Another option is to have exams sealed when sent to schools.  In the examination room students are instructed to
open the same simultaneously.  Any teacher who taught a student writing the exam cannot be in the room.  At a given time the exams are sealed by the student and given to the monitor.  Then they are sent off to be marked.

The Royal Conservatory of Music still does their written exams in this fashion.  (I’ve written them.)

Of course Ontario wants no part of this because it’s called accountability. 

Parents, there are easy solutions to the problem of cheating…

“He put the test in his fireplace once he’d confirmed that he had taught the necessary concepts. But he worried that his students would struggle with questions that were delivered in paragraph form. Some of his seventh-grade students were still reading by sounding out the letters. It seemed unfair that the concepts were “buried in words.” Lewis felt that he had pushed them to work harder than they ever had in their lives. “I’m not going to let the state slap them in the face and say they’re failures,” he told me. “I’m going to do everything I can to prevent the why-try spirit.”

There is active resistance across the K to 12 span to resist accountability measures of any kind that seeks to ultimately informed the state of the 3 Rs of students. Classroom educators along with the union brass, actively work against any measures that would indicate the levels of the 3 Rs of a student or students. Instead, the focus is on no grades to no zero policies to encouraging parents to skipped out on standard testing to even cheating. Why? All to avoid the conversation of the questionable literacy and numeracy proficiency levels of the 3 Rs that students possesses at the time of evaluation.

A blog owned by an Ontario education, had posted a blog on a parent who had her children skipped out on the EQAO. It will clearly show the resistance of classroom educators to the principals to the school board to the EQAO gang what the focus has been and still is. It is certainly not to ensure the students have the skills in the 3 Rs to write any type of testing. A quote from the parent - ” To tell an ADHD student with Tourette Syndrome and learning disabilities to simply “Try Harder” is akin to telling a blind student just to “See Better”.  It is impractical, unhelpful, and insulting.  After receiving a 90% in Applied Grade 9 English, he was told on numerous occasions last semester by a teacher that he would probably fail the OSSLT – however, no extra help was offered in any way..”  http://andrewscampbell.com/2013/03/26/opting-out-of-eqao-one-parents-story/

Suffice to say, the K to 12 crowd will not do the one thing, by rasing the proficiency levels in literacy and numeracy levels of students. All to avoid being held to account by their peers, the K to 12 and the public.

They are sealed here Bev. This did not stop a similar scandal at Moira high school in Belleville.

There is a massive and growing resistance amongst American parents to reject testing.

What a remarkable story.

This isn’t just a cheating middle-school The culture of cheating permeated this school district from top to bottom.  The superintendent demanded it, the sub-superindents supervised it, the principals organized it, and the teachers did the dirty work - or face termination.

A huge number of schools participated (although only 44 were fingered).  The elementary schools cheated, sending up ‘graduates’ to middle school who couldn’t read, and the high schools subsequently receiving these students continued to cheat.

Parks’s Middle School, the focus of this story, had students who counted on their fingers and couldn’t read.  The teachers were hugely dedicated but adrift, leaderless, and ineffective.  Yet their football and basketball teams were undefeated (Makes you think of our own Nelson Mandela school.)

Malkin, I disagree that this school could have legitimately raised its test scores with better curriculum.  The problem was much bigger and systemic.  Top-performing charter schools manage to break this cycle, largely by returning autonomy to the school level, focusing on academics, and treating the teachers like professionals.  Some public boards have done it, notably Tower Hamlet in the UK.  The curriculum follows.

Former students from this school are likely to end up in prison one day - poor adults without educations don’t have many legal jobs available to them.  I hope they run into the school managers while in jail.

You notice how nobody in the reform movement speaks of ‘charter schools performance’ any more just ‘top performing charter schools’ They want to compare top performing charters to low performing public schools.

In fact the more charter schools there are the more they “migrate to the mean” in other words, the more charters created the more water in the wine. As they are forced to compete with other charters, and public and catholic schools the more they need to retain their low achieving students or shrink.

We can see this in the pathetic results of Washington DC and soon New Orleans charters. Very soon everyone will be saying “why are we wasting time on these charters.They are no better than public schools”

To the standardized testing naysayers: Strangely no one seems to have died of ‘testitis’ yet. Quebec has had standardized tests in both public and private high schools for the last 60 years. Peel’s IB & AP programs all have year end tests (IB graded by outside personnel) Through it all Peel ratepayers have had more than enough of the ‘no accountability’ pr promoted in local syndical rags. Just ask ‘em

Doug, what about the waiting list of 5000 students wanting to get into a charter school in Alberta. What about the charter lotteries for every seat available in a charter school, there is four students who won’t draw the lucky number. Or is it as the K to 12 crowd does love to state, the parents are deluded to think that their child could escape their zipcode by receiving a quality education. As the K to 12 crowd loves to say - “It’s all about the poverty, stupid.”

