----- Original Message -----
From: "Erich Wallner"
To: "Lehrerforum"
Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2002 6:31 PM
Subject: LF: Lehrer unter Druck


> DER STANDARD
> Dienstag,11. Juni 2002, Seite 8 Ausland
>
>
> "Lehrerin hat falsche Antwort wegradiert"
> Britische Lehrer erschwindeln bessere Noten in nationalen Examen
>
> Großbritannien/Wien - Britische Lehrer schwindeln bei staatlichen
> Abschlussexamen, indem sie ihren Schülern beim Beantworten von
> Prüfungsfragen helfen oder falsche Antworten nachträglich korrigieren.
> Das berichtet die Londoner Tageszeitung The Guardian.
>
> "Meine elfjährige Enkelin hat soeben ihre Abschlussprüfungen in der
> Volksschule gemacht", berichtet Margaret Jacobs, pensionierte Lehrerin
> aus
> London: "Als ich sie fragte, wie es denn gegangen sei, sagte sie: "Ganz
gut
> eigentlich, Oma. Die Lehrerin hat uns zuerst die Fragen erklärt, und
> wenn wir was falsch gemacht haben, hat sie's ausradiert, damit wir es
> hinterher besser machen könnten."
>
> Das Ausradieren falscher Antworten, Durcharbeiten von exakt auf die
> Prüfungen zugeschnittenem Lehrstoff, ja sogar Auswendiglernen der
Antworten
> von seiten der Schüler nach Bekanntgabe der Fragen durch ihre Lehrer
> seien nur einige der Praktiken, die ihr in den letzten fünf Jahren -
> seit Beginn der Bildungsoffensive der Labour-Regierung - zu Ohren
> gekommen seien, bestätigt eine andere Volksschullehrerin mit
> Berufserfahrung aus ganz England. "Lehrer", erklärt sie, "stehen bei
> allgemeinen Budgetnöten unter dem Druck, die vorgegebenen
> Leistungsstandards zu erfüllen".
>
>
> Volksschulniveau
>
> Die Lese- und Schreibfähigkeit von sieben Millionen Menschen in
> Großbritannien und Nordirland befindet sich derzeit auf
> Volksschulniveau
> (Einwohnerzahl: fast 60 Millionen). Die Regierung Tony Blair will daher
den
> Schulen Anreiz für eine bessere Performance geben. Staatliche Schulen,
> die

> ihre Resultate bei national vorgegebenen Abschlussexamen verbessern,
werden
> in ein Ranking empfehlenswerter Schulen aufgenommen. Wer den Eintrag
> nicht schafft, muss um Schüler und Personal kämpfen.
>
> Schulen, die besonders gut abschneiden, können außerdem punktuelle
> Förderungen nach einem Cash-Bonus-System bekommen, das Lehrern und
> Schulpersonal zugute kommt. Im Vorjahr wurden 60 Millionen Pfund (rund
> 93 Millionen Euro) verteilt. Privatschulen sind von Ranking und
> Cash-Bonus-Förderungen ausgenommen.
>
> Noch scheint sich Schwindel auf Volksschulen zu beschränken. Denn
> einzig
bei
> den Voksschulabschlusprüfungen (SATs) bekommen die Lehrer die
> Prüfungspapiere einen Monat vor dem Examen zugesandt - im Unterschied
> zu GCSE (Mittlere Reife) und A-Levels (Matura), wo die Schüler die
> Kuverts
mit
> den Fragen in der Prüfung selbst aufreißen müssen. (east)

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Der folgende Text mag ein paar Jahre alt sein (Clinton!), doch er fügt sich nahtlos an das oben Gesagte an:


When Teachers Are Cheaters


By Barbara Kantrowitz & Daniel McGinn


This spring has been a season of embarrassment for the nation's public schools. In suburban Potomac, Md., an elementary-school principal resigned last month after parents complained their children were coached to give the right answers on state tests. In Ohio, state officials are investigating charges of cheating by teachers at a Columbus elementary school that was recently praised by President Clinton for raising test scores. And in New York City, more than four dozen teachers and administrators from 30 schools stand accused of urging their students to cheat on various standardized city and state tests.

