Frontline doc about Rhee and cheating

[Anonymous]

Those third graders are another perfect illustration of how social promotion fails, especially when it's in combination with a weak curriculum and failures at every grade level below that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Those third graders are another perfect illustration of how social promotion fails, especially when it's in combination with a weak curriculum and failures at every grade level below that.

When Rhee came in they threw out the old but did not create the new. We had standards, a list of things to teach - that was it. I was in shock as a new teacher, that was all you received, and no I did not get any textbooks, I bought my own as do many teachers still. I could never understand why the public didn't object to the fact that there was no curriculum It is only now with the new Common Core that we have a DC Curriculum, and they are being rolled out monthly. We are on the 3rd unit right now, we are waiting for the 4th right now. The DC CAS is not aligned to the standards, never was, and neither is the new PIA. It all sounds good, but those on the inside have never swallowed the Kool-Aid. It was all smoke and mirrors, yes she got rid of some lazy teachers but progress has been slim to non-existent due to the constant chaos, turmoil, continual overall of teachers and principals and new teachers every year (so you can never get the ball rolling), and constant roll out of new initiatives that have to be implemented NOW. As for IMPACT, if only you knew what we have had to "dog and pony show" over the years, to the detriment of students. IMPACT has gotten better, but if they'd listened to the experts they wouldn't have wasted time implementing all that nonsense (that they've now had to take out) in the first place. Do you really want a teacher making the kids demonstrate 5 learning styles in 30 minutes!!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't buy the "teaching to the test" BS. From everything I've seen about the DC-CAS, what's covered on it is nothing more than a watered-down subset of content that should be covered in a standard, grade-appropriate curriculum. It's stuff that would have been a piece of cake, with no studying for me, were it to be given back when I was in grade school. By and large, it's stuff that kids already should have learned.

Wouldn't be any need for cheating, or "teaching to the test" if DCPS had the right curriculum and materials in the first place. It's not the test that's the problem, it's the whole system that's the problem.

You're probably right, and most children who come to school with a fair background in literacy in DC do just fine on it. You do the math.
The Science test that I saw demonstrated eveything wrong about the way we teach science btw. Children are expected to know everything about everything (basically a lot of terminology) rather than demonstrate some understanding of the method. A written paper exam discussing a hypothetical situation would be far better than they are given. And if tests drive what happens in the classroom, it would drive teachers to do a shallow survey rather than deep investigations.

[Anonymous]

Understanding of method can be assessed via multiple-choice, a written essay would be far less to assess in any uniform way across an entire school district.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those third graders are another perfect illustration of how social promotion fails, especially when it's in combination with a weak curriculum and failures at every grade level below that.

When Rhee came in they threw out the old but did not create the new. We had standards, a list of things to teach - that was it. I was in shock as a new teacher, that was all you received, and no I did not get any textbooks, I bought my own as do many teachers still. I could never understand why the public didn't object to the fact that there was no curriculum It is only now with the new Common Core that we have a DC Curriculum, and they are being rolled out monthly. We are on the 3rd unit right now, we are waiting for the 4th right now. The DC CAS is not aligned to the standards, never was, and neither is the new PIA. It all sounds good, but those on the inside have never swallowed the Kool-Aid. It was all smoke and mirrors, yes she got rid of some lazy teachers but progress has been slim to non-existent due to the constant chaos, turmoil, continual overall of teachers and principals and new teachers every year (so you can never get the ball rolling), and constant roll out of new initiatives that have to be implemented NOW. As for IMPACT, if only you knew what we have had to "dog and pony show" over the years, to the detriment of students. IMPACT has gotten better, but if they'd listened to the experts they wouldn't have wasted time implementing all that nonsense (that they've now had to take out) in the first place. Do you really want a teacher making the kids demonstrate 5 learning styles in 30 minutes!!!

I agree. As a former dcps teacher, I could not believe what I saw. We had no library. We at times had no paper. We were given no textbooks. Handed standards days before we started And told to post our unit tests that met those standards and to find and create material along the way. We had an infestation of rats. We had police officers come to speak to our kids about trusting the police--one 5th grader said that same cop came to his house after his dad was mugged and told his family to move if he didn't like where he lived. We had kids selling drugs in the stairwells--when we tried to expel them, we were told it was a classroom issue. 80% of the 5th grade could not read at a proficient level, but passed the DC-CAS the year before. We had students who were expelled from the charter schools show up days before the CAS. Some of them were expelled for truancy. HR was a mess. The 5th graders had no recess. It was all really sad. All this, with being told, almost daily, that we could lose our jobs at any time. Thus, we could not just stop and go back to try to teach 1st grade reading to our students who needed the instruction so badly. Thus, we taught strategies for the test. We thought we were good teachers (at least trying to be) so we wanted to keep our jobs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't buy the "teaching to the test" BS. From everything I've seen about the DC-CAS, what's covered on it is nothing more than a watered-down subset of content that should be covered in a standard, grade-appropriate curriculum. It's stuff that would have been a piece of cake, with no studying for me, were it to be given back when I was in grade school. By and large, it's stuff that kids already should have learned.

