Sounds like this school is "troubled" in more ways than one:
A student at the troubled Wilmer-Hutchins school district says his teacher helped him with answers on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills standardized test last year.
"The teacher would walk around the class during the test and be like, 'Hey, that's wrong,"' James Wright, now a 12-year-old sixth-grader at Kennedy-Curry Middle School, told The Dallas Morning News for its Sunday editions. "You'd go through the answers and you'd say, 'Is this the right one?' They'd say 'nope.' And you'd say, 'Is this the right one?' And they'd say 'nope' until you got the right one. Then they'd say 'Yeah' and nod their head."
Sounds like someone needs to say to this teacher, "Hey, that's wrong."
An analysis by the newspaper first raised suspicions that cheating took place on the TAKS tests in the district. It found that despite a history of poor academic performance, one elementary school in the district posted the state's highest scores on the third grade reading TAKS test last year.
The district has been investigated in recent months by the Texas Rangers, two grand juries, the FBI and others on alleged misappropriation of funds and other accusations.
The Texas Rangers got involved? Whooo, that's heavy. And good for the newspaper for poking around in the data.
Damm said he has told district principals that if any of them knowingly allowed cheating at their schools, they will treated as if they did the cheating themselves. Falsifying testing documents is a third-degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison...
The newspaper did not find evidence of cheating on other tests in other grades at the school. Another school in the district, Alta Mesa Elementary, scored highly in all grades and on all tests. Some students said cheating was widespread.
"When the test started, some people didn't know the answers, so they'd raise their hand and the teacher would come up to them. The teacher read the question and then gave us the answer," said Guyler Easter, who attended Alta Mesa in the fifth grade and is now a seventh-grader at Kennedy-Curry Middle in Wilmer-Hutchins.
If it's that widespread, maybe it is a job for the good guys in the white hats.
Posted by kswygert at November 14, 2004 02:43 PM