Puppycow
7th April 2011, 11:27 PM
Man. I thought that this woman might have had some real answers, but I should have been more skeptical.
When test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real? (http://www.usatoday.com/NEWS/usaedition/2011-03-28-1Aschooltesting28_CV_U.htm)
Michelle Rhee, then chancellor of D.C. schools, took a special interest in Noyes. She touted the school, which now serves preschoolers through eighth-graders, as an example of how the sweeping changes she championed could transform even the lowest-performing Washington schools. Twice in three years, she rewarded Noyes' staff for boosting scores: In 2008 and again in 2010, each teacher won an $8,000 bonus, and the principal won $10,000.
. . .
Erasures are detected by the same electronic scanners that CTB/McGraw-Hill, D.C.'s testing company, uses to score the tests. When test-takers change answers, they erase penciled-in bubble marks that leave behind a smudge; the machines tally the erasures as well as the new answers for each student.
In 2007-08, six classrooms out of the eight taking tests at Noyes were flagged by McGraw-Hill because of high wrong-to-right erasure rates. The pattern was repeated in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, when 80% of Noyes classrooms were flagged by McGraw-Hill.
On the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians consulted by USA TODAY.
But despite that level of improbability, the acting Chancellor (Rhee's former deputy says that "a high erasure rate alone is not evidence of impropriety."
Then there's even allegations (http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/04/06/michelle_rhee_lyons/index.html)about what Rhee herself might have done when she was a teacher:
She rose to prominence largely due to her self-proclaimed brilliance as an elementary school teacher in inner-city Baltimore.
Rhee's résumé described her students' near-miraculous success: "Over a two-year period, [Rhee] moved students scoring on average at the 13th percentile on national standardized tests to 90 percent of students scoring at the 90th percentile or higher."
Not on any bell curve I've ever seen. If a basketball coach said something so improbable, skeptics would check the record.
. . .
"This is like an education Ponzi scam," a teacher's union official told USA Today. "If your test scores improve, you make more money. If not, you get fired. That's incredibly dangerous."
Oh, and the Baltimore miracle? Confronted with contemporaneous test scores dug up by a skeptical teacher, Rhee admitted to the Washington Post that she’d soften that 90th percentile business to "significantly."
Something fishy here. I guess we shouldn't be surprised at cheating when there is a strong incentive to fudge the numbers.
And what does this say about the whole notion of linking performance pay and school budgets to test scores?
When test scores soared in D.C., were the gains real? (http://www.usatoday.com/NEWS/usaedition/2011-03-28-1Aschooltesting28_CV_U.htm)
Michelle Rhee, then chancellor of D.C. schools, took a special interest in Noyes. She touted the school, which now serves preschoolers through eighth-graders, as an example of how the sweeping changes she championed could transform even the lowest-performing Washington schools. Twice in three years, she rewarded Noyes' staff for boosting scores: In 2008 and again in 2010, each teacher won an $8,000 bonus, and the principal won $10,000.
. . .
Erasures are detected by the same electronic scanners that CTB/McGraw-Hill, D.C.'s testing company, uses to score the tests. When test-takers change answers, they erase penciled-in bubble marks that leave behind a smudge; the machines tally the erasures as well as the new answers for each student.
In 2007-08, six classrooms out of the eight taking tests at Noyes were flagged by McGraw-Hill because of high wrong-to-right erasure rates. The pattern was repeated in the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years, when 80% of Noyes classrooms were flagged by McGraw-Hill.
On the 2009 reading test, for example, seventh-graders in one Noyes classroom averaged 12.7 wrong-to-right erasures per student on answer sheets; the average for seventh-graders in all D.C. schools on that test was less than 1. The odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance, according to statisticians consulted by USA TODAY.
But despite that level of improbability, the acting Chancellor (Rhee's former deputy says that "a high erasure rate alone is not evidence of impropriety."
Then there's even allegations (http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/04/06/michelle_rhee_lyons/index.html)about what Rhee herself might have done when she was a teacher:
She rose to prominence largely due to her self-proclaimed brilliance as an elementary school teacher in inner-city Baltimore.
Rhee's résumé described her students' near-miraculous success: "Over a two-year period, [Rhee] moved students scoring on average at the 13th percentile on national standardized tests to 90 percent of students scoring at the 90th percentile or higher."
Not on any bell curve I've ever seen. If a basketball coach said something so improbable, skeptics would check the record.
. . .
"This is like an education Ponzi scam," a teacher's union official told USA Today. "If your test scores improve, you make more money. If not, you get fired. That's incredibly dangerous."
Oh, and the Baltimore miracle? Confronted with contemporaneous test scores dug up by a skeptical teacher, Rhee admitted to the Washington Post that she’d soften that 90th percentile business to "significantly."
Something fishy here. I guess we shouldn't be surprised at cheating when there is a strong incentive to fudge the numbers.
And what does this say about the whole notion of linking performance pay and school budgets to test scores?