Teachers criticize test monitoring
When Charleston County school officials monitored Sanders-Clyde Elementary School's testing process this year, they deprived students of snacks and breaks and created a stressful and uncomfortable atmosphere, according to teachers' firsthand accounts of the situation.
School district leaders say that's an inaccurate description of what happened, and they denied doing anything that would negatively affect the school's testing process.
Teachers' descriptions of the monitoring somewhat mirror former Principal MiShawna Moore's account of what took place. Both predicted test scores would drop, and they did, dramatically. The State Law Enforcement Division is investigating whether any foul play was involved at the downtown school, which had become a shining star in Charleston for its low-income students' achievement.
Sanders-Clyde staff gave the district a 16-page packet of information after testing ended that chronicled issues they saw. It shows that teachers and other school employees shared many of the same concerns as Moore about the district's method for monitoring.
Previous Stories
Former principal breaks her silence; Moore denies any impropriety on tests, published 10/07/08
"While many students probably performed as well as expected, there are others that likely did not," wrote Corday Borders, a teacher coach. "All of our children deserved the best testing environment possible. We failed to provide that."
"The process they used impacted our schedule, our children's confidence, our teachers' behavior and the very atmosphere within our school," wrote Melissa Kersey, a fifth-grade teacher.
"The testing environment felt hostile, and this made everyone at Sanders-Clyde on edge," wrote Tanya Domin, guidance counselor.
The packet, however, does not explainother issues that triggered the state investigation, specifically a high number of eraser marks on the school's tests in 2007 and improbable one-year gains made by students that same year. Moore, who talked to The Post and Courier last week after repeated requests for an interview, could not explain the eraser marks or large one-year gains.
Moore also could not explain the gap between students' scores on a test similar to PACT and the PACT test itself. On the former test, students' scores were among the weakest in the county, and on the latter, they were among the strongest.
Moore has denied cheating, encouraging cheating or knowing of any cheating at the school.
Janet Rose, the district's executive director of assessment and accountability who oversaw the monitoring process, said she was surprised at teachers' reactions to the monitoring because it was totally unobtrusive.
Her staff deliberately sat in the back or sides of classrooms so they would not distract students, and Rose said no one was pressured to finish tests quickly.
Snacks and breaks were allowed, she said. Rose asked teachers to provide snacks in a more orderly way rather than constantly supplying students with food because that was distracting.
Rose also asked teachers to ensure breaks were more orderly because students were stopping at different times and possibly disrupting others, she said.
District staff didn't go to the school in an effort to try and find something wrong; they were there to validate the school's scores, she said.
"I don't want to make the school look bad," Rose said. "I'm with the school district. I wanted the scores to look good."
The packet contained specific, detailed accounts from seven Sanders-Clyde employees.
Common themes included: discomfort among children with the presence of strangers watching them, interruptions during testing caused by the monitors, limited access to snacks, pressure to continue testing without breaks and not allowing teachers to encourage students to do their best.
One part of the packet even suggests that district officials deliberately sabotaged the school to ensure the awards and recognition that had gone to the school would stop.
"Many Sanders-Clyde staff members are left wondering if the distractions were intentional," the packet read. "Is it possible that individuals had personal agendas that included proving that the poor African-American child on Charleston's East Side could not have possibly produced the improvements documented over the past five years?"
The packet does not include concerns about students on medication having to test immediately rather than waiting for their medicine to kick in. That was a key concern of Moore expressed earlier last week. Instead, teachers express concerns that testing often was delayed as a result of the district.
The last piece of the packet has comments from Moore, who foreshadowed the school's poor test score results.
"How do we prepare for what is to come and tell our side of the story? Perhaps we are to take the high road and say nothing," she wrote.
Reach Diette Courrégé at 937-5546 or dcourrege@postandcourier.com.
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Comments
GermanyXO (anonymous) says...
As this story develops, it has given my board and I insight into how dependent these students may have become on the teachers in their classrooms. Our PACT is used to measure each student's individual level of academic achievement. It shouldn't matter if a student excels academically or not--that student shouldn't have a problem with whomever is standing in the room during a test. Tests are designed to test one's individual capacity to answer a question. This investigation revealed just how badly tests at Sanders-Clyde Elementary School had become a group effort--students AND teachers. This behavior must stop. Seriously, students must not be taught to expect teacher assistance on every test. What is going to happen when these students test for college? Are these same teachers going to hold their hands? These tests are written by teachers and professors who know what is taught at each grade level, so if the teachers teaching strategies are truly working in favor of their students, then those students should be able to perform. Teaching at Sanders-Clyde must commit to fundamentals of teaching with integrity and maintaining standards. Ultimately, the school's failure to uphold testing standards failed the students.
