The stress was overwhelming.
For years, this veteran teacher had received exemplary evaluations but now was feeling pressured to raise her students' test scores. Her principal criticized her teaching and would show up to take notes on her class. She knew the material would be used against her one day.
"My principal told me right to my face that she — she was feeling sorry for me because I don't know how to teach," the instructor said.
The Los Angeles educator, who did not want to be identified, is one of about three dozen in the state accused this year of cheating, lesser misconduct or mistakes on standardized achievement tests.
Monday, November 07, 2011
Are We Really Going To Make Such Excuses?
Are California's teachers--especially the next-to-impossible-to-fire tenured teachers--really going to claim that testing requirements are forcing them to cheat?
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4 comments:
Maybe those who can't do, cheat?
I've often heard that those who can't teach, go into administration.
Another variant is that those who can't teach, coach.
Both are mildly entertaining, but someone always takes offense. *sigh*
Those who can, do.
Those who can't, teach.
Those who can't teach, teach PE.
Those who can't teach PE become an administrator.
That's how i heard it.
Of course they're going to blame the test for forcing them to cheat. It's an understandable, if self-serving, response.
But really, what else would anyone expect?
The teachers in question have never had to demonstrate professional competence at the task they're ostensibly hired to perform so why shouldn't they be upset when the terms of the job have changed?
They may have hired in with visions of educational sugarplums dancing in their heads but a decade or two of doing without the slightest recognition of professional skills should either drive them from the profession or force some sort of an accommodation.
For some teachers that accommodation's going to mean the expectation of never having to demonstrate professional competence. Some degree of whining's to be expected and so is some degree of cheating.
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