James Fox

Many of the TV news specials this last weekend highlighted the sad fact that almost 25% of the SAT-9 tests recently taken by K-12 students here in California will have to be thrown out because of cheating during the taking of the tests.

Many teachers frankly admitted they helped the students by various means, from taking the test early and correcting the answers that were entered incorrectly for the students to study before really taking the test to actually giving them the answers on a seperate piece of paper. They all stated that their supervisor "encouraged" them to help the students cheat.

I'm not surprised. In an earlier column I stated that when a teachers job was on the line, there was no way you could trust that teacher to come in contact with any testing materials or answers before the students started taking the tests. I also said that in a union atmosphere, there was no way one teacher could or would evaluate another teacher's performance in any way that would cause the one being evaluated to lose their job.

The only thing that did surprise me, a little, was that nobody seemed to care -- not even the news media. If you figure how much it cost to test those little rascals, and then devide that by 4 then that's how much money they stole from the taxpayer. A skewed the test results enough to make them unreliable.

The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert taught school for 19 years before entering politics. During a recent interview, he stated that he felt that weekly testing was his most effective tool for receiving feedback from the children he was trying to teach.

The tests allowed him to find out which students were having difficulty and in which areas those difficulties resided. This allowed him to best utilize his personal attentions before the student fell too far behind. They also provided him with the real results of his teaching efforts -- sort of a report card on his own efforts.

I believe a good teacher knows exactly whether they are taking care of the needs of all the students, or whether some are dropping behind. I believe that under current pressure to show rapid improvement in test scores and the monetary considerations involved regarding salaries and bonuses; many potentially good teachers are opting to teach test taking rather than the curriculum. That is why the new tests are evolving and the SAT is being phased out.

Unfortunately, the new tests will soon be prioritized to monopolize class time and usurp curriculum because the states and the Federal government have their heads "where the sun don't shine." They are contracting to spend millions on textbooks, test design, implementation. and grading. The end result will corrupt the classroom, take valuable time away from classroom instruction, and improvement will only be apparent, not actual.

Hastert is right. The testing could be an invaluable tool to insure the student individual assistance and give them the education they need, but there is a better, cheaper way to do the job.

If I was assigned the task, First I'd extend the teachers year by one month, then I'd buy only 3 or 4 copies of the curriculum -- perhaps for example, 7th grade math.

In July the teacher would separate the semester work into individual weeks and run a photo copy of each week's work. for every student. One additional copy for the test programmer. During July the teacher would highlight around 100 pertinent areas of each week's lesson in the programmers copy.

When school starts in September, the teacher issues each student their copy of the week's lesson and starts teaching. Each student needs to know how to use the mouse and keyboard on a computer to take their weekend test. They can take their test at home or at school, but only after they have turned in their week's worksheets on Friday.

It is a simple matter to extract randomly 25 questions from the 100 areas and create a test form that can be transmitted after completion. The individual tests will be received as e-mail, processed, graded, and forwarded to the teacher all automatically by the program.

When the teacher downloads their e-mail, early Monday morning or sooner, the tests will be downloaded already graded ... ready for the teacher's evaluation and then they will know where their priorities lie.

The costs of creating and processing each week's test shouldn't run over $20. The Final exams could be processed the same way; however, the most important factor is to never allow the teachers to select any test questions and keep the programmers identity hidden from faculty and anyone else who has no need to know.