History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
For teachers, many ways and reasons to cheat on tests
- 03-11-2011
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By Jodi Upton, Denise Amos and Anne Ryman/USA Today
In 2008, teacher assistant Johanna Munoz helped her Orlando-area fourth-graders on the state achievement test. According to investigative documents obtained by USA TODAY, Munoz erased wrong answers and whispered corrections while she was helping non-native English speakers with difficult words. She snapped her fingers in a code students understood to mean they should correct an answer. While the teacher was out of the room, Munoz warned the students "not to tell anyone, not even your parents, what I did." If they told, she warned, they "would fail fourth grade." This is high-stakes testing. The standardized tests required by the federal No Child Left Behind law have become one of the most important — and controversial — ways to measure a student's progress, a teacher's competence, a school's success and a state's commitment to education. That can be a heavy load for an assessment built on paper booklets and bubble sheets. (more...)
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