Latest revelation of incompetence and dishonesty among professionals: nuclear launch officers cheated on proficiency tests; do we properly evaluate ANYONE?

There are huge numbers of highly competent people in all professions--so why do less competent people so often rise to the top?

Why do our most crucial professions fail to root out incompetence and dishonesty?

For years the evidence has been accumulating that we don't properly evaluate teachers and doctors and police and judges. What I'm wondering now is if ANYONE in ANY job or profession gets effectively evaluated.

Why is this such a widespread problem?

Because politics matters more than competence in almost every venue--not just in schools.

What can we do about it? We can start in our schools, giving real educations, and teaching young people to rely on their abilities instead of manipulating people and situations. And we need to teach the value of honesty and a job well done.


Major General Michael Carey was dismissed for conduct unbecoming
US nuclear launch officers suspended for 'cheating'
Beth McLeod
BBC News
16 January 2014

Thirty-four US Air Force officers in charge of launching nuclear missiles have been suspended over accusations that they cheated in proficiency tests.

The air force said some staff had texted answers to the routine tests to others, while others had known about the cheating but failed to report it.

The ranks involved range from 2nd lieutenants to captains.

The allegations emerged during investigations into alleged drug use by personnel at other bases.

Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James said the cheating had involved officers based at the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, and related to a monthly test all nuclear missile staff must take.

"Some officers did it," she said of the cheating. "Others apparently knew about it, and it appears that they did nothing, or at least not enough, to stop it or to report it."

Illegal gambling

Ms James said it was "absolutely unacceptable behaviour" but that the security of the nuclear programme was not in doubt.

"This was a failure of some of our airmen. It was not a failure of the nuclear mission," she said.

The 34 officers have had their security clearance revoked and the entire team in charge of overseeing missile launches will be re-tested.

A further three officers have been suspended for allegedly possessing recreational drugs.

It is the latest scandal to hit the air force and nuclear missile force.

In August, a nuclear missile unit at Malmstrom failed a safety and security inspection, leading to a senior security officer being relieved of duty.

And in May, it was reported that 17 officers in charge of maintaining nuclear missiles were sidelined over safety violations at Minot Air Force base in North Dakota.

In October, the general in charge of America's long-range nuclear missiles, Maj Gen Michael Carey, was sacked, with officials citing a "loss of trust and confidence".

It later emerged he had engaged in conduct "unbecoming of a gentleman" during a work trip to Russia in July.

Gen Carey's removal came days after the Navy sacked Vice-Adm Tim Giardina, second-in-command of the US Strategic Command, over illegal gambling.

Strategic Command oversees everything from America's land-based nuclear missiles to space operations governing military satellites.

US nuclear programme scandals

October 2013 -
Maj Gen Michael Carey, a two-star general in the 20th Air Force, is sacked after accusations of drunken misconduct
October 2013 -
US Navy Vice-Adm Tim Giardina is removed as deputy head of US Strategic Command and investigated for illegal gambling
August 2013 -
the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base fails a safety test, and its commander is relieved of duty
May 2013 -
The US Air Force temporarily strips 17 officers at Minot base in North Dakota of their nuclear watch authority following a poor grade in a missile launch test.
October 2007 -
The air force relieves several officers of their duties after a B-52 bomber was mistakenly flown across the US loaded with nuclear-armed missiles

Report: U.S. teacher training an "industry of mediocrity"

Report: U.S. teacher training an "industry of mediocrity"
AP
June 18, 2013

The nation's teacher-training programs do not adequately prepare would-be educators for the classroom, even as they produce almost triple the number of graduates needed, according to a survey of more than 1,000 programs released Tuesday.

The National Council on Teacher Quality review is a scathing assessment of colleges' education programs and their admission standards, training and value. The report, which drew immediate criticism, was designed to be provocative and urges leaders at teacher-training programs to rethink what skills would-be educators need to be taught to thrive in the classrooms of today and tomorrow.

"Through an exhaustive and unprecedented examination of how these schools operate, the review finds they have become an industry of mediocrity, churning out first-year teachers with classroom management skills and content knowledge inadequate to thrive in classrooms" with an ever-increasing diversity of ethnic and socioeconomic students, the report's authors wrote.

