CEO of mobil oil, tinkerbell runs the lesbian porn scenes in hollywood, christopher columbus was hilter, and fireworks were invented by the eskimos...oh, and god is an astronaut*
man, the people in this counry are getting dumber and dumber all because of the no child left behind..they drop the passing scores. george carlin was right..all your going to need one day, to get into college, is a pencil and paper

reply to post by Annee

"I don't know" is not permitted in our family. That along with "nevermind" - "hate" - "I can't" - - etc.

Kids in the family who use these phrases - - have to drop and do 10 pushups.

I will say, though, that this does set a dangerous precedent. You are better off to try to BS your way through than to take an honest route.

The point of a test is to check for understanding of a concept and how to apply it, helping the student and teacher understand what areas need to be focused on. I am, interestingly enough - very good at constructing answers out of a question without ever having seen the material ... and somehow satisfying whomever is grading the exam.

I get my exam back, go "wow, can't believe that worked" - and while I should go back and study that section to improve my understanding - the test is done and over with, and the finals are often chock full of standardized "pick the right one out of four."

Which, strangely, I have more trouble with. For example: "True/False: Electricity is electrons." Horrific wording - because the answer is true from a very basic standpoint, but false from a technical standpoint. Electricity is the flow of electrons from one point to another (well, it's really the term applied to the concept of the flow of electrons and all of its encompassing mechanics... but whatever). At this point, I, the test taker, have to rate the response against the perceived intelligence of the test writing team. Generally, I presume they are retarded and writing the test as though I am even more retarded than they are - and when presented with such poorly worded questions, I usually go with the simple interpretation that the lowest common denominator would have. This is probably why I have such a bitter and hostile outlook on the average person's intelligence - I am forever condemned to try and figure out what answer they are looking for in some "selected response" ("multiple choice" was phased out because it was a 'confusing' term... that should sum up our country's education problems, right there) test, forever prohibited from giving them the correct answer in writing.

Teachers either loved me or hated me, because I refused to just write true/false or some fill-in-the-blank term. If I thought their question was loaded or poorly written, I filled the damned margin with my correct answer. I will not be pigeon-holed.

Anyway - at this point, I'm likely preaching to the choir.

This sort of stuff in the OP is just what happens when you try too hard to standardize testing. Sure - standardizing a proficiency in various academic areas is reasonable - you should be able to identify the three branches of the federal government and their roles, identify the major steps of the scientific method and give a description of each, etc - but standardizing the tests to the degree we have is just pure nonsense.

Us school system seems bit in trouble. This is what we've done and it is working:

1) All teachers have masters degree.
2) Only top 15% of applicants get the job.
3) School starts at age 7 and mandatory education is 9 years. We dont spend our childhood at the schools.
4) 3 teachers in each class. 2 teach the whole class together while one is individual helper for those who have trouble.
5) No standardized testing. All teachers set their own goals.
6) All students stay with the same teacher for years. So they become very much like family.
7) 100% unionized teachers.

Maybe I forgot some key points but would any of this work in US?

reply to post by PsykoOps


I think that would be a great ideal, here in the states. I also think that they have made school so complicated with so many different subjects, that it is hard for a student to keep up. With all the changes each year as well as having a social life, students just don't care. Its showing more and more students are screwing off on their state testing, the schools are paying for it.

When we were in our last year of high school, we screwed all state testing to the point of knowing the right answer and choosing the wrong one. We did this and sent a letter to our local congressmen saying that we didn't like NCLB and that it was a stupid system that only hindered the students as well as the teachers.

I like your system and I think a few improvements could be made as well.

1. Teach the basics, Teach the basics, Teach the basic,
Too many schools offer ten different classes just to speak from different countries, don't offer any.

2. Let the teachers, teach how they want, the way they want.

3. Stop lowering a schools budget if they do poorly, common sense tells you that a school with low test scores needs more money not less.

4. ban unions they are the biggest part of the problem, band unions any way from all work ( different topic)

5. Fire all teachers, hirer new ones top 15% as you said.

6. no such thing as tenure

That would go along way at least in cali, were Teachers are over paid, lazy, jerks who complain that they don't make enough money. Yet will tell you all about their trip to the U.K, or Ireland, or any dozen other places that normal people cannot afford.

Yet at least here in cali, were they don't make enough money but they drive Lexus and such, sorry for the rant I got out of school in 2006 so I still remember how assbackwards my teachers were.

Originally posted by apacheman
Teaching has far more in common with farming than manufacturing: every student learns at their own pace under different circumstances. Trying to treat education as a manufacturing process pretty much ensures that the vast majority of the "products" are going to be sub-standard, because that model inherently doesn't work well for education, any "education" usually comes in spite of, not because of that model.

Wow That was so well put!

When farming went agribusiness, "farmers" could cheat, too. Moderate fruit tree bloom with chemicals. Pick oranges and tomatoes green and "ripen" with chemicals. Cover vegies with coating to make them more appealing/ last longer.

And red meat could be made to stay red at the store by chemicals, or lighted to make it look redder at the market than it really is. Agribusiness cheats all the time with growth enhancers in animals to produce more milk or meat.

reply to post by Aim64C


We would have enjoyed learning from each other if you were a student of mine. You describe precisely why I rejected multipple guess: it's very hard to create a question that doesn't betray the answer if the student has a passing knowledge of the rules of grammar and spelling when you offer four or five choices.

When I ws in schoold I knew that I could pass just about any multiple-choice exam offered without having to know squat about the subject. In any four answers, two are usually obviously wrong; the remaing two give you a fifty-fifty blind chance. If your vocabulary and genral knowledge are broad enough, the differences between the two answers are easier to discern, and should shift the balance enough to pass.

But it doesn't mean you understand the material: it just means you understand how to take a test, and you have a good vocabulary.

Knowing a lot of words is essential to learning.

One of the first things I told my students in every class I taught was this:

Words are the building blocks of thought.

Without words, you can feel the thought, but you can't express it.

If you can't express it, but can feel it, frustration follows, with usually not good consequences.

If I use a word that you don't understand, immediately shoot your hand up and demand I put it in English for you, because if you don't understand it, chances are a lot of others don't either.

Backtracking to pick up stragglers is NOT a waste of time, as you will see the material from different views and know it more completely.

I think that cheating is bad.
As for the school system that does such a thing, I think it is done deliberately.
I've seen it in many places around the world, where knowledge is continuously being downgraded.
It seems that "they" want knowledge to be downgraded for other reasons...
I agree that we should give all the help, and above our powers, to our children, but in such a way
that we enhance learning and knowledge.
It has to be a system that helps learning and not only memorization.
There are a lot of fields out there that need knowledge and deep learning.

Question: Would you go to a doctor if you knew that he/she had cheated on all of his/her exams to
get that diploma and work?

Wouldn't it be even worse if you didn't know and got all the wrong treatments?

Think about it...

A little more info on how this cheating deal was exposed can be found in this article:

Cracking a System Where Cheating Was Rampant

...Gov. Sonny Perdue said he was fed up and determined to conduct a thorough investigation. For this, he called on three men who had spent a good part of their careers putting people in prison: Michael J. Bowers, a former state attorney general; Robert E. Wilson, a former county district attorney; and Richard L. Hyde, who could well be the most dogged investigator in Georgia.

It took them 10 months to uncover the biggest cheating scandal ever in a public school district....