Wouldn't be any need for cheating, or "teaching to the test" if DCPS had the right curriculum and materials in the first place. It's not the test that's the problem, it's the whole system that's the problem.

You're probably right, and most children who come to school with a fair background in literacy in DC do just fine on it. You do the math.
The Science test that I saw demonstrated eveything wrong about the way we teach science btw. Children are expected to know everything about everything (basically a lot of terminology) rather than demonstrate some understanding of the method. A written paper exam discussing a hypothetical situation would be far better than they are given. And if tests drive what happens in the classroom, it would drive teachers to do a shallow survey rather than deep investigations.

I find that to be complete bunk. How is it that we CAN assess proficiency and mastery of methods and facts for far more complex material, like professional licensure examinations for engineering, pharmacology or law which cover the majority of the content with multiple-choice questions? IF the students learned proper material in the first place, they should have no problem with tests. And, how would you ever get consistent assessments from written papers? Five different assessors could easily come up with five different assessments - and, you have tens of thousands of students to assess. The logistics of essay-based approaches are completely unworkable.

Seems to me these DCPS anti-test advocates are going in exactly the wrong direction. There are ways to develop and maintain sound item banks (DC-CAS probably does not have a robust enough approach), which enlists a variety of professionals (teachers not just from the DCPS system but from other schools and districts as well) as item bank writers and reviewers, a system that maintains the item bank to rotate the questions given and periodically retire questions, along with a system for assessing the questions and results themselves. Psychometricians have quite a few best practices on how to write and maintain good item banks, how to structure the questions (i.e. use of logical distractors), and even automated algorithms that can flag a question as either too misleading or too far out of the realm of what the student body would know (and that the item should be tossed and exam results adjusted) based on how they answer it. They even have algorithms for detecting cheating and other types of exam fraud. These DCPS anti-test advocates don't even talk about any of the more substantive aspects or details of the testing, they just whine about the mere fact of the exam, which to me suggests they are likely rank amateurs where it even comes to test development.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those third graders are another perfect illustration of how social promotion fails, especially when it's in combination with a weak curriculum and failures at every grade level below that.

When Rhee came in they threw out the old but did not create the new. We had standards, a list of things to teach - that was it. I was in shock as a new teacher, that was all you received, and no I did not get any textbooks, I bought my own as do many teachers still. I could never understand why the public didn't object to the fact that there was no curriculum It is only now with the new Common Core that we have a DC Curriculum, and they are being rolled out monthly. We are on the 3rd unit right now, we are waiting for the 4th right now. The DC CAS is not aligned to the standards, never was, and neither is the new PIA. It all sounds good, but those on the inside have never swallowed the Kool-Aid. It was all smoke and mirrors, yes she got rid of some lazy teachers but progress has been slim to non-existent due to the constant chaos, turmoil, continual overall of teachers and principals and new teachers every year (so you can never get the ball rolling), and constant roll out of new initiatives that have to be implemented NOW. As for IMPACT, if only you knew what we have had to "dog and pony show" over the years, to the detriment of students. IMPACT has gotten better, but if they'd listened to the experts they wouldn't have wasted time implementing all that nonsense (that they've now had to take out) in the first place. Do you really want a teacher making the kids demonstrate 5 learning styles in 30 minutes!!!

I agree. As a former dcps teacher, I could not believe what I saw. We had no library. We at times had no paper. We were given no textbooks. Handed standards days before we started And told to post our unit tests that met those standards and to find and create material along the way. We had an infestation of rats. We had police officers come to speak to our kids about trusting the police--one 5th grader said that same cop came to his house after his dad was mugged and told his family to move if he didn't like where he lived. We had kids selling drugs in the stairwells--when we tried to expel them, we were told it was a classroom issue. 80% of the 5th grade could not read at a proficient level, but passed the DC-CAS the year before. We had students who were expelled from the charter schools show up days before the CAS. Some of them were expelled for truancy. HR was a mess. The 5th graders had no recess. It was all really sad. All this, with being told, almost daily, that we could lose our jobs at any time. Thus, we could not just stop and go back to try to teach 1st grade reading to our students who needed the instruction so badly. Thus, we taught strategies for the test. We thought we were good teachers (at least trying to be) so we wanted to keep our jobs.