"A vast majority of teacher preparation programs do not give aspiring teachers adequate return on their investment of time and tuition dollars," the report said.

The report was likely to drive debate about which students are prepared to be teachers in the coming decades and how they are prepared. Once a teacher settles into a classroom, it's tough to remove him or her involuntarily and opportunities for wholesale retraining are difficult — if nearly impossible — to find.

The answer, the council and its allies argue, is to make it more difficult for students to get into teacher preparation programs in the first place. And once there, they should be taught the most effective methods to help students.

"There's plenty of research out there that shows that teacher quality is the single most important factor," said Delaware Gov. Jack Markell, a supporter of the organization's work.

Democrat Markell said: "We have to attract the best candidates" possible.

To accomplish that goal, Markell earlier this year signed into law a measure making admission to education programs more difficult in his state. Potential teachers must either post a 3.0 grade point average or demonstrate "mastery" results on a standardized test such as the ACT or SAT before they're even admitted to a program.

It's an idea the council has applauded and suggests other states should consider to limit the number of candidates entering teacher training programs.

"You just have to have a pulse and you can get into some of these education schools," said Michael Petrilli, a vice president at the conservative-leaning Fordham Institute and a former official in the Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement. "If policymakers took this report seriously, they'd be shutting down hundreds of programs."

Some 239,000 teachers are trained each year and 98,000 are hired — meaning too many students are admitted and only a fraction find work.

Among the council's other findings:

— Only a quarter of education programs limit admission to students in the top half of their high school class. The remaining three quarters of programs allow students who fared poorly in high school to train as teachers...

Cheating scandal: Feds say teachers hired stand-in to take their certification tests

I've been saying for years that we need more highly-capable teachers.

Cheating scandal: Feds say teachers hired stand-in to take their certification tests
By Adrian Sainz
The Associated Press
Nov. 25, 2012

It was a brazen and surprisingly long-lived scheme, authorities said, to help aspiring public school teachers cheat on the tests they must pass to prove they are qualified to lead their classrooms.

For 15 years, teachers in three Southern states paid Clarence Mumford Sr. — himself a longtime educator — to send someone else to take the tests in their place, authorities said. Each time, Mumford received a fee of between $1,500 and $3,000 to send one of his test ringers with fake identification to the Praxis exam. In return, his customers got a passing grade and began their careers as cheaters, according to federal prosecutors in Memphis.

Authorities say the scheme affected hundreds — if not thousands — of public school students who ended up being taught by unqualified instructors.

Mumford faces more than 60 fraud and conspiracy charges that claim he created fake driver's licenses with the information of a teacher or an aspiring teacher and attached the photograph of a test-taker. Prospective teachers are accused of giving Mumford their Social Security numbers for him to make the fake identities.

The hired-test takers went to testing centers, showed the proctor the fake license, and passed the certification exam, prosecutors say. Then, the aspiring teacher used the test score to secure a job with a public school district, the indictment alleges. Fourteen people have been charged with mail and Social Security fraud, and four people have pleaded guilty to charges associated with the scheme.

Mumford "obtained tens of thousands of dollars" during the alleged conspiracy, which prosecutors say lasted from 1995 to 2010 in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee.

Among those charged is former University of Tennessee and NFL wide receiver Cedrick Wilson, who is accused of employing a test-taker for a Praxis physical education exam. He was charged in late October with four counts of Social Security and mail fraud. He has pleaded not guilty and is out of jail on a $10,000 bond. He has been suspended by the Memphis City Schools system.

If convicted, Mumford could face between two and 20 years in prison on each count. The teachers face between two and 20 years in prison on each count if convicted.

Lawyers for Mumford and Wilson did not return calls for comment.

Prosecutors and standardized test experts say students were hurt the most by the scheme because they were being taught by unqualified teachers. It also sheds some light on the nature of cheating and the lengths people go to in order to get ahead.

"As technology keeps advancing, there are more and more ways to cheat on tests of this kind," said Neal Kingston, director of the Center for Educational Testing and Evaluation at the University of Kansas. "There's a never-ending war between those who try to maintain standards and those who are looking out for their own interests."

