CHARLESTON ADMINISTRATORS MAY HAVE DOCTORED PACT SCORES
If you can’t win, change the rules. That’s the approach of State Schools Superintendent Jim Rex and his “Goodbye Minimally Adequate” campaign to magically fix South Carolina’s decrepit public education system by changing two words in the state constitution.
And it appears to have rubbed off on the administration at Sanders-Clyde Elementary School in Charleston County. Only in their case it’s, “if your Palmetto Achievement Challenge Test scores are mind-numbingly low, change the numbers.”
The Voice for School Choice blog has picked up on a story that the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is investigating the school over allegations that former principal MiShawna Moore (pictured above) doctored the PACT scores, which suspiciously skyrocketed during her four-year tenure before plummeting again this year.
The Charleston Post and Courier reports:
By 2007, the school outscored state and district averages, far exceeding the progress of schools with students from similar backgrounds. Educators hailed Moore as a model for other principals, the community showered her school with praise, and federal and state awards went to the school in recognition of its achievement. Moore was so successful that she was asked to lead a second downtown school, Fraser Elementary, to duplicate her accomplishments.
This year, the school’s PACT results fell sharply in every subject and at every grade level. [...]
Last year, in most subjects, 80 to 90-plus percent of its students were at least minimally prepared for the next grade, according to PACT results. This year, about half of students were unprepared for the next grade in most subjects.
Last year, 96 percent of its third-grade students scored at or above their grade level in math. This year, 47 percent scored at or above their grade level.
A typical one-year fluctuation in a small school might be 10 percentage points, the average at Sanders-Clyde was 31. The biggest drop was 49.
It’s funny that the big government, leftist “educrats” have gone around trumpeting the “wave of progress” on the education front, only to get busted fudging test scores.
What’s not funny is that our kids are getting left in in the dust by these status quo defenders.
Oh, and Tar Heel State residents will be happy to know Moore is now an assistant superintendent in Halifax County, N.C. Any guesses about how much their scores will jump next year? I’ll set the over-under at 300 percent.
(Photo: Charleston Post and Courier)
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 11th, 2008 at 6:05 pm and is filed under Around the state. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Schools are following the lead of the direction of this country. Every government agency changes the rules when they can’t win; please do not pick on schools.
Education is way too important to fight about. Tests don’t truly measure success.
I don’t have the answers here but I will call your attention to every single agency and elected person changing the rules when they feel threatened about ” not winning”.
What all that means ought to be the subject of it’s own article.
loulou,
Here is a test for you, which synonym most accurately describes you?
Main Entry: loulou
Part of Speech: noun
Synonyms: ament, blockhead, bonehead, booby, cretin, dimwit, dolt, dope, dork, dullard, dunce, fathead, fool, imbecile, jerk, moron, nitwit, simpleton, stupid, twit, idiot
SCH,
Great prototype test for future S.C. school testing. Multable-choice with no wrong answers.
And none of the educrats picked up on the “sudden” increase? Where are these people’s brains?
To Hotline…
You left out what describes me…. HONEST