When HS in your town cheats your child

chocoholic · May 3, 2007, 12:14pm

NJ-mother,

just curious, did you call the Board of Ed. or how did you find out that is is actually a violation?

We too have the situation where tests are handed to the students for a brief look, and then collected, because the teachers want to re-use the tests. I don’t get this. Is a kid supposed to see what she did wrong in those few minutes? Some teachers will actually go over the entire test in class, while the students have the returned tests in their hands, so at least the student understands why they got a certain grade, and how to do the problem next time.

Treetopleaf · May 3, 2007, 12:59pm

NJ_mother, I feel for your situation. Maybe your kid can self-study the topic based on the text? I’d complain to the school board, or at least threaten to, if the supervisor won’t respond to your requests.

Re: tests not being handed back for more than a brief look, this appears to be standard procedure to avoid cheating. It’s apparently even true for the homework assignments - answers are done on the board only. I think this is affecting my kid’s learning and have suggested that answers to the math problems ought to be provided so the kids learn the math.

chocoholic · May 3, 2007, 1:16pm

Not handing tests back is mostly about not having to make new tests. It takes a lot of time. And I am the first one to say that teachers are underpaid and unappreciated in general.

That said, their actual hours of work, in our school at least, are 9:00 - 3:00 which includes a 50 minute lunch plus a 50 minute prep.

NJ_mother · May 4, 2007, 11:38am

Chocoholic, I found out by asking a supervisor. Teachers in much of NJ are not underpaid. In northern NJ, they make more than DH and I do and we are med school faculty with PhDs. Our friends who are middle school teachers in a poorer district than ours make enough to 1) pay the alternative tax; 2) pay for college (private for 1 and out of state public for the other) for 2 kids, neither of whom qualified for scholarships; 3) pay for luxury snorkeling vacations twice a year. We don’t pay the alternative tax (thank G-d), don’t go on vacations regularly, paid for half of in-state costs for D#1 (loans for the rest) and are a bit panicked at the cost of dream school for D#2 (private; in-state public will not suit her for a variety of reasons) though we have saved over the years in a 529 plan.
One of my med students was married to a HS physics teacher (they went to college together) - he was making $90K a year 7 - 8 years ago (we neither of us make that much now!). And teachers work 9 months a year; we work 12 months a year (teachers have 3 months of vacation, we have 3 weeks). Teachers can take 2nd jobs summers; we are forbidden by law (we’re at state med school) from moonlighting. Teachers’ days are shorter than ours (our average is 10 hours at the med school plus evenings and weekends running experiments, grading papers or exams, writing grants, writing papers, preparing lectures, reviewing journals articles or grants, committee work, …).
Treetopleaf, I hope you are joking. Self-taught algebra II, trigonometry, chemistry, heck just get rid of teachers altogether in that case. Then who needs college?

ReneeV · May 4, 2007, 3:03pm

Wow, my first thought was “I’m moving to NJ!” I prefer not to go into precise details about my finances, but I have a 195-day contract (10 months), work many extra hours each week (not mandatory, my choice-but that’s what it takes to do a good job), have a full-time working spouse and one child at home, we rent, and our FAFSA EFC is a bit over $20,000, which will be very tough for us. I do realize that you have high taxes and other living expenses there also. But if your teachers are making that kind of money, you should be able to expect more than you are getting. Sounds like you have something to go on now with what you’ve learned about the district policy.

Your mention of your daughter’s interest in music caught my attention. What is her specialty(ies)? My daughter is a very good pianist and sent a CD of selections with her applications even though she has no plans to major in music. Although she only dealt with admissions staff and did not approach music departments herself, she was contacted by music profs from three of her schools, one interested in her as a pianist and two looking for a bass clarinet player. She was aiming for selective but not tip-top LACs and small universities (top 40 if you go by rankings) and was accepted by all that she applied to, and I’m sure she’ll join an orchestra, accompany an ensemble, or something like that. Musical ability can be a wonderful tipping factor for your daughter, especially if she shapes her list with an eye to schools where she can bring something they really want (and also have great music opportunities). Has she visited the dream school, had any contact with profs in her specialty, things like that?