Hi Doug, I think your ‘top performing charter schools’ comment is aimed at me.  My interest is these inner-city charter schools, because a strong no-excuses education is the most powerful method to break the cycle of poverty available.

Middle-class kids don’t need these ‘rescue’ schools - they learn to read at home, and get lots of enrichment from their environments.  They enjoy their summer vacation and come back to school in the fall smarter than when they left.  So most middle-class charter schools tend to be a only bit better than public schools in academics.

But middle-class parents LOVE charter schools.  There is no stone-walling from administrators, incompetent teachers get pushed out, kids get more individualized attention, parents’ priorities get attended to, and so on.

But why would anyone object to charter schools?  It’s the same funding dollars, just following the students instead of being handed directly to the school boards.  Doesn’t cost the taxpayer an extra dime - in fact the few charter schools in BC are saving those taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars each year, and BC is smartly ahead of Ontario in the PISA rankings. 

Competition with charter schools improves the performance of public schools.  High performance charters break the cycle of poverty.  Middle-class charters make the parents happy.  No cost to the taxpayers.  Ontario’s Ministry of Education should be rushing to set them up. 

Why do people want charter schools?

Because they think they will get something better. They don’t

EQAO also in grade e and 6 Tom. Grade 10 test chosen because 16 is school leaving age. All thought out.

Why do some “high performing” charter schools do better?

- longer hours

-corporate top up funding

-smaller classes

-summer programs

-push out

-restricted admissions contracts few SE. ELL kids

Whole thing is rigged and everyone in education knows it.

Cannot be brought to scale without enormous costs.

Looks you swallowed all the chart school propaganda Tom.

Look where they exist on mass scale not a one off here and a one off there.

Washington DC charter kids 50% cant read or do math close to grade level.

New Orleans will soon see the same.

Very high turn over of staff in charters.  Nobody wants to stay and work the long hours for the low pay. As soon as there is mass hirinv again in public schools the charters will be wiped out.

Correcting Doug’s half-truths.

1. The age is 18 - “every person who attains the age of six years on or before the first school day in September in any year shall attend an elementary or secondary school on every school day from the first school day in September in that year until the person attains the age of 18 years; and”  http://www.e-laws.gov.on.ca/html/statutes/english/elaws_statutes_90e02_e.htm#BK27

2. The rest of Doug’s rant is a compilation of the myths being portrayed by the K to 12 unionists among the K to 12 establishment.

Meanwhile, at a typical public high school - The regulation regime. In some cases far more restrictive than at a charter school. I can go on and on about nonsensical rules such as no social gatherings at the school library. Only studying and using the computers is permitted within the time periods of the day. But my point is to stress that Doug’s argument is a pretty lame one.  The public schools have their set of restrictions and programs that could be seen as rigged. Such as the grade 12 diploma is no guarantee that Canadian colleges will accept the grades without testing the students for the 3 Rs. The students are admitted under the condition that they take remediation courses in the 3 Rs. All what should have been taught sometime in K to 12 schools, but the K to 12 crowd was too busy in ensuring students were following and complying to the regulation regime and school policies to be bother with the 3 Rs.

You can leave school at 16 with an early school leaving permit.

Another correction regarding to Doug’s last post. Starting at section 21 one will find a) multiple ways of leaving school early b) there is a slight difference between children under the age of 16 and over children 16 to 18 years old. c) nevertheless, the age is 18

As one goes down from section 21, one will see the many different controls being enacted to keep children 18 and under in school. I even raise my eyebrow over the special treatment of single parents as opposed to the two-parent scenario. Then there is the fines and bonds put up by parents, to force parents to send their children to a public school, or any one of the options. There is even a special provision for employers having students 18 years and younger working for them during school hours.

Education act is a regulation regime on steroids. If a parent is truly having trouble with the local school and school board, they need to hire a lawyer just to prevent the school, school board and education ministry from trampling all over the rights of the parents and students. Of course, what one won’t find are the regulations that keeps the K to 12 crowd in ensuring a quality education for their children.

At least charter schools do one thing better than the public school, the focus is on the student, their achievement and their futures. The public K to 12 is too busy trying to get students and parents to complied with the regulations and edicts of the K to 12 crowd.

Recently the Deans of UBC, Simon Fraser and UVic got together to tell BC parents that they would not be looking at the BC high school exit exam because they found it of no value and no predictive ability when deciding which students to admit to the 3 main BC universities.

Doug,

In reference to your last post regarding the 3 Deans of BC universities chatting to BC parents about the school exit exam, can you please provide a link to this conversation? I would be interested in reading about this.  Thanks.

I cant find one but I know this is the case. I know Paul Shaker formerly SFU quite well.