Hundreds Affected At 'Exemplary' High School
This from The Huffington Post:
Hundreds of high school seniors in Texas were caught cheating on their final exams last month. Now, officials at the southeast Houston Clear Creek Independent School District are investigating how around 200 students at Clear Lake High School acquired test answers before the exam in December.Educators at Clear Lake realized that about a third of the exams had identical answers. As a result, administrators nulled all 600 tests, and offered the students two options: take the test again or have their final grade calculated without a final exam grade."We're committed to determine how the test was accessed, how it was distributed, what we can do as a school, as a school district, to ensure our internal processes to make sure that this doesn't happen again," Clear Creek ISD spokesperson Elaina Polson told KTRK.The test was administered over several days. The test on the second day was a different version from the first, but school officials said some students gave answers that corresponded to questions on the test from the day before, KTRK reports.In a letter to parents and students, Principal Debra Dixon wrote that students will receive an "incomplete" grade until they make a decision on whether to skip or retake the exam, Your Houston News reports. Clear Lake High School was rated "Exemplary" in 2009 and 2010...
1 comment:
THis just baffles me as an educator. First you accuse hundreds of students of cheating with the basis of the claim being high frequency of common correct answers on the assessment. So we discount that teachers may have taught content or that at least one of the "hundreds" of students actually learned and performed well on the exam.
If you are going to stand by that claim, then what in the world are you teaching the kids that cheated?
Either you get a second chance or you just get to avoid the assessment all together? What in the heck kind of lesson is that and how is that going to discourage students in the future from not cheating?
After the investigation, my bet is that we find either a teacher sold the answers for financial reward or gave them out in order to protect their job.
Come on folks, what are we as educators doing with these assessments in the bigger picture?
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