BassDad · May 4, 2007, 3:14pm

I agree with ReneeV on the idea of sending in a CD with applications, but the best way is to send one to the admissions department and another to the music faculty member that would be most interested along with a personal note or email. This faculty member could be a director of one of the ensembles there or a teacher of the instrument in question. That way, you are not depending on the admissions folks to get the CD where it will do the most good. The admissions office probably passes along CD’s to the music department as a matter of course at most schools, but they may not send it to the same person that you would and it might even get lost somewhere along the line.

NJ_mother · May 6, 2007, 1:43pm

ReneeV and BassDad: she wants to continue to study her music; she knows she’s not conservatory material. Her dream school is DH’s and my alma mater, a top-ranked school. Wants to major in history or writing but take pre-med courses for med school.
Yes we’ve had contact; I haven’t failed to donate to the annual fund since I graduated, and we went there for a visit over her spring break a couple of weeks ago. We’re thinking of ED, since 45 to 60% of ED applicants get into that school.
We are so heart-sick over the math shaft, and it has repercussions - it’s causing her not to do well in AP Chem this year according to her chem teacher (we didn’t want her to take but she’s in honors-AP track and the school forced her), may have kept her out of NHS (rejection letter just came yesterday). She’s in 3 other national honor societies: music, Italian, and nominated for math (not a joke, she’s #1 in her math class this year; she has a teacher who is there all the time and who teaches math, amazingly-enough, not step-dancing).
We also found out that her algebra teacher who left mid-year last year, ostensibly for a supervisor’s job in Newark, is not even part of the Newark school system. We think she lied about a better job to get out of her contract before her malfeasance caught up with her. We also found out that the absentee teacher from last year somehow falsified her records to show only 13 absences for the school year, although she missed at least 1 day per week (and more often 2, plus was off for an entire week more than once) for the entire year. I am so disgusted.

system · May 6, 2007, 1:48pm

What top ranked school take 40-60% of ED applicants? That doesn’t sound right. I was a double legacy at a top school as well that couldn’t afford to apply ED. RD worked out for me.

paying3tuitions · May 6, 2007, 2:44pm

So sorry that you know teachers who work 9 a.m.-3 p.m. daily.

I don’t know any like that.

In fact, since we weren’t allowed to strike, when we were working for 2 years without a contract, the only way we could get community attention was to “work to rule.” For many weeks, we actually did the 9-3. No field trips, no afterschool tutoring, no clubs, no HOURS NIGHTLY of class preparation for sheer love of the children and the job. Worst of all: no teacher recommendations written for high school students applying to college. That’s done after hours too.

Work to Rule was like the l0 plagues. The district practically ground to a halt. The parents begged the school board to negotiate with the teachers. We demonstrated that if we actually worked as little as our contract indicated, education would just wither up and die. Nobody wanted that. It broke the negotiation logjam.

So to the OP, go ahead and rail about your school but you lose credibility with this 9-3 stuff. Everybody knows that’s not the reality on-the-ground.

And if you know one teacher who has the nerve to “snorkel” on her vacation,
more power to her. Maybe her parents gave them the vacation. You can never see inside another person’s pocketbook, really.

Isn’t it more becoming to confine your argument to what you know first-hand?
Try driving by any school at 7 a.m. and you’ll see half the teachers’ cars parked there. Then drive by around 4 p.m and there’s everybody else’s cars. It’s just the way it works. You can’t survive that profession without putting in copious extra hours. If you know ONE lazybones, I’ll give you that, but it doesn’t justify a broad-brush.

If you think it’s that easy a job, you’d probably be eligible to teach math or science with a little retraining in pedagogy, but you don’t. Why not? Because it’s really a tough job and underpaid. You probably saw median job figures for top-tier teachers. A new public school teacher starts around $35-40K most everywhere. Before you tell me about someone earning a PACKAGE of $85K, I want to also know if she’s a 30-year veteran of the profession.