Sad, since DCPS HAS more than enough money for the library, the paper, the textbooks, the pest control, HAS the means and wherewithal to be working with teachers far in advance regarding standards, DC HAS a criminal code that clearly identifies drug dealing as a criminal activity and so on. It demonstrates a systemic culture of corruption, dysfunction, fraud waste and abuse which has existed for decades. DCPS really DOES need someone to go in and do some major housecleaning.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IF the students learned proper material in the first place, they should have no problem with tests. And, how would you ever get consistent assessments from written papers?

If the test was valid and reliable . . .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't buy the "teaching to the test" BS. From everything I've seen about the DC-CAS, what's covered on it is nothing more than a watered-down subset of content that should be covered in a standard, grade-appropriate curriculum. It's stuff that would have been a piece of cake, with no studying for me, were it to be given back when I was in grade school. By and large, it's stuff that kids already should have learned.

Wouldn't be any need for cheating, or "teaching to the test" if DCPS had the right curriculum and materials in the first place. It's not the test that's the problem, it's the whole system that's the problem.

You're probably right, and most children who come to school with a fair background in literacy in DC do just fine on it. You do the math.
The Science test that I saw demonstrated eveything wrong about the way we teach science btw. Children are expected to know everything about everything (basically a lot of terminology) rather than demonstrate some understanding of the method. A written paper exam discussing a hypothetical situation would be far better than they are given. And if tests drive what happens in the classroom, it would drive teachers to do a shallow survey rather than deep investigations.

I find that to be complete bunk. How is it that we CAN assess proficiency and mastery of methods and facts for far more complex material, like professional licensure examinations for engineering, pharmacology or law which cover the majority of the content with multiple-choice questions? IF the students learned proper material in the first place, they should have no problem with tests. And, how would you ever get consistent assessments from written papers? Five different assessors could easily come up with five different assessments - and, you have tens of thousands of students to assess. The logistics of essay-based approaches are completely unworkable.

Seems to me these DCPS anti-test advocates are going in exactly the wrong direction. There are ways to develop and maintain sound item banks (DC-CAS probably does not have a robust enough approach), which enlists a variety of professionals (teachers not just from the DCPS system but from other schools and districts as well) as item bank writers and reviewers, a system that maintains the item bank to rotate the questions given and periodically retire questions, along with a system for assessing the questions and results themselves. Psychometricians have quite a few best practices on how to write and maintain good item banks, how to structure the questions (i.e. use of logical distractors), and even automated algorithms that can flag a question as either too misleading or too far out of the realm of what the student body would know (and that the item should be tossed and exam results adjusted) based on how they answer it. They even have algorithms for detecting cheating and other types of exam fraud. These DCPS anti-test advocates don't even talk about any of the more substantive aspects or details of the testing, they just whine about the mere fact of the exam, which to me suggests they are likely rank amateurs where it even comes to test development.

This thread is not about the best way to assess students -- it is about if Rhee did her job correctly or not. The discussions about testing (and how to properly align the curricula so that the tests would be valid and reliable, and how much time should have been built in for "catch up") should have happened five years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Those third graders are another perfect illustration of how social promotion fails, especially when it's in combination with a weak curriculum and failures at every grade level below that.

When Rhee came in they threw out the old but did not create the new. We had standards, a list of things to teach - that was it. I was in shock as a new teacher, that was all you received, and no I did not get any textbooks, I bought my own as do many teachers still. I could never understand why the public didn't object to the fact that there was no curriculum It is only now with the new Common Core that we have a DC Curriculum, and they are being rolled out monthly. We are on the 3rd unit right now, we are waiting for the 4th right now. The DC CAS is not aligned to the standards, never was, and neither is the new PIA. It all sounds good, but those on the inside have never swallowed the Kool-Aid. It was all smoke and mirrors, yes she got rid of some lazy teachers but progress has been slim to non-existent due to the constant chaos, turmoil, continual overall of teachers and principals and new teachers every year (so you can never get the ball rolling), and constant roll out of new initiatives that have to be implemented NOW. As for IMPACT, if only you knew what we have had to "dog and pony show" over the years, to the detriment of students. IMPACT has gotten better, but if they'd listened to the experts they wouldn't have wasted time implementing all that nonsense (that they've now had to take out) in the first place. Do you really want a teacher making the kids demonstrate 5 learning styles in 30 minutes!!!

