This year’s testing season in England was disrupted by the leak of national examinations, not once, but twice!
The first leak was blamed on a “rogue marker” at Pearson, someone who got early access to the tests.
The second leak was the national test for students in their sixth year, 11-12 year-olds.
“The Department for Education suffered a second major embarrassment over its controversial exams for primary school pupils, after answers for a test due to be sat by all 10- and 11-year-olds in England were leaked online.
“Nearly 600,000 year 6 state school pupils are to sit the test of spelling, punctuation and grammar (Spag) on Tuesday, but it emerged that both the test paper and its answers were posted to a website the day before by the department’s contractor, Pearson.
“The error means that the answers – such as lists of words pupils were to be asked to spell – could have easily been downloaded, copied and distributed a day ahead of the crucial test, potentially allowing parents and teachers to teach pupils the correct answers.
“Labour accused the education department of compromising the test, which was already a subject of national protests last week by parents concerned that primary-age pupils were being placed under too much pressure, and authors including Philip Pullman claimed the tests were too demanding.
“It is the second time in just the space of three weeks that the department has been embarrassed in its attempts to impose tougher Spag tests on primary school pupils.
“Last month the scheduled Spag test for six- and seven-year-olds at key stage 1 had to be scrapped after the education department’s testing agency mistakenly included the actual test paper within a bundle of practice material published three months earlier.”
A new international industry emerges: test security. Better locks needed on the barn doors.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
We need that kind of activism here in the good ol US of A.
I fear, though, that the majority of US teachers are too GAGAGG* to have the cojones to do so.
But it only takes one or a few and the damage can be inflicted, as it should be. It is the only ethical and moral thing to do.
*Go Along Get Along Good Germans
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That’s what I don’t understand about the teachers? Why they just don’t say they “NO” when they are to proctor. I know they know it’s a bad test and they know what it does to curriculum and they see the effects on students. Why aren’t more doing “black ops recon’?
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Blaming teachers is not an answer. Say “no” and you lose your job. Or you will be sued if discussing test content. Or prosecuted. While many non-teachers or those not in the profession on this site have lots of behind-the-keyboard bravery, what teachers really need is a pendulum swing towards public support so there is more say from the classroom.
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Sorry, MathVale, but spoken like a GAGAGG!
While “blaming teachers” may not be an answer, if teachers were to do their jobs ethically and morally and not with and eye to expediency perhaps we wouldn’t be in this mess to begin with. Yes, the vast majority of the teachers (and adminimals) are a huge part of the problem. Correctly pointing out problems is the first step in fixing said problems. Without that first step, well. . . look at where we are.
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Label and prejudge all you want. From someone not in the classroom, your keyboard courage leading from the rear is breathtaking. Most teachers have mortgages, college loans, kids to support. I can’t afford right now to fall on a sword for you or another “expert” willing to condemn teachers as unethical and immoral for trying to cope with the forces against teachers in this country. I invite you to give up your job, get licensed, become a teacher and show us how it’s done. Until then, you are part of the problem and yet another teacher basher.
Here is reality. Teachers focus on reaching students and doing their in spite of the ridiculous mandates. That, for now, is where the victories lie. When, and if, a ground swell of support gains for teachers rather than blaming them, I suspect most you now dismiss as GAGAGG are ready and able to lead an effort back to sanity in education.
My Marine uncle always said his unit had a saying when fighting – “Is this the hill I want to die on?”. Teachers need to pick their battles to win the war.
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I’m one of the few (ever heard the Marines say that about themselves) that have been challenging this crap since before this century began. And I’ve got a file full of letters filled with lies by adminimals in their attempts to get rid of me and my “questioning/challenging” attitude. I’ve been chased out of one district-I chose to leave so as to not give them the pleasure of lying their way to my firing (while the NEA was doing nothing other than telling me “to find work in another district before they destroy your career”). I refused to be part of the mandatory ACT testing my last year in the classroom. As I told them “If I can’t read it I can’t give it”. That would be asking me to do something unethical-giving a test that I haven’t reviewed.
I’m no armchair critic in this fight. I’ve been there and fought as I could, as subversively as I could and as out in the open as I could. I’m the one at those district meetings who asked “the wrong questions” with most thinking, there’s that crazy Swacker again, while later on coming up and saying, you know you’re right to question this nonsense. NO ELSE WOULD.
So my purpose in using the GAGA(GG) label is to hopefully light a fire under the asses of those who are too afraid something bad will happen to them. Yes, something bad will happen one way or another. Would you rather get dumped on knowing your right and did what you could or that you got dumped on without a fight??? I know what a Marine would say!