Bottom line is: most parents aren’t willing to lock themselves inside a room with 25 or more 7 year olds and no birthday cake to keep them happy, for 2 hours let alone 6 (elementary school).

Most parents also aren’t willing to spend their day responsible for tracking achievement of a roster of 120 hormonal preadolescents (middle school) or adolescents (high school).

Most teachers speak about parents with much more respect than you’re demonstrating on this thread about teachers. Sooo, I’ll just have to figure that the
frustration of the specific situation re; your daughter has gotten to you. But if I began ranting about parents based on the few that almost threw me over a cliff at the end of some long days, you wouldn’t enjoy reading it here.

If the math situation is better this year, that’s testimony to your good daughter and a better teacher. Maybe it’s time to reframe your concerns now?

wharfrat2 · May 6, 2007, 4:35pm

There may be another factor at play here with regard to not handing back tests. Frequently there are students who are absent on the day of the original exam. These students are entitled to make-up the exam and have a rather loosely stated “reasonable amount of time” to do so in our district. When you combine this with the fact that at my school we are on an A/B day block schedule it can take as much as a week or so before these exams get made up. In the meantime we have moved on in class and it’s very easy to simply lose sight of what has been handed back and what hasn’t. In my class (A.P.) students are permitted to come in and correct the questions they answered incorrectly thereby earning back half of their total missed points. Frequently I have a dozen or more students in my room doing this. It has been valuable in that they do see the mistakes they made, and they have the added benefit of simply seeing A.P. type questions over and over again.

anxiousmom · May 6, 2007, 5:02pm

You go Paying3tuitions!! I, too, understand the frustrations of the awful teacher situation… but please, do understand that most of us are not like that. I work 6:60 a.m. - 4:45 most days, with (ostensibly) a 30-minute dutyfree lunch, (oops, Juan dropped his lunchtray, and D’Neesha just vomited and needs to be taken to the nurse. Looks like a short lunch today!). In Texas, teachers cannot strike, and do not have the unions that everyone complains about in NJ. Our elementary day for academics runs from 7:45-2:45 (7 hours), but breakfast opens at 7:00 a.m., and afterschool tutoring and enrichment takes place until 4:30. (We are “strongly encouraged” to tutor, at the rate of $16 per hour. We are also “strongly encouraged” to the point of it being almost mandatory for 3rd-5th grade teachers to teach halfday Saturday school). We have required team planning in the summer, plus workshops. Yes, we end up with 8 weeks or so of summer vacation - but since I usually put in 55+ hours a week of work, I feel like I’ve earned it. (And after 15 years on the job, and a master’s degree, I make about $40,000 a year. I’m not complaining, but I’m not getting rich either. ) Okay, excuse the rant. Now back to the OP.

NJ_mother · May 7, 2007, 12:46am

P3T, you get summers off, I don’t.
Anxious mom, your day would be a short one for me (is 6:60 am the same as 7 am? Just asking, since I get to work 8 am most days). I wish I had only a 55 hour week - I don’t really get lunch breaks, that’s the time I use to catch up on correspondence, eating in my office (and only 3 weeks of vacation, 2 personal days). No teacher in our district begins at 7 am, the earliest is around 7:45 am.
Anxious mom, you could have unions if you wanted them. I’m sure the AFT or NEA would love to come to your district.
I’ve worked without a contract for up to 3 years when the university refused to negotiate. Faculty don’t belong to a union and thus can’t strike (we have physicians in our collective bargaining group, which is different from a union).
But P3T, are you recycling old exams and thus not letting your students take them home so as to learn from their mistakes? Are you giving math and science tests graded by Scantron so that no part-credit is given, students are not tested on concepts, and don’t have their understanding evaluated fairly? You can be a warm body, or baby-sitter, and spend 12 hours a day in school, or you can be a teacher and use pedagogically-sound methods.
Are either of you guilty of the 2 “crimes” I’m charging these delinquent math teachers with - 1) paying attention to an extra-curricular activity instead of to teaching math; 2) excessive absenteeism, at least 1 day per week, without a substitute math teacher in place.

paying3tuitions · May 7, 2007, 1:23am

Both of my parents taught college and were treated with dignity and respect.
They were appalled at how hard my job was.

emeraldkity4 · May 7, 2007, 1:24am

You probably saw median job figures for top-tier teachers. A new public school teacher starts around $35-40K most everywhere.