Cheating on standardized tests is not new, and it can be as simple as looking at the other person's test sheet. The Internet and cell phones have made it easier for students to cheat in a variety of ways. In the past few years, investigations into cheating on standardized tests for K-12 students have surfaced in Atlanta, New York and El Paso, Texas.

Still, most of the recent test-taking scandals involved students taking tests, not people taking teacher certification exams. Cheating scams involving teacher certification tests are more unusual, said Robert Schaeffer, public education director for the National Center for Fair & Open Testing.

Schaeffer notes that a large-scale scandal involving teacher certification tests was discovered in 2000, also in the South. In that case, 52 teachers were charged with paying up to $1,000 apiece to a former Educational Testing Services proctor to ensure a passing grade on teacher certification tests.

Teachers from Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee and Mississippi took tests through Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Ark., in 1998. The college was not accused of wrongdoing.

Educational Testing Services also writes and administers the Praxis examinations involved in the Memphis case. ETS spokesman Tom Ewing said the company discovered the cheating in June 2009, conducted an investigation and canceled scores. The company began meeting with authorities to turn over the information in late 2009, Ewing said.

"These cases are rare, but we consider them to be very serious and something we have to guard against happening for all the honest test-takers, students and teachers," Ewing said.

Ewing said ETS observes test-takers and reviews test scores to try to root out cheaters. ETS also has received anonymous tips that have led them to cheaters, Ewing said.

Prosecutors in the Mumford case say he, the teachers and test-takers used the Internet and the U.S. Postal Service to register and pay for the tests, and to receive payment. The indictment does not say how much he allegedly paid the test-takers.

An experienced educator, Mumford was working for Memphis City Schools when the alleged scam took place. Authorities say Mumford defrauded the three states by making the fake driver's licenses.

"What happens at many testing centers is that a whole bunch of test-takers show up simultaneously, early on a Saturday morning, and the proctors give only a cursory look to the identification," Schaeffer said. "It's not like going through airport security where a guy holds up a magnifying glass and puts our license under ultraviolet light to make sure it has not been tampered with."

Mumford was fired after news of the investigation came out, and others, like Wilson, have been suspended. But at least three teachers implicated in the scandal remain employed with their school district.

Kingston, the university professor, said prospective teachers may not be confident in their knowledge base to pass the test. Or, the cheaters may believe they are smart enough to pass on their own but also know they are poor test takers.

Kingston said his research has shown that cheating on exams is getting more prevalent.

"The propensity to cheat on exams both through college and for licensure and certification exams seems to be increasing over time," said Kingston. "People often don't see it as something wrong."

The pressure of passing the test could make people do things they normally would not do. And it could take a while for authorities and test-taking services to catch up with the cheaters.

"When people come up with a new method for cheating, it takes some time for folks to figure it out, partly because this has been an understudied area in the field of assessment," Kingston said.

Nina Monfredo, a 23-year-old history teacher at Power Center Academy in Memphis, has taken Praxis exams for history, geography, middle school content, and secondary teaching and learning.

Monfredo, who passed all her tests and is not involved in the fraud case, said the exams she took were relatively easy for someone who has a high school education. She said some people use study aids to prepare, but she didn't. And she didn't feel much pressure because it was her understanding that she could take the test again if she did not pass.

"If you feel like you can't pass and you hire someone it means you really didn't know what you were doing," she said. "I think it would be easier to just learn what's on the test."

Testing the teachers

It's rare that I completely agree with David Brooks, but I think he's right that college professors should make an effort to motivate students--particularly during their first two years of study. Basically, colleges need to do the job that high schools failed to do.

Testing the Teachers
By DAVID BROOKS
April 19, 2012

There’s an atmosphere of grand fragility hanging over America’s colleges. The grandeur comes from the surging application rates, the international renown, the fancy new dining and athletic facilities. The fragility comes from the fact that colleges are charging more money, but it’s not clear how much actual benefit they are providing.

Colleges are supposed to produce learning. But, in their landmark study, “Academically Adrift,” Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa found that, on average, students experienced a pathetic seven percentile point gain in skills during their first two years in college and a marginal gain in the two years after that. The exact numbers are disputed, but the study suggests that nearly half the students showed no significant gain in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills during their first two years in college.