It's bad enough when kids get kicked out for cheating. But as the school year ends, an alarming number of teachers and principals face charges of fixing the numbers on high-stakes tests that determine everything from whether an individual kid gets promoted to an entire district's annual budget. Although there are no firm statistics, school officials agree that the problem has become much worse in the past few years as more states have adopted testing as a way to audit national and state educational standards. In theory, the exams ensure that teachers pass on the right lessons. The problem is that high scores--not high standards--have become the holy grail. In some parts of the country, educators can get bonuses of as much as $25,000 if they raise their students' scores. In other places, school officials can lose their jobs if their students don't produce the right numbers. And the repercussions extend beyond the classroom, even affecting real-estate values. Scores have become "the only exchangeable currency we have any more about whether schools are bad or good," says Joseph Renzulli, director of the National Center on the Gifted and Talented at the University of Connecticut.

Even the best tests are designed with much more modest goals. They're supposed to be diagnostic tools--to help pinpoint gaps in learning. They don't provide a full picture of a child's--or a school's--accomplishments any more than a single blood test can supply all the data a doctor needs to treat a patient. And they can have a significant error rate, says George Madaus, a professor of education and public policy at Boston College. "You can't use these tests by themselves to make any decisions," he says. That hasn't stopped policymakers from trying to use tests as a quick fix for all that ails public schools. And the pressure quickly trickles down to principals and teachers--who are supposed to be role models. No one's condoning cheating, but test critics see it as the inevitable side effect of score mania. "Cheating is simply one more piece of a dangerous fallout from the politicians and bureaucrats placing too much emphasis on standardized tests," says Peter Sacks, the author of "Standardized Minds," a critical look at the testing movement.

In the worst cases, teachers or administrators are accused of out-and-out fraud. In Columbus, for example, students say adult tutors actually told them the right answers--a charge the school's principal denies. Last year a Texas grand jury indicted the Austin Independent School District on charges of criminal tampering. In what was believed to be the country's first prosecution of a school district, investigators alleged that low-scoring students were excluded from the test, thus raising the overall results. One official resigned, denying wrongdoing, and the district avoided a trial through plea bargaining.

In other cases, teachers are alleged to have coached students by having them study earlier versions of an exam. Sometimes teachers have kids practice questions that are almost identical to ones that will be on a test. That's not technically cheating, but it isn't real teaching either. Lorrie Shepard, an education professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder, uses the example of third graders preparing for a math test that the teachers know will contain a question asking kids to circle one third of a set of three umbrellas. The kids practice by circling one third of a set of three ice-cream cones. They'll probably get the right answer on the test, but are they learning the broader point about fractions? "Can they even circle two thirds of the ice-cream cones?" Shepard asks. "What about two thirds of nine Popsicle sticks?"

This sort of "teaching to the test" is a far more serious threat than outright cheating, according to some experts. Renzulli calls this the "ram, remember, regurgitate" curriculum, a new version of the three R's. "It's nonsense content," says Linda McNeil, a professor of education at Rice University and author of "Contradictions of School Reform: The Educational Costs of Standardized Tests." In Texas, she says, some kids spend months doing nothing but preparing for the test. "It's like you're mentally teaching kids to hit the delete key," she says. "You're training them to forget. The real cheating is of a solid academic curriculum."

Other educators worry that all the publicity about cheating could trigger more than just a backlash against tests. "We may find ourselves in a position where the standards movement may die, and I think that would be a tragedy," says Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association. A better solution is to de-emphasize tests and focus on more sophisticated assessments like student portfolios and classroom performance. That may not entirely eliminate cheating, but it certainly would make it a lot harder to play with the numbers.

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"Teaching to the test" -- ein Schlagwort, das wir uns merken müssen?

Soeben etwas mitgenommen von einem 12-Stunden-Matura-Marathon zurückgekehrt

K Forstner



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