From the web site of Jerry Pournelle
An email posted July 12th., 2004

From another conference:

LOS ANGELES — Some say high-stakes testing is to blame for cheating in the classroom. But in this case, it's not the students getting caught — it's the teachers.

A recent study shows as many as 200 teachers in California were caught cheating to help their students perform better on rigorous new standardized tests, which are part of the President Bush's "No Child Left Behind " education plan, which calls for greater accountability among teachers.

Since the law was implemented, more teachers have been caught helping students cheat in about a dozen states around the country.

Well, The Good News is that at least these teachers knew what the right answers were!

I am not being completely flip. We spend our summers at our Del Mar, California beach home, leaving their regular nanny behind  (with full pay, of course), so we employ a couple of Del Mar School District teachers on summer holiday as nannies. One of them had just gotten in trouble at the end of the school year for refusing to pass her student teacher ("Of Color", of course) because the girl (who possessed a 4-year "college" degree) could not read and write and do arithmetic even at a 6th-grade level. So if this product of first Affirmative Admissions and then Affirmative Grading (she reported getting excellent grades in "college") had made it into the teacher corps via Affirmative Action, she would *not* have been able to help her kids cheat!

Even worse, the wretch refused all attempts to tutor her as an insult to her intelligence and "education"!

Jim

Self esteem training in action?

Red text is Jerry's.