Doesn’t sound bad to me
Inc benefits we spend $65,000 a year for teachers- more with advanced degree and training.

My niece who graduated from Colgate a few years ago
PhiBetaKappa-SummaCumLaude, & has been working full time ever since
is now excited that she soon will be getting a raise- she still wont be getting many benefits but she will be making $20,000 a year

I am a advocate of unions in many cases & certainly when workers are being overworked in unsafe conditions for low pay- it sounds like a nobrainer case to unionize.

paying3tuitions · May 7, 2007, 1:47am

OP, may I please remind you of why you started this thread? You asked us here,

“How do you overcome these injustices on the college app without whining, self-pitying, etc? Is my town the only one like this?”

In your thread, you’ve dismissed every suggestion offered.

Private schools? you say that yours in NJ have “no standards, been there, pulled them out.”

Tutoring to fix your daughter’s math skills? No, you need the tests back for the tutor to see. How about a tutor who’s smarter and doesn’t need the tests? (no response)

You are fighting your district on this thread. Many people have tried to advise you. I’ve also tried very patiently to suggest that I think you can’t fix your district, but should tend to your daughter.

You want to compare your job’s difficulties to mine, which gets your D nowhere.

If I were you, I’d focus on getting your daughter into the best possible college, by culling the good from her surroundings and not expressing herself as the victim. I’m sorry she tanked in a math class and I’m sorry you were ill-served by your district.

My eldest kids went to a school district that did not care about the college-bound because of gang fighting in the hallways. Their GC’s spent time bailing kids out of jail, not able to help the college-bound kids much. (Talk about hard-working, those GC’s were the bomb, but no attention for my law-abiding kids!) But my son and daughter refused to play the pity card on their applications. You live in a typical NJ suburb. It’s not distinguished in education, obviously, from the way you describe it. WIth character, kids do apply from such schools and get into good colleges, when they make maximum use of the resources available to them.

My D had a hard time in Math, including some C’s and D’s, but wrote about it on her essay as her struggle and discussed (briefly) how she intended to seek remediation in college. It was unfortunate but she didn’t chastise anyone over it. My youngest had some math trouble, too, so took the courses in the summer when he could focus on just Math. It was a weak point on otherwise strong applications. My hope is that the Adcoms who admitted them saw their response to difficulty, weighed it against their other achievements in the humanities and performing arts, and took them anyway.

I hope I’m demonstrating what a good teacher shows, which is care for YOUR student’s situation.

And no, I got a “perfect attendance” award for 0 absences my first year out of teaching college, so I can’t relate to anyone who misses a lot of time.

marite · May 7, 2007, 9:41am

I’m not going to wade into the discussion of which profession is harder or the issue of teacher responsibility. I’ll confine my remarks to the tutoring issue.

I’m surprised that it is necessary for a tutor to have access to past exams to be able to help a student. The tutor ought to be able to administer a diagnostic test, even orally, and easily find out where a student needs help. Additionally, most math textbooks have excercises from which teachers choose as homework for their students.

Several of Ss friends were advanced in math and were allowed to study on their own, with textbooks provided by the teacher who did nothing else. My S was supervised by his dad who assigned problems from the book and corrected them. Another student had a tutor who met (outside school) a couple of times a week to assign problems and correct old ones. The system worked well, and both did splendidly. I don’t see why this could not work for the student who is the subject of this thread.