October 12, 2008 at 6:25 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Teach7775 (anonymous) says...
You've got to be kidding me... PLease quit trying to make excuses and cover for Moore...
October 12, 2008 at 6:26 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ironhorse (anonymous) says...
How many times will I read about a liar lying?
Moore and her three supporters need to give up the fight to win public opinion.
October 12, 2008 at 6:43 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
karmann (anonymous) says...
So, snacks and attaboys will raise test scores? There are too many seemingly unanswerable questions that are coming up.
October 12, 2008 at 7:56 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
jammer (anonymous) says...
it's a failed school full of failing students, it can all be blamed on the institution that these kids depended on to actually try to teach them to get ready for real life
that school/system is broke, they should fire all of them and bulldoze that school down... build a new one that doesn't have all those bad memories and stigma to it
then put in a new competent staff that will actually teach these kids how to learn
what's happened to our school system is a shame and a disaster.... total revamp...
October 12, 2008 at 8:19 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
clisby (anonymous) says...
Hmmm, wonder why the snacks and the breaks and the encouragement and wonderful testing atmosphere didn't result in high MAP scores at Sanders-Clyde?
If the PACT scores themselves weren't enough to make people suspicious, this 16-page CYA document would do the trick, for sure.
Clisby
October 12, 2008 at 8:47 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
buzzinlikealdrin (anonymous) says...
How did I ever make it through school without the teachers giving me SNACKS throughout the day????!
October 12, 2008 at 8:59 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
shoelaces (anonymous) says...
Jammer:
I know. It's always the fault of the teachers. I am sure the fact that many of these kids don't have two parents at home let alone one decent one. I know it has nothing to do with their upbringing or lack of upbringing at home. Blame it on those of us who have the daunting task of teaching a child who may be 2-3 years below grade level when they enter our room. After all, we teachers ARE miracle workers.....I am wainting on my sainthood right now.
Ashley Cooper:
You just made what I believe to be a negative comment about the teaching profession. It felt like a slap in my face. Nice...
As for MAP testing you have to understand THAT test. A student starts the computerized test. They begin to get answers correct so the computer gives them higher level questions. When they start to get questions wrong the computer brings them back down to whatever level they are capable of answering. I have seen PACT tests since they came out. It's impossible not to notice the kinds of questions asked. I can read right over the shoulders of kids on computers. We aren't told not to. The questions on these two tests ARE different from one another.
As for snacks, I didn't always provide a break or snack halfway through testing but I do now. It may or may not matter but anything to provide a comfortable testing atmosphere must lower the stress levels and give the kids a chance to recharge even if only for a few minutes.
ALL OF YOU....WHEN YOU WALK THE WALK OF THE TEACHER THEN YOU CAN TALK THE TALK. OTHERWISE, BACK OFF.
October 12, 2008 at 10:19 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ColdBud (anonymous) says...
46 years old and I've never taken a test where we had snacks and breaks in the middle of the test. My, how times have changed. I can't see where snacks and breaks would affect the scores one way or another unless they were some how part of a cheating scheme.
Taking all of the articles about this issue in to account, it appears that cheating, on a fairly large scale, did occur.
October 12, 2008 at 10:27 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Diamondhead (anonymous) says...
Shoelaces:.
You hit the nail on the head in your the first paragraph. Once the family breaks down I'm afraid it has a domino effect throughout our society.
Education starts with the family, the student, a teacher, some books and a classroom. It worked a couple of hundred years ago with the founding of this nation and we produce some brilliant people without the city, state and federal bureaucracies.
October 12, 2008 at 10:44 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
holly123 (anonymous) says...
If these kids are coming from such broken backgrounds ( and I believe they are) why isn't the district doing something to change the way they teach them? In districts all across the country they are adding choices and bussing children based on title1. They are trying to keep schools at a level of 30% poverty because thats what works. If you put all poor kids with broken families in a school then what can we expect? Not much, I'm afraid. Teachers should rally around this idea if they really want to help these children.
October 12, 2008 at 11:32 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
coolfreaknbeans (anonymous) says...
I understand on the surface the snack thing may seem silly. But you have to look a little deeper. Alot of kids don't start off their day with a healthy breakfast,some with no breakfast at all. I see no problems with providing a healthy snack during a test break or starting their day off with a good breakfast before testing. I think it helps. But I'm not saying that there wasn't any shady business at this school. I can also see where having strangers being the monitors in classes would be nerve racking and distracting. I remember being in school and "outsiders" would come in to do evaluations or whatever,the kids would be nervous. I want to clarify,I'm not saying there wasn't cheating or wrongdoing however.
