Since the passage of the “No Child Left Behind Act” in 2002, the education reform movement has increasingly focused on measuring students with standardized tests. Test scores are used to assess student growth, but they are also increasingly used to judge the success or failure of school districts, and even individual schools.
Kids are really feeling the pressure to perform. So are teachers. And let’s not forget all the pressure on principals. You can’t claim to be doing a good job of teaching if your scores don’t go up every year.
So there are some shenanigans going on.
One elementary school principal in Mississippi was investigated after her school’s test scores rose dramatically in 2003. RawStory recounts the events, which seem to be a real comedy of errors.
First the school’s scores rose dramatically. Then the state noticed that there was a whole lot of similarity in the answers from Heidelberg Elementary. Something seemed fishy. So the state of Mississippi ordered the Clarksdale Municipal School District to do its own investigation.
Superintendent Dennis Dupree looked things over and said that all was well. Nothing to see here, no sir.
The State wasn’t buying it, so it ordered the “Student Accountability” boss to look more closely. He interviewed teachers first. They told him that their principal, Lawanda Tyler-Jones, had instructed them to “coach” the kids during the testing, and to change their scores if needed.
Uh, oh.
Then he interviewed the principal herself. She had a whole different explanation.
“She indicated to me during an interview that she anointed the desks, the pencils, the doorways and also the students’ heads with holy water.”
She also claimed that prayer was partly responsible for the rise in scores.
I was a teacher for more than 20 years. I understand very well how much pressure educators feel around student test scores, I really do.
There were even times when I was tempted to pray as I watched the kids struggling to fill in the bubbles in their answer booklets.
I never thought of the holy water idea, though.
More on public schools and cheating on high stakes tests:
Featured image Screengrab via YouTube video from PBS Newshour.