NJ_mother · May 7, 2007, 1:37pm

P3T, if my D had you for her first 2 math teachers, I wouldn’t have needed to post. I considered every suggestion, indeed most of them, before posting. Perhaps there is no solution.
EK4, public school teachers here start at around $40K; HS teachers earn more. My friends have many years’ experience, howeveer my student’s spouse was making so much in so few years because he could teach HS chem and physics and apparently such teachers are very much needed.
We finally made contact with the math supervisor since I posted (nearly a year after we first contacted her); we had already rehired the math tutor for over the summer, before I posted.
Marite: the tutor told me that D was getting her homework and quizzes nearly 100% correct so tutor needed to see the exams to determine why D was getting bad grades on report card. The “diagnostic” test showed that D understood and could solve problems, but the skills weren’t translating into good test scores. Now you see?

emeraldkity4 · May 7, 2007, 2:05pm

Yes my niece isn’t working in the school district, if she was, she would have started at about $35,000 - $45,000.
I just used her as an example of what kids with other degrees make coming out of college.

We do need science and math teachers desperately- however- the district does not yet allow emergency staffing.
So this is the situation here.
For example-we can have a “sub” teach biology, for a majority of the year, that isn’t certificated in biology, and may not have had any past intro in college.
( Same with other subjects- my daughter had almost two years of Spanish, one in high school and one in middle school, that she was taught by subs, who did not have college background in Spanish- as a result, she doesn’t feel prepared to go on to a 4th year of Spanish)

I also attended several workshops where I met those who are working at the UW, who are physicists, geneticists, etc, ( post PHd work) and would love to teach in the schools. They volunteer, and in fact are regularly consulting with teachers in the schools who have little background in science, and who are trying to keep up with their students.

However, they also do not want to take the time & money to go back to undergrad and take education courses to allow them to meet the teaching certification, which I can understand- there should be a provision that enables them to take the exam- without taking the coursework and the time. Can’t you sit for the bar with self study?

I have a hard time understanding, that there are those who could teach math, science and other subjects, but because they don’t have a teaching degree, cannot be hired. Instead my daughter has teachers who are substitutes, for most of the year, , who have a teaching degree & can’t get hired as a classroom teacher & who may not have background in the subject they are supposed to be teaching students preparing for college.

However- a sub is cheaper than a fulltime teacher- a lot cheaper, so I guess the district comes out ahead aye?

marite · May 7, 2007, 2:11pm

NJ Mother:

Thanks. Now, I remember you mentioned it, but I’d forgotten.
There is something else the tutor could test: how fluent your D is in the subject. For example, my S claimed to have mastered a topic, and he did well on homework. But at exam time, he did not finish the problems. It turned out that while he knew the concepts, he had not quite mastered them sufficiently to acquire fluency and thus speed. While this was not detrimental for homework, it affected his performance in timed exam.

This does not, of course, address the issue of teacher irresponsibility or incompetence or of your D getting a wrong grade. But it may be a way of improving your D’s knowledge, with the hope of getting a better teacher next year.

emeraldkity4 · May 7, 2007, 2:21pm

just curious what sort of math program does your school teach?

My D is taking honors chem,and working very hard at it- getting As in math, but she has never come close to passing the math portion of the state graduation test.

There are many parents who are also having to supplant math curriculum at home ( I don’t teach math- and this one wouldn’t let me anyway- but we have hired tutors)
We are trying to get the district to offer different curriculum ( as are many teachers)- but I was curious what districts are using.

<a href=“http://www.wheresthemath.com/[/url]”>http://www.wheresthemath.com/</a>

I think it might help to see the test- for example- some kids have trouble tracking and while you can do diagnostic tests, it would save time if you could just see past tests to see what sort of mistakes were being made.
( Which may be why my D is getting As in her math classes, but hasn’t passed the state test- we aren’t allowed to see the test or the results- unless we make an appt- and even then we can only see it for a short time, without taking any notes- I didn’t figure it was worth it- as I can’t remember anything if I don’t write it down)

When HS in your town cheats your child

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