I agree. As a former dcps teacher, I could not believe what I saw. We had no library. We at times had no paper. We were given no textbooks. Handed standards days before we started And told to post our unit tests that met those standards and to find and create material along the way. We had an infestation of rats. We had police officers come to speak to our kids about trusting the police--one 5th grader said that same cop came to his house after his dad was mugged and told his family to move if he didn't like where he lived. We had kids selling drugs in the stairwells--when we tried to expel them, we were told it was a classroom issue. 80% of the 5th grade could not read at a proficient level, but passed the DC-CAS the year before. We had students who were expelled from the charter schools show up days before the CAS. Some of them were expelled for truancy. HR was a mess. The 5th graders had no recess. It was all really sad. All this, with being told, almost daily, that we could lose our jobs at any time. Thus, we could not just stop and go back to try to teach 1st grade reading to our students who needed the instruction so badly. Thus, we taught strategies for the test. We thought we were good teachers (at least trying to be) so we wanted to keep our jobs.

PP, I'm so sorry for you. That sounds awful, and you've eloquently enumerated everything that is wrong with using standardized tests as the sole measure of progress.

[Anonymous]

Ditto former DCPS teacher. Thank you for your service. What you experienced sounds dreadful. Would you share what school it was? I'd love to know if it was led by one of Rhee's recruits.

[Anonymous]

Someone on here once compared Rhee to Sarah Palin, and I think it's apt. At bottom, she's all about her own survival and gain, as evidenced by her decision to quit a job where she could have had a major impact on a bunch of kids who really needed help to go make big bucks as a consultant to frauds like Rick Scott. She has the same self-promotional instincts as Palin, and the same street-fighter impulses. And I'm someone who used to praise her on this board.

I will say this--like Sarah Palin, who actually did a few good things as governor of Alaska (probably not for the right reasons), there are some positive legacies of Rhee's tenure. Her brash, clean-house style did instill confidence in DCPS among a subset of parents who otherwise would not have invested in the system. So schools in Wards 2 and 3 are busting at the seams with folks who now believe in DCPS--that's mostly good news.

Unfortunately, she probably hurt the kids in the system who really needed help the most--the ones in failing schools who need more than a school can provide and in terms of education need intensive remediation but have been taught to the test instead. These are the kids she claimed her reforms were going to help, and it's pretty clear that she failed. And now the gap between Wards 2/3 and the rest of the city are even more stark because there's no longer room in the top schools for kids who in the past would have been able to attend OOB.

Because, like Sarah Palin, Rhee has a major martyr complex and no sense of personal accountability, she will never look critically at her work in DC or accept any responsibility for her failures. The small bit of good news is that Kaya Henderson, even if she comes from the same reform background as Rhee, seems not to have the same sort of narcissistic personality.

[Anonymous]

Interesting analysis, 9:33! Thanks for posting.

[Anonymous]

I agree. As a former dcps teacher, I could not believe what I saw. We had no library. We at times had no paper. We were given no textbooks. Handed standards days before we started And told to post our unit tests that met those standards and to find and create material along the way. We had an infestation of rats. We had police officers come to speak to our kids about trusting the police--one 5th grader said that same cop came to his house after his dad was mugged and told his family to move if he didn't like where he lived. We had kids selling drugs in the stairwells--when we tried to expel them, we were told it was a classroom issue. 80% of the 5th grade could not read at a proficient level, but passed the DC-CAS the year before. We had students who were expelled from the charter schools show up days before the CAS. Some of them were expelled for truancy. HR was a mess. The 5th graders had no recess. It was all really sad. All this, with being told, almost daily, that we could lose our jobs at any time. Thus, we could not just stop and go back to try to teach 1st grade reading to our students who needed the instruction so badly. Thus, we taught strategies for the test. We thought we were good teachers (at least trying to be) so we wanted to keep our jobs.


I have been a DCPS teacher in a Title I school for the last 4 years and I still find myself stunned by your story. I believe it to be true as I've experienced some of those things myself and have heard stories about others. I've found that most people are clueless to the actual conditions at some of our failing schools and the totally unrealistic expectations placed on teachers and staff. I myself began teaching with no textbooks or curriculum; I spent the first 2 years reinventing the wheel on the fly. So much $$$ is spent in the name of education but none of it makes it's way into the classroom, directly helping students improve.

I feel like I work in a totally surreal world. The things I hear and see on a daily basis, you can't make this stuff up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:From what I saw, most of they key parts of Rhee's agenda were never even given a chance to get rolling - it was mired in obstructionism, and she was driven out.

We will never really know if her plan was good or bad.

Rhee closed schools, fired principals, invented a new teacher evaluation system. fired many teachers based on it. Set up merit pay, paid students for good grades and behavior, etc etc. Henderson continued all these programs (except paying kids for grades - the funders backed out) and DCPS has not improved