How Public Schools Lie to Parents and Betray Our Children
Joel Turtel, in his new book "Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public Schools Lie To Parents and Betray Our Children," explains why parents should think twice about trusting their local public schools. To protect their jobs, teachers and principals are now under intense pressure to cheat — to fudge test scores and report cards to fool parents and school administrators.
(PRWEB) April 26, 2005 -- Under the "No Child Left Behind Act," public
schools whose students consistently fail standardized tests can now be shut
down. To protect their jobs, teachers and principals are now under intense
pressure to cheat — to fudge test scores and report cards to fool parents and
school administrators.
How do public schools deceive parents? Joel
Turtel, author of the new book, "Public Schools, Public Menace: How Public
Schools Lie to Parents and Betray Our Children" (ISBN #0-9645693-2-9), lists
some of the ways teachers can “cheat”:
1. Poor students are excluded or
discouraged from taking the tests.
2. Teachers assign tests as homework or
teach test items in class.
3. Test security is minimal or even nonexistent.
4. Students are allowed more time than prescribed by test regulations.
5. Unrealistic, highly improbable improvements from test to test are not
audited or investigated.
6. Teachers and administrators are not punished for
flagrant violations of test procedures.
7. Test results are reported in ways
that exaggerate achievement levels.
(from Myron Lieberman's book, "Public
Schools: An Autopsy")
In December 1999, a special investigation of New
York City schools revealed that two principals and dozens of teachers and
assistant teachers were helping students cheat on standardized math and reading
tests.
Andrew J. Coulson, in his brilliant book, "Market Education: The
Unknown History," cites an example of how public schools deliberately lie to
parents about their children’s academic abilities:
“Consistently greeted
by A’s and B’s on their children’s report cards, the parents of Zavala
Elementary School had been lulled into complacency, believing that both the
school and its students were performing well. In fact, Zavala was one of the
worst schools in the district, and its students ranked near the bottom on
statewide standardized tests. When a new principal took over the helm and
requested that the statewide scores be read out at a PTA meeting, parents were
dismayed by their children’s abysmal showing, and furious with teachers and
school officials for misleading them with inflated grades.”
In 1992, the
scholarly journal Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice published the
results of a national survey about teacher cheating. Janie Hall and Paul Kleine,
the authors of the report, asked 2256 public-school teachers, principals,
superintendents, and testing supervisors if their colleagues cheated on tests.
Forty-four percent of those questioned answered yes. Also, 55 percent of the
teachers surveyed said they were aware that many of their fellow teachers
changed students' answers, taught specific parts of tests prior to the tests,
and gave students hints during tests. Today, the pressure for teachers and
principals to cheat is even greater because of the No Child Left Behind Act.
In 1990, three academics, Harold Stevenson, Chuansheng Chen, and David
Uttal did a study of the attitudes and academic achievement of black, white, and
hispanic children in Chicago. They found a disturbing gap between what parents
thought their children were learning and the children’s actual performance.
Teachers in high-poverty schools had given A’s to students for work that would
have earned them C’s or D’s in affluent suburban schools.
In the study,
black mothers of Chicago elementary school students rated their child’s skills
and abilities quite high and thought their kids were doing well in reading and
math. The children thought the same thing. Unfortunately, the researchers found
that the parents’ and children’s self-evaluations of their math and reading
skills were way above their actual achievement levels.
There was a big
gap between their optimistic self-evaluations and their dismal academic
performance on independent tests. Public schools were giving these children a
false idea of their academic skill levels. In other words, these children were
heading towards failure and no one bothered to tell them.
Parents would
not be wise to trust any claims by teachers or school authorities about their
children’s alleged academic abilities, even in so-called “good” schools in
suburban neighborhoods. Parents should have an outside independent company test
their child’s reading and math skills to find out how their child is really
doing. If parents find that their child’s academic skills are far below what
their local public school led them to believe, they might want to take their
child out of public school and look for better education alternatives.
The Resources section in "Public Schools, Public Menace" shows parents
many excellent, low-cost education options for their kids, such as the new
Internet schools, learning computer software just for kids, and home-schooling.
Parents will find more information about public schools on Turtel's
website, www.mykidsdeservebetter.com. The website also lists many
reading and math-skill testing companies parents can use to determine their
children's true reading and math abilities.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/4/prweb232518.htm