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Editorial
Most important test has nothing to do with material
Thursday, July 30, 2015
Emphasis on educational test results always bring about objections to instructors "teaching to the test," but along with pressure to improve test results comes the increasing possibility that teachers will fail a test of their own -- ethics and morality.
The Omaha World-Herald was able to obtain a report showing eight serious cheating incidents across the state since 2010, but not detailed specifics about the cases.
Palisade native Matthew L. Blomstedt, education commissioner, invoked an exception to the state's public records law, saying releasing more details would discourage local officials from self-reporting violations.
The report did give examples of what a serious breach would be, such as changing a student's answers, directly coaching a student or providing test answers to students.
Of the eight, three from the 2014-15 school year are still under investigation and those involved in the remaining cases have been disciplined.
One fourth-grade teacher had her teaching certificate suspended for a year for fixing students' writing on the writing test, and four others received public reprimands.
The report listed 107 security breaches since 2010, 29 moderately serious and 70 least serious as well as the eight serious incidents.
"Moderate" might be something like allowing students to use calculators when it's not allowed or an adult reading a reading-test passage to a student. A least serious incident might be leaving up a wall poster describing the writing process in a testing room.
Cheating on a fourth-grade test is one thing, but remember recent incidents when military crews, in charge of launching nuclear missiles, were found to be cheating?
From what we've heard, test cheating has been widespread in the military.
Increasing emphasis on test results for financial gain will only make the practice more common.
Tests at any level are designed to demonstrate one's knowledge of the material, but inherent in every one of them is the examination of an even more important trait: personal integrity, of both the person taking the test and the one administering it.
Without personal integrity, supposed knowledge of the material is meaningless.