Recently, school officials in El Paso were investigated and found guilty of pushing certain students out of school to prevent them from taking the state tests. The purpose was to boost the district’s scores and make it appear to be doing better than it was. Some children were literally excluded from school and never finished. The superintendent was convicted and sentenced to jail. This was disgraceful, and it was an indictment of the officials’ personal ethics, but also an indictment of the absurd high-stakes testing regime foisted on the nation by No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top. School officials in some district will do literally anything to get their scores up, even though it hurts children. This is wrong. And the system which it incentivizes this behavior is also wrong.
This blogger has a different take on the El Paso incident. He tends to view it as an example of “opting out” of testing. He longs for the day that “No Child Shows Up.”
Of course, if the superintendent in El Paso had told all children to stay home on testing day, he would now be a national hero to angry parents and educators. Instead, he is a convicted criminal because he did not have the best interests of children in mind. He told only the low-performing students to stay home or to drop out of school. He was not acting in their interest. He was acting from self-interest, trying to inflate the scores of his district.
Someday, all educators will have the courage to stop doing things that they know are educational malpractice.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It seems Kant had something to say about situations like these in his third formulation of the categorical imperative:
“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means.”[2] We ought to act only by maxims that would harmonize with a possible kingdom of ends. We have perfect duty not to act by maxims that create incoherent or impossible states of natural affairs when we attempt to universalize them, and we have imperfect duty not to act by maxims that lead to unstable or greatly undesirable states of affairs.
There is a huge scandal with grade inflation and tampering in my district. I tried to fight it and got fired.It is not just in my district, I am sure, but ours in one of the worst and we are supposedly one of the best systems in the stare. Here is my story:
http://chapelboro.com/I-still-hope-for-change-in-the-district/10391214?pid=269185
Same in CT… See this comment from this post. Sorry for typos. No power on iPhone.
Adamowski is fraudulent in that he falsely reported increased graduation rates in Hartford; he did so by raising the minimum failing grade to 55 and disregarding attendance requirements among students. The result was that, for a one-semester course, a given student could achieve a grade of 65 during one quarter and never show up again; his second quarter grade of zero would be inflated to 55 and the student would pass the course with an average of 60 for the course. For a full year course, the student could earn a grade of 75 and never show up again; his/her grades of zero for three marking periods would be inflated to 55 each and the student would pass with an average of 60 for the course. If that isn’t fraudulent, I don’t know what is!
He also falsely reported increase CAPT and CMT scores using the Bush Texas Miracle method of simply keeping students from taking the tests until their scores did not count by advancing them to the next grade, or by having them take the MAS. If you weed out the problem students, of course your scores would appear to increase, but no real improvement in education actually took place.
In other words, his entire practise is based on fraud. He specifically violated 13 provisions of the Connecticut State Code of Professional Conduct while serving as superintendent of Hartford Public Schools, yet there was no investigation. Either the State BoE is negligent in their jobs, or there is strong support for his corrupt methods.
http://jonathanpelto.com/2012/10/15/different-test-or-make-them-disappear-same-result-but-different-consequences/
You beat me to it, Linda, even though you are still in the dark!
I will add to the list the Special Master’s decision in Windham to decree free and reduced lunch for 100% of students. Although that may appear generous at first glance, think for a moment how that could affect the almighty test scores and related data.
Not to mention illegal… There are federal income guidelines for free and reduced lunch. But, hey, what’s one more broken and manipulated regulation in the name of reform?
What was the Bush slogan…the soft bigotry of low expectations. Since they don’t expect the low performers to improve, they just juke the stats and recategorize the kids. And this folks is how you get a reputation as an innovative teformer here in CT, USA!
Typo…reformer. No power iPhone issues.
I’m so sorry, Robin. You must really feel betrayed. You did everything by the book to make yourself a good teacher. Selling your soul should not be part of the deal.
No, this isn’t civil disobedience, and it isn’t “opting out”. It’s a crime against children.
They charged this perpetrator with fraud for his contracts to his girlfriend, by the way, not for pushing kids out without diplomas. If the contracts were with Pearson, that would be fine. Claiming to educate low-income kids by stealing their birthright (at a profit) and making them disappear with fraudulent statistics is the “civil rights issue of our time”, they say.
