Over 178 Teachers and Principals in Atlanta's Public Schools Cheated to Raise Student's Scores on St - Polidicks

[QUOTE=Raptor_Girl;30950209]This doesn't surprise me. The entire 5th grade of school, my step-sister and the rest of her school was taught to excel at the standardized test. Everyone did great on the test at the end of the year. Come 6th grade, they couldn't do basic long division.[/QUOTE] This is one of the major flaws of the American school system, schools are so obsessed with getting good test scores that they forget they're god damn schools

[QUOTE=IdiotStorm;30950582]This is one of the major flaws of the American school system, schools are so obsessed with getting good test scores that they forget they're god damn schools[/QUOTE] It's not necessarily the schools fault; they are sort of forced into it. SAT's are starting to mean jack-shit to some college's.

[QUOTE=redBadger;30950635]It's not necessarily the schools fault; they are sort of forced into it. SAT's are starting to mean jack-shit to some college's.[/QUOTE] No Child Left Behind (what a bullshit title) is completely and totally to blame for this. The entire system is punitive; if your kids don't score well enough then you lose your job and they get packed in to even larger classrooms. My local school system had a school that got closed, and they were literally required by law to bulldoze the old school and build a new one. The law doesn't even let you restaff a school, you literally have to close it down and either shoehorn all the kids into other schools, or build a new one. What a complete waste of money, all because of Bush's ass-backwards NCLB legislation.

[QUOTE=Canuhearmenow;30947844]Some schools approaching a 50% drop-out rate, for one.[/QUOTE] Well Georgia's close then, my high school (~60 miles from Atlanta) had a senior class of about 160. 62 students failed to graduate.

A lot of people don't value knowledge anymore in the US and want to find the easiest way to make money without education. A small result of the problem is drug trading and gang violence which has been increasing since the 80s. This is horrible on the students part. I know what a ghetto school is because I had to go to one for a month in 7th grade. It's shit. I got stabbed with pencils for being new. There isn't racism there, white, black, mexican, asian, all the children were horrible. Teachers just went up there and acted like zombies just saying words hoping the children would hear something. No wonder this happened. It's appalling that the teachers did this, but it's just as much the students fault as the teachers.

In our district, we had some of the lowest scores in the state, and within 3 years the government wanted to cut the education budget by [i]thirty five percent[/i]. We were already running out of paper a few weeks before the end of the year, and forget a decent education, most teachers just didn't care. Gotta love the "funnel our future to a forgettable war" strategy the US just loves employing.

Honestly, the major reason that America's standard of education is so regrettably low is because of No Child Left Behind, which is a literally backwards system. Because so much funding is removed from districts after receiving a failing mark on these standardized tests, schools that fail are placed into a catch-22 situation where they can't educate efficiently because they don't have funding and they need to educate efficiently in order to receive funding. This means schools that fail pretty much get kicked while they're down. Not to mention that some schools just have students that, in a word, don't give a shit. Fact of the matter is that you could get all the highest-grade college-level professors in the world to teach some students and they'll still end up failing the test at the end of the day. Additionally, some teachers could be the same way. Now, you may ask, why they don't hire new teachers. The reason is simple: [b]they don't have the money to[/b]. I understand the reasoning behind NCLB, and how the pressure of having their funding cut would scare teachers and students into educating better because apparently teachers were too lazy to fully educate their students, but the simple fact is that it does not work and that is not the major reason why. If anything, schools that receive bad test scores should get more funding and should be closer monitored by the government. Additionally, schools that do good should receive the same amount funding than they received the year before unless there is reason that the education they are dishing out is failing due to a lack of funding, in which case they would get more. If America is really going to pull itself out of this little rut, first and foremost they need to rid themselves of this large, grotesque tumor on the education system. Yes, there are other problems with the education system, but NCLB is the worst of the worst.

[QUOTE=redBadger;30950635]It's not necessarily the schools fault; they are sort of forced into it. SAT's are starting to mean jack-shit to some college's.[/QUOTE] The ACT means more, actually. Although it basically just acts as a placement test when you go to college. If you don't take it, the college will just sit you in a room to take a placement test. Depending on your scores, you're put into the appropriate classes.

[QUOTE=Raptor_Girl;30952801]The ACT means more, actually. Although it basically just acts as a placement test when you go to college. If you don't take it, the college will just sit you in a room to take a placement test. Depending on your scores, you're put into the appropriate classes.[/QUOTE] Which I find to be bullshit. The ACT measures knowledge. The SAT measures intelligence and ability to come up with answers on your own.

[QUOTE=Raptor_Girl;30952801]The ACT means more, actually. Although it basically just acts as a placement test when you go to college. If you don't take it, the college will just sit you in a room to take a placement test. Depending on your scores, you're put into the appropriate classes.[/QUOTE] I found the ACT to be a superior test in every way to the SAT. Not only does it test in areas not covered by the SAT, but it's also better questions. The SAT is a reasoning test, so it all depends on how well you read the question while the ACT is more focused on how well you know the material. I did terrible on my SATs. Took it three times and got on average a 650 per subsection. Took my ACT and got a composite of 35 in one try.

[QUOTE=werner;30947317]One episode of Simpsons comes in mind[/QUOTE] Reminds me of the King of the Hill episode where they brand all the dumb kids as special needs so they're exluded from NCLB.

[QUOTE=Dolton;30954149]Which I find to be bullshit. The ACT measures knowledge. The SAT measures intelligence and ability to come up with answers on your own.[/QUOTE] I disagree. The purpose of a standardized test is to measure knowledge. It's impossible to determine the problem-solving skills and intelligence of the person based on a test with five answer choices per question. You can easily measure how much someone knows with a test like that, but you need open-ended analysis for a measurement of problem-solving and creativity. Standardized tests are also really based on luck. Sometimes you take a test and get nervous and blank out. It's why the ACT is so much easier for me to take because it's easy to read and know exactly what the test wants.