October 12, 2008 at 11:39 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
holly123 (anonymous) says...
Title1 kids are served a healthy breakfast at school every day. They just have to get there on time.
October 12, 2008 at 11:49 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Riptide (anonymous) says...
I think it would be a lot easier and less expensive to fix the family than to employ another person with a million dollar grant from the federal government to study the problem as to why kids are failing in school. I realize federal grants and bureaucracies employs people but it is also a burden on the taxpayers.
October 12, 2008 at 12:02 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
holly123 (anonymous) says...
The problem has been studied ad nauseum. The solution is to integrate the schools. The way to integate the schools is to attract middle class children with a powerful choice program, not the Mickey Mouse choice plan that McGinley has proposed. When these children are exposed to middle class children the behavior problems lessen because the behavior is modeled by better behaved kids. It will take generations to "fix" a problem that has taken generations to devolve into what it is today.
October 12, 2008 at 12:11 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
clisby (anonymous) says...
shoelaces: I do understand how the MAP test works - it's an adaptive test. Yes, it is different from the PACT test. For any individual child, I wouldn't be surprised to see a difference in the results. However, it is clearly way outside the ordinary for an entire school to score very low on MAP and very high on PACT. That has nothing to do with my opinion or knowledge of MAP - it's just a fact. Most CCSD schools *don't* show that big a gap in performance on the two tests. If you can offer an explanation for why Sanders-Clyde would be so far outside the norm when you compare test results, I'd love to hear it.
October 12, 2008 at 12:29 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
she_crab (anonymous) says...
Snacks, breaks, four-course meals, sofas, lazy-boys with climate control...any number of comforts could be given to these students and it WILL NOT make a difference in their test scores. The root of the problem is parents who do not care. The WEAK will always blame others for their problems. No amount testing or analysis is going to give a helpful solution. The more you give, the more they take.
October 12, 2008 at 12:33 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
holly123 (anonymous) says...
She crab, Don't ya think our esteemed CCSD should have atleast talked with a few of these little Einstiens when those test scores started going up at those alarming rates. I've seen and spoken with thos kids on play grounds and I never could have guessed that they were scoring with the likes of Buist kids. Hey, CCSD! Ever hear the old saying "if it sounds to good to be true"? Why did you all never check it out after Sandi Engleman complained and the D20 constituant board warned you! It was a conveient LIE.
October 12, 2008 at 12:50 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Riptide (anonymous) says...
holly123...
I seriously doubt intergrading kids is the solution either. A kid growing without a father to discipline him and keeping him on the straight and narrow is the problem here. When I was disruptive in class, the vise principal of the school need only to say one thing to me " do you want me to call your father". That alone got my attention and was the key to my behavior in school. I did not want my father involved.
Putting disruptive kids into a middleclass school will not do anything. What's that old adage:one bad apple will ruin the barrel. It has nothing to do with race, class, or gender but everything about attitude. You remove the father from the equation to correct the attitude of that kid then all the money on social theories won't amount to much except employ the liberal intelligentsia. Again you need to fix the family.
October 12, 2008 at 12:53 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Carolina_Politics (anonymous) says...
[...I'm not going to convict Principal Moore here. The details are still too vague to be able to adequately determine exactly what happened with these test scores, but all circumstantial evidence points to something very fishy going on at this school. You have a school with piss poor test performance year after year. Then suddenly one year scores shoot through the roof and the school is dubbed a huge success, and then the next year they are back to piss poor again....]
http://www.carolinapoliticsonline.com...
October 12, 2008 at 12:58 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
willie08 (anonymous) says...
Let's just let them all snort their riddlin during breaks, and you'll see that they won't be so easily distracted!
But make sure to (as the Post & Courier cleverly states)
have them, "test immediately rather than waiting for their medicine to kick in."
(sarcasm)
Oh what will these poor children's lives be like when they have to fill out a job application, but need to wait for their medicine to "kick in."
Yeah, they tried convincing my parents I should take riddlin too. Thank God my mother had better sense than that.
October 12, 2008 at 1:16 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
coolfreaknbeans (anonymous) says...
holly123- Not necessarily true. My child rides the bus to school and I've sent her with money to have lunch at school and theres no time for her to get breakfast. I was appalled. The only way for them to have breakfast at her school and have time to eat is for parents to take them in early.
October 12, 2008 at 1:24 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
holly123 (anonymous) says...
Carolina Politics,
It didn't take 1 year. It went on for 3 years! CCSD had THREE years to check out the scores as they were rising and did not. CCSD is only focusing on the last year to hide the fact that it did NOTHING for 3. Look at the scores on the education oversite website.
October 12, 2008 at 1:29 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
coolfreaknbeans (anonymous) says...