I’ll say it again. My district put my girls out onto the street with less than a tenth grade education to “leverage” the test scores, and hung award banners in the hall as a result. That’s how they “taught them an important life lesson” about tardiness. My students came to me in tears, to be signed out of their school against their will for “failure to make academic progress.” They disappeared from the state data banks, and nobody counted.
American public administrators, politicians, lobbyists, corporate Board of Education appointees, academic departments at places like Harvard, newspaper columnists at the Washington Post and Boston Globe, counselors and teachers right in my building chose to just “go along to get along” with that.
I have never stopped fighting i, but what can I do when people just don’t see anything wrong with it? I can’t get over it, it still feels like I swallowed hot gravel or something. Am I crazy, or is America?
It is happening everywhere and BOE’s don’t want to deal with it and corporate owned media do not want to report it since it won’t fit their privatization agenda. See comment left here re: Hartford, CT and then full link. The so-called reformers gets their stellar reps but all they do is move the shells around:
These are the things that I have seen or heard of in Hartford:
1. When the CMT was administered in Oct in grades 4, 6 & 8, students were put back into grades 3, 5 & 7 until after the test. There was a mini investigation conducted by an assistant supt and the director of assessment.
2. I heard from a former staff member at Simpson-Waverly that the principal there who is now a supt in a nearby system did the same thing.
2. At Bulkeley Lower School students were told to leave answers blank if they were unsure. I heard that there was a team of staff members who filled in the bubbles. I heard there was one girl who sat and did nothing during the test, leaving all answers blank and she scored at goal. The principal sent out an email telling staff not to take attendance on the computer during one week of CAPT. The math scores soared from 40% at/above goal in 2008 to 75% at/above goal in 2010 and the reading scores went from 50% at/above goal in 2009 to 70% at/above goal in 2010. Adamowski had a huge party for them. No one bothered to question anything. The same principal for years has had students re-take classes over and over again for credit.
3. I have heard that an elementary school principal instructed her staff to walk around the room during testing and check that students were answering correctly and to let them know when the answers were wrong.
There have not been any miracle jumps in test scores at any school in Hartford without cheating or an influx of suburban students. The Hartford Courant doesn’t care to report the truth or investigate any suspicions. It’s all available at ctreports.com.
http://jonathanpelto.com/2012/10/15/different-test-or-make-them-disappear-same-result-but-different-consequences/
Search for more on this blog, Jonathan Pelto, under these reformy names: Vallas and Adamowski.
By the way, the above comment was cut and pasted from the Pelto blog left by a teacher in that system…they have tried to report these tactics. There has to be a breaking point eventually.
The reformers do need a certain level of consent from the public to accomish their objectives.
OPT OUT: Public Education is too important to democracy to be privatized.
Opting out implies choice. Coercion does not.
A movement’s success is dependent on all affected parties being aware of their choices. Students and parents who remain ignorant will perpetuate our current existence. Those who are informed will make this a revolution.
The glaringly ironic fact is that privateers have no choice. And they know it.
Opting Out refers to the growing micro movement against high stakes testing. Parents across the country ate increasingly keeping their kids home on testing days, or telling schools not to test their kids.
Opting Out of testing is a real choice and not merely a protest statement.
Protests speak out to affect current conditions in hopes of change. Real choices result in revolutions with permanent effects.
It’s the difference between holding up a sign during Occupy Wall Street and being an active participant during the conflicts which arose in 1776.
We have been hoping with the former far too long.
Sandy Kress covered up a scheme in Dallas at Sunset High School –94-95–where students were put in the street during the day to decrease dropout rates and increase attendance rates. TEA allowed the principal and dean and superintendent to skate–all kept their jobs. Massive attendance and grade fraud and Sandy just went to TEA and got permission for the district to investigate itself when criminal conduct had occurred.
Same thing as El Paso–disappear the dropouts, bloat up attendance.
Principals were reporting 2% dropout rates when 70% of the class disappeared before graduation.