Is HISD serious about ending TAKS cheating?
Rick Casey has an excellent column questioning HISD's seriousness about rooting out and then preventing TAKS cheating. He lists the bonuses given to district administrators and teachers for good TAKS results, including a fat $60,000 bonus for new Superintendent Abe Saavedra. Casey says the bonuses total up to about $7 million.
That should send up HUGE warning flags -- rewarding for good TAKS scores. Quite an incentive to fudge things, you know? Seven million dollars could be much better spent funding new textbooks, school supplies, quality teacher training, perhaps even TAKS cheating prevention. Rewarding administrators for good TAKS results when they aren't even on the front lines of teaching students is insulting to hardworking teachers.
In his column, Casey explores the reason for HISD's inability to effectively deal with TAKS cheating. He thinks it boils down to the massive size of the district and the lack of oversight:
But school trustees, part-time and unpaid, have only one source of in-depth information on the district's operations: the executive whose job, salary and bonus depend on their good impressions.
HISD is far too large and important an endeavor for a governing arrangement designed for small, 19th century communities.
He's right. This is where I would argue that the larger the school district, the more ineffective it is, except at being an employer. And that's not what a school district should be about. In my perfect world, large school districts would be broken up, so that communities could truly take back control of the schools in their own neighborhoods. Smaller communities understand the needs of their own students, and would have much fewer layers of bureaucrats sucking up valuable taxpayer dollars that should go to the students and the teachers.
But it's not my perfect world. So Casey suggests this idea:
And it may be that a change in state law would be required for trustees to set up a well-funded and well-staffed internal auditing arm reporting to them.
It would definitely be a good start.
UPDATE: The Chronicle has a terrific editorial on the issue of HISD's response to TAKS cheating:
Educational experts question whether a longtime district veteran with friendships in the bureaucracy is the right person to head up such an effort. The University of North Carolina's Gregory Cizek told the Chronicle's Jason Spencer that school districts who police themselves rather than hiring outside security consultants are setting up potential conflicts of interest.
The new superintendent says he does not intend to abolish the district practice of giving financial bonuses to teachers, principals and administrators for good student test performance. Some argue those cash incentives provide the motive for rigging scores.
While Saavedra promises real change in the district's efforts to enforce integrity in its testing, he said the same thing a year and a half ago when the focus was on Sharpstown High School. Back then he promised that the district would monitor accountability data more closely. According to HISD trustee Kevin Hoffman, "the board assumed that some of these controls were in place, and it's been made real clear to us of late that they are not."
Last week Saavedra explained the district's failure to keep that pledge with, "I wasn't superintendent then."
It's an excuse that he can only use once.
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 01/09/05 08:20 PM | Print |
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