Kenny
Current Event Posting Number 2
Topic: education
Title of article: Nine Schools Cited for Exam and Credit Irregularities
Author: Anna M. Phillips
Publication Name: New York Times
Date of Publication: Feb 23, 2012
Length: 921
New York City's Education Department has called for investigation into nine high schools for irregularities in examinations or awarded credits. The officials found problems at 55 high schools. They found out that many students did not meet the requirement to graduate. 292 fell short on their requirements. Education officials also said the adult had prompted them to speed up plan that have Regents exams graded by someone other than school teachers. Many principals were not familiar with the graduation requirements. The department decided to create training sessions for the principals of 460 public high schools. Last year, cheating scandals erupted in Atlanta and Philadelphia. In New York City, complaints of cheating have risen in several years. Sate Education Department has appointed a special investigator to review how it receives and investigates compaints of test tampering.The audit found unusual Regents scores in 14 schools, including teacher giving points to students for blank answers.
Many schools do not give the students proper examination and credit to let student to meet the graduation; yet, some student still graduate without meeting the standard graduation requirement. Some principals do not know very well about the requirements, so the way teachers grade assignments are not always base on the skills of normal high school students. I think each high school should at least let students to meet the graduate requirement. Students will have really hard time to succeed in the future if they don't meet a simple requirement.
Despite America's push for improving and implementing education nationwide, New York City's high schools proves just a simple case of where America falls short: 55 high schools, under investigation by the education department, were found to have irregular examination and credit awarding patterns, which ties into other cheating scandals apparent in Atlanta and Philadelphia. Furthermore, these high schools graduated about 292 students in total who failed to even meet requirements, which is partially in fault by the lack of the principal's knowledge his or her school's graduation requirements. As a result of this flawed system, complaints from the public about cheating have risen and, thus, the NYC education department responded by creating training sessions for principals across 460 public high schools. Some problems that are still in need of attention include, but are not limited to, teachers giving students credit for leaving a blank answer and test tampering issues.
ReplyDeleteThe fact that even school principals are not aware of the exact graduation requirements at their respective schools is representative of a disturbing trend: that U.S. schools are not nearly as good as they are touted to be. In fact, last year saw rashes of cheating in both Atlanta and Philadelphia, with a SAT cheating scandal occurring in New York. Audits by the New York State Education Department revealed problematic test administering procedures, such as giving students credit for questions left blank. In response to this, training sessions were implemented for the principals of over 400 public high schools, which will hopefully serve to reduce some of these problems.
ReplyDeleteNot only are schools graduating students without completion of basic requirements, but the number of schools that this is an issue with are large. Students that graduated inadequately were aloud to keep their diplomas also. This also takes trust from the teachers, a solution to this aspect is to have an outside source grade tests and look for an overall trent difference in the test scores. The warning sign that set the whole incident off was the surplus of students that received the exact minimum required to pass.
ReplyDelete