BTW- I meant breakfast at school,not lunch.
October 12, 2008 at 1:43 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
jammer (anonymous) says...
shoelaces you didn't seem to notice that I didn't blame any of the teachers at all
I specifically left out saying anything bad about the teachers on purpose, it's the system that's broken... not necessarily the teachers, some are good but many are as worthless as a tick on a boar's a*s ... lol
if your hands are tied because the institutions won't allow you to discipline or kick the troubled kids out, and if you're forced to teach so many untruths for PC reasons then there's only so much you can do
we the parents are fighting back and it's showing up all over this area as well as others, we're removing our kids as fast as we can from these incompetent liberal idiots
most of us are fed up and are NOT waiting on the govt school systems to continue their downward spiral
who should decide what and how our kids are taught?? the parents... obviously not the govt as is proved by their continued failures
October 12, 2008 at 1:50 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ColdBud (anonymous) says...
Posted by holly123 on October 12, 2008 at 12:11 p.m.: The solution is to integrate the schools. The way to integate the schools is to attract middle class children with a powerful choice program, not the Mickey Mouse choice plan that McGinley has proposed. When these children are exposed to middle class children the behavior problems lessen because the behavior is modeled by better behaved kids.
I no longer have children of school age. If I did, I would not want them to have to teach children with behavioral problems the proper way to behave. I sent my children to school to learn, not to teach. If you want my kids to teach, you need to pay them. I also have no interest in paying the extra cost of shipping kids all over town trying to achieve a 30% poverty rate in each school. These are both prime examples of short sidedness in that they try and fix a problem by addressing symptoms of the problem instead of attacking the problem itself. I'd rather someone step up and force the parents to teach the kids how to behave (WOW! What a novel idea!!!!). Forcing society to take care of those that refuse to take care of themselves is exactly why we are in the financial and moral dilemma that we are now facing.
October 12, 2008 at 4:11 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
commonsence (anonymous) says...
holly is correct about this being a multi-year problem. Ask any one of the current or past members of Dr. Rose's staff and they will tell you that this issue has been batted around the Academic Council meetings for at least 2-3 years. MGJ refused to address it (probably because of her job search prospects). Time for NJM to come clean about the whole picture...
October 12, 2008 at 5:22 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
WSM (anonymous) says...
"ALL OF YOU....WHEN YOU WALK THE WALK OF THE TEACHER THEN YOU CAN TALK THE TALK. OTHERWISE, BACK OFF."
My only comments in all of this madness is directed to the above attitude. You are not only a human being, but a public employee who is subject to public scrutiny when a failing public institution continues to produce functionally uneducated members of society. What makes you think that you are so far above the "Great Unwashed?"
I have had my fill of everything from "the culture doesn't embrace education" to "if we made school breakfast mandatory." What has it accomplished? NOTHING!!
My solutions:
1. Meet minimum standards or get left behind.
2. Misbehaviour will NOT be tolerated. Kick the lil' bastards out that can't act half civilized, and let the parent deal with it. That will force disciplining.
3. Focus more on READING, Math, basic sciences, American, S.C. and World History, and bring back Economics, Government, and Logic.
October 12, 2008 at 9:52 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ColdBud (anonymous) says...
Good Post WSM.
October 12, 2008 at 10:16 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ParkCircle4Ever (anonymous) says...
There are plenty of Title I/High Poverty schools in CCSD, many of which are in north Chuck... a spike like this should warrant immediate investigation. I proctored at a North charleston School last spring during PACT. The snacks, 'positive behavior incentives' and breaks were nothing but a distraction, especially when 4th graders are supposed to be answering ridiculous questions that I had to think twice about and writing essays. A retired teacher who also volunteered said that the questions she saw (er I mean didn't see because you aren't supposed to see any questions)would have been given to 6th or 7th graders in her day...
October 13, 2008 at 11:27 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
charlestonpride (anonymous) says...
Snack time interupted? There is no "snack time". The students are allowed to eat every minute of the day all day long if they want to. The interuption was...it was time to take a test with out eating! The noises coming from the stomping and moving furniture around from the 2nd floor was very distracting during test time.
Ms. Moore has NOT been charged with ANYTHING....She seems to be jumping to conclusions about possible....being guilty. She is the one who can't sleep or eat. Sled has NOT charged her with anything!!!!
October 13, 2008 at 3:31 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
mlm (anonymous) says...
Shoelaces said, "ALL OF YOU....WHEN YOU WALK THE WALK OF THE TEACHER THEN YOU CAN TALK THE TALK. OTHERWISE, BACK OFF."
Shoelaces, you assume too little and know even less of those you assail.
October 13, 2008 at 6:53 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
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