This research followed the Wabash Study, which found that student motivation actually declines over the first year in college. Meanwhile, according to surveys of employers, only a quarter of college graduates have the writing and thinking skills necessary to do their jobs.

In their book, “We’re Losing Our Minds,” Richard P. Keeling and Richard H. Hersh argue that many colleges and universities see themselves passively as “a kind of bank with intellectual assets that are available to the students.” It is up to students — 19 and 20 year olds — to provide the motivation, to identify which assets are most important and to figure out how to use them.

Colleges today are certainly less demanding. In 1961, students spent an average of 24 hours a week studying. Today’s students spend a little more than half that time — a trend not explained by changing demographics.

This is an unstable situation. At some point, parents are going to decide that $160,000 is too high a price if all you get is an empty credential and a fancy car-window sticker.

One part of the solution is found in three little words: value-added assessments. Colleges have to test more to find out how they’re doing.

It’s not enough to just measure inputs, the way the U.S. News-style rankings mostly do. Colleges and universities have to be able to provide prospective parents with data that will give them some sense of how much their students learn.

There has to be some way to reward schools that actually do provide learning and punish schools that don’t. There has to be a better way to get data so schools themselves can figure out how they’re doing in comparison with their peers.

In 2006, the Spellings commission, led by then-Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, recommended a serious accountability regime. Specifically, the commission recommended using a standardized test called the Collegiate Learning Assessment to provide accountability data. Colleges and grad schools use standardized achievement tests to measure students on the way in; why shouldn’t they use them to measure students on the way out? Many people in higher ed are understandably anxious about importing the No Child Left Behind accountability model onto college campuses. But the good news is that colleges and universities are not reacting to the idea of testing and accountability with blanket hostility, the way some of the members of the K-12 establishment did.

If you go to the Web page of the Association of American Colleges and Universities and click on “assessment,” you will find a dazzling array of experiments that institutions are running to figure out how to measure learning.

Some schools like Bowling Green and Portland State are doing portfolio assessments — which measure the quality of student papers and improvement over time. Some, like Worcester Polytechnic Institute and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, use capstone assessment, creating a culminating project in which the students display their skills in a way that can be compared and measured.

The challenge is not getting educators to embrace the idea of assessment. It’s mobilizing them to actually enact it in a way that’s real and transparent to outsiders...

My Teacher, the Number One Draft Pick

My Teacher, the Number One Draft Pick
Voice of San Diego
August 19, 2010
by John H Borja

Arne Duncan wants to publicize the individual performance records of teachers. He says he wants to highlight the work of "super performers." The problem with that is he would have to revamp No Child Left Behind to read the performance of individual teachers. That's fine, but he can't count on the cooperation or collaboration of the rest of the staff.

He would also need to find a way to accommodate all those parents who would demand placing their kids with that teacher. They certainly would not want to place their kids with just a "good teacher."...


Maura Larkins comment:

This problem can be solved. Individual teachers could decide whether they want their performance published. In exchange for big bucks, teachers could publicly demonstrate that they deserve the increased pay. I don't think that the worst teachers should be given the same responsibilities as the best teachers. The strongest instructors should have responsibility for several weak teachers (and their classrooms). These master teachers would give instructions to the regular teachers, as well as giving some lessons to students. All schools would get equal proportions of master teachers and regular teachers.

Test scores matter for firemen in in Connecticut but not for teachers in California

Why did New Haven create a formula that relied 60% on a multiple choice test? It's not that I have anything against multiple choice tests. It's just that I can think of jobs where such tests are more important, but are not used at all!

Teachers don't take tests to get raises. But they should.



Supreme Court rules in favor of Conn. firefighters
Group accused city of racial discrimination
Boston Globe
By Joseph Williams

WASHINGTON - A sharply divided US Supreme Court ruled yesterday in favor of a group of white firefighters who accused the city of New Haven of racial discrimination, potentially making it much harder for employers to bring racial balance to the workplace, while handing ammunition to critics of high court nominee Sonia Sotomayor on the eve of her confirmation hearings.


