Educators Hide Underachievers

[faviana]

A provincial education office intentionally omitted 15 underachievers from a report in a desperate attempt to rank its region's students as top-league in the state-run standardized tests held last October.

The manipulation of test scores took place at the Imshil Education Office, in North Jeolla Province and resulted in the region being rated as one of the top-performing offices.

The county office concocted the scores ahead of the government's plan to evaluate schoolmasters and teachers from 2011.

It was the first time the government has disclosed test results of schools across the country. It found some 2.4 percent of sixth graders, 10.4 percent of middle school seniors and 9 percent of high school freshmen scored below basic standards required to proceed to the next academic year.

The county announced that none of their elementary students failed to meet basic academic levels in social studies, science and English.

However, the office omitted 15 underachievers in its report. The head of the office has offered to resign and an official in charge has been dismissed.

The government is looking into other education offices to find out if similar incidents have taken place elsewhere.

Education Minister Ahn Byong-man expressed regret over the case Thursday. ``I deeply regret the incident. We will take proper action after looking into the cases,'' Ahn said. ``We will supplement the test system and prevent such manipulations from occurring again. Above all, I hope parents understand this test is to find and help underachieving students.''

Progressive teachers' groups lost no time in calling for scrapping the system. ``The disclosure of the academic records will only rank schools and spawn irregularities and corruption at schools to raise the test scores,'' said the Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union in its statement.

``Giving incentives to the best-performing schoolmasters and teachers is not pursuant to academic excellence. As long as the government insists on the flawed test, it will create more irregularities.''

[hanel]

I'm sure the concept of ranking schools and disclosing it to the public is not a very unique one. However, it would definitely be a lot more competitive in countries where academics are regarded much more highly than in other places. They could probably solve this issue by having standardized ranking tests overseen by the school boards.

[sabzero]

Not on such a large scale, but i remember in highschool our physics teacher told a couple of the failing students to not take the final exams and he give them a pass instead of failing them; in an attempt to not bring down the schools average and get a better state ranking.

Guess some people take their work VERY seriously.

Like with most cheating, probably happens a lot, only the bad ones are caught.

[hanel]

Not on such a large scale, but i remember in highschool our physics teacher told a couple of the failing students to not take the final exams and he give them a pass instead of failing them; in an attempt to not bring down the schools average and get a better state ranking.

Wish my professors would do that. Would have saved me quite a lot of tuition money...hah.

[bekka]

In Asian countries, the pressure to maintain standards are often very high... These kind of stuff also happen in countries like China as well...