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Duane’s a full time successful teacher, I think. I don’t know how he manages to preserve his integrity in his own classroom, in his own school, but he seems to be able to do it. He might be lucky enough to have an enlightened administration.
But he does raise a good point about how bad things have to be before one stops going along to get along. GAGAGG is a problem everywhere, but especially damaging in education. With tenure, aka due process rights, it was often possible to close the door and actually teach no matter what bird droppings were being propelled through the school corridors by the most recent giant fan of an educational chief in charge of politically correct innovation in a building.
Innovation=same old, same old nonsense.
Nowadays, with the move toward hiring teachers under the usual business world of Fire At Will contracts, it might make a teacher more wary about not going along. Requirements to post the goal of the day and 7 day lesson plans on the door or in the room, have made it easier for teacher-hunting principals, or assistant principals, or sub-assistant principals or department heads to create a not-effective evaluation for anyone, even those who are actually doing a superb job.
Good teaching I always found (in high school anyway) was part improvisational theatre. NOT having to stick to a lesson rubric was part of the excitement of teaching. At least in teaching literature and composition.
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Ahh. I see. I understand the frustration, but not the condemnation. Teachers are not the only working Americans silenced in this recession. Most Americans can’t switch jobs or demand a raise, living on the edge of disaster. I suspect that is what the 1%ers want and work to keep it that way through offshoring and globalization. It will take more than a few teachers complaining to change things. Until then, teachers can continue to resist as best they can, don’t drink the koolaid of reform, and watch for signs parents and the public once again value teachers and schools. We just aren’t there today. I admire those that stick it out.
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As someone who is currently being investigated for “violating state law” just by teaching the required curriculum, I think you’re being very unfair, Duane. Keeping one’s job is a real concern, particularly if one is the primary wage earner. I may lose my career completely, not because I allegedly violating a law, but really because I have spoken out against mindless testing to an administrator who thinks testing is the greatest thing since sliced bread, so he set me up. And what has my speaking up accomplished? NOTHING, because no one else will speak out. So I could lose my teaching license for nothing.
I listened to you and spoke out. I truly believed I was making a difference. Now I know better.
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Some how I really love this kind of sabotage or incompetence. “Mistakenly included,” eh?
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Thanks, HU, for the kind words above!!
Was it easy to walk that line? No. I tried to play by the rules, getting on school improvement committees, district finance committee, other committees, volunteering my time. Going through administrator training in the district, being certified, all those things one is supposed to do.
But I never told them what they wanted to hear, I told it the way I saw it and pointed out the logical fallacies, the bad proclamations of “success”, how what was being done left way too much to be desired. I know how it feels to be ostracized, where fellow staff don’t want to be seen with that “crazy Swacker” who challenges things. They walk away or if they were administrators they would find every excuse to not talk to me about things, even though they would ask for feedback.
But when I closed the door, we, yes me too, learned Spanish and the students (and me too) were expected to work hard, to work together, to encourage each other, etc. . . . As you stated good teaching (I’ve never been much interested in the superlative of good as a descriptor) is very much an improvisation. And either one can do it or they can’t and it takes a tremendous amount of energy everyday to do so.
But if we had to discuss something on the student’s mind that wasn’t subject matter related, well sometimes we took the whole hour if it was that important for the students. And sometimes it was and in the long run they would study that much harder for having been listened to when no other staff would take the time to discuss it-it wasn’t a part of the curriculum. I’d hate to tell those others that there is a hell of a lot more to the teaching and learning process than just “delivering” curriculum (now known as “covering the standards” (sic).
And, yes I retired a bit earlier than I was planning. I know this year there was a good chance that health wise I might not have made it with all the stress that was going to go down due to my refusals to institute malpractices. I don’t think I would have made it, having been there and done that. So the offer of two years of health insurance coverage to retire, well I couldn’t resist. And I think my daughter is a lot happier for that fact-ha ha!
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I love that: “refusal to institute malpractices.”
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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Psycho-Babble 101: The solitary thinker
The solitary thinker is not conducive to group-think. The “outlier”, to the edifice of
qualified “elites”(professing a particular “truth” acumen) threatens the problem-solution
system of peer pressure compliance.
The “I’ve got bills” provides no “get out of jail free card” to the outlier, for he knows
WHO painted himself into a corner of debt.
The outlier isn’t the pot calling the kettle black…For the money is for the money,
independent of “credentials” or “expertise”.
Hail “crazy” Swacker…
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