The 5-to-4 ruling struck down the decision of a three-judge federal appeals court panel that included Sotomayor, President Obama’s first Supreme Court pick and the first Latino chosen to serve on the nation’s highest court. Since her nomination, conservative Republicans have attacked Sotomayor’s views on racial preferences and stirring up hot-button questions about whether diversity and background should be considered for a lifetime judicial appointment. If confirmed, Sotomayor would replace retiring Justice David Souter, who agreed with her and sided with New Haven in the case.

Conservative legal analysts were quick to link the ruling, issued on the last day of the court’s session, to Sotomayor.

“It suggests that we have somebody who’s quite out of sync with the right approach to the law in this area,’’ said Roger Clegg, who heads the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank.

At the same time, legal analysts said the court’s decision dramatically shifts the affirmative action landscape. Opponents of race-based preferences cheered the ruling as a major step toward a society that doesn’t place significance on color, while supporters said the majority ignored the ongoing need for remedies to past discrimination, virtually wiping out advances made over the last quarter century.

Marge Baker, executive vice president for policy and program planning at People For the American Way, a liberal advocacy group, said the ruling is more evidence that Chief Justice John Roberts is presiding over “a piecemeal dismantling of really, really important civil rights protections.’’

“It’s going to make it harder for the typical employer to make choices in their employment decisions with an eye toward achieving some kind of racial diversity,’’ said Stephen Vladeck, an American University constitutional law professor. “These choices will invariably be seen as discriminatory against whites. The court has been moving this way for some time.’’

At the heart of the case is Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which makes it illegal to base hiring decisions on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.’’

Although New Haven had tried to make its promotion examination race-neutral, too many whites and Latinos and too few African Americans met the standard for promotion. The city, worried that it would be sued by black firefighters, voided exam results and did not promote any of the white firefighters, even though they scored high enough to advance...

Middle School teachers don't know how to do math

Our kids are falling further behind in math as they go through school.

Education Week writes about the problems that middle-school teachers are having understanding math.

This deficit explains two things:
1) Why teachers aren't doing a good job teaching math;

2) Why teachers don't have a good grasp of how to learn (and teach) concepts that are just beyond their reach. In other words, they don't know how to think. They don't know how to figure things out, or to teach kids how to figure things out. This deficit doesn't just apply to math, but to all the problems facing schools.



EDUCATION WEEK
December 19, 2007

U.S. Middle-Grades Teachers Found Ill-Prepared in Math
By Kathleen Kennedy Manzo
Premium article access courtesy of Edweek.org.

...The preparation of teachers to impart high-level mathematics skills at the middle and high school levels has been gaining attention as U.S. business leaders and policymakers express worries about the ability of schools to train a globally competitive workforce.

Now, in a study released this week, researchers are offering data on teacher education that hint at the extent of the problem...

William H. Schmidt, Michigan State University: “Our future teachers are getting weak training mathematically and are just not prepared to teach the demanding mathematics curriculum we need for middle schools if we hope to compete internationally,” said William H. Schmidt, a Michigan State University researcher who conducted the study.

Another international study, released this week by the American Institutes for Research, looks in part at the intersection between math achievement and science learning, which experts say suggests the broader importance of good math instruction.

In Mr. Schmidt’s study, U.S. teachers scored significantly lower than those in all countries except Mexico on knowledge tests in algebra and functions, which are considered critically important for teaching middle school math...

Moreover, teachers who pursue certification specific to middle school education, as opposed to elementary or secondary programs, are the least primed of all.

The study of U.S. performance on international science tests, by the Washington-based AIR, outlines successively lower rankings of U.S. students on international assessments as they age.

U.S. 4th graders, for example, were ranked higher among participating countries than U.S. 8th graders on the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study tests, while 15-year-olds were outperformed by even more countries on the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA.

“As the science becomes more mathematically inclined as students move to the physical sciences and chemistry, they are going to be at a disadvantage if they don’t have the math background,” said Steven Leinwand, an author of the AIR report...

Mr. Schmidt’s findings confirm the view that more math content, as such, is not the answer.

“There are people who advocate the view that all you need to do is find people who are trained in mathematics and put them in the classrooms, and they will be fine,” Mr. Schmidt said. “... It takes a knowledge not just of mathematics, but how you bring that mathematics to kids.”

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2007/12/19/16middle.h27.html?tmp=737074774