Korean Job Discussion Forums

[madoka]

We've heard about teachers going to all sorts of lengths to challenge and inspire students. Surely you've seen stories or personal examples of those who offer up themselves for dunking booths, head shaving, hair dying, and all sorts of other fun antics if students meet x, y, or z goal. I've never, however, seen a teacher willing to do something quite as drastic as what a California teacher recently did.

Stanley Richards, a teacher at San Francisco's City Arts and Technology High School, told students he would get a tattoo of the school's former vice principal, Paul Kho, if they raised their standardized test scores significantly. While they were expected to raise scores by 7 points, he said he'd get inked if they raised them by 50. With the bar set so high, he never thought he'd have to do it.

He was wrong.

They did it, and he did too. He revealed his new tat -- a picture of Kho as a samurai warrior with a medallion bearing the test score around his neck -- to them right before school let out for the summer. He calls it a "memorial to the students' achievement," and to his time spent at the school. I call it one incredibly dedicated teacher, and I can only hope my children encounter some like him (tattoos or not) during their school careers.

Pic and video here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2011227/Inked-Teacher-gets-tattoo-vice-principal-calf-losing-bet-students.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

[madoka]

Campare that to what just happened in Georgia:

Georgia investigators have found evidence of cheating at close to 80 percent of the Atlanta schools where they examined the 2009 administration of state tests.

The result was inflated test scores that led to thousands of children being denied the remedial education they were entitled to, state officials said Tuesday in announcing the results of the investigation. More than 80 educators have so far confessed to misconduct. Investigators said the cheating dated back to at least 2001.

The 48,000-student Atlanta district has been under a cloud for the past two years, ever since an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis found improbably high results on the state�s Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, or CRCT. Georgia uses those tests to determine whether schools have made adequate yearly progress under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Based in part on what appeared to be Atlanta�s strong results on standardized tests, Superintendent Beverly Hall has been hailed as a model for urban superintendents. In 2009, she was honored by the American Association of School Administrators as superintendent of the year. But amid the investigations and instability on the school board, she announced that she would not be seeking a contract extension, and left the district this June after 12 years.

Under Hall, the district investigated the allegations and said there was no evidence of cheating. Then-Gov. Sonny Perdue called the district�s own investigation �woefully inadequate� and appointed an independent investigator. About a month before she stepped down, Hall acknowledged in a videotaped farewell that the results of the report would be �alarming.�

The full report is not yet available. The governor�s office released an outline of the investigation, saying that the evidence allows for �no other conclusion other than widespread cheating.�

The investigation states that 178 teachers and principals in the Atlanta Public Schools System were involved in cheating. Of the 178, 82 confessed to this misconduct.

Six principals refused to answer questions on the grounds that they might incriminate themselves, which, �under civil law is an implied admission of wrongdoing,� the report states. �These principals, and 32 more, either were involved with, or should have known that, there was test cheating in their schools.� In all, the investigators reported finding cheating in 44 of the 56 schools they examined

[recessiontime]

[tanklor1]

Awesome!

[Gorf]