Heat on teachers after English exam breach

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 12/01/2010 (5798 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Next up for Grade 12 students is the provincial math exam — a key test for school administrators who were unable to keep the questions for the English exam secret.

"It doesn’t say in the (provincial) manuals explicitly that you’re not to tell students ahead of time. It’s implicit it’s to be kept under lock and key," St. James-Assiniboia School Division superintendent Ron Weston said with considerable irony Monday.

Weston said he’s been laying down the law throughout the division in the wake of a teacher at College Sturgeon Heights Collegiate telling his class the theme of the provincial Grade 12 English test ahead of time.

Weston said he’s "making it abundantly clear" that the math exam must remain secret until students enter the examination room.

Weston has met with the teacher who breached confidentiality of last week’s English exam; the teacher told his class the theme on Dec. 18, just before the holiday break. The theme of environmental issues spread on Facebook, though no one has a clue how widely it was disseminated.

Students wrote the four-day test Tuesday through Friday of last week.

"We’re verifying all the facts. The teacher did what we thought he did," said Weston, who will decide on discipline within a couple of days. "I’m meeting with staff. We’re consulting our legal department," he said.

Weston would not divulge what the teacher told him, and said that the division would not make public any disciplinary action.

Weston is still investigating how the breach occurred.

About 7,000 students wrote the English test last week. Students taking English language arts in the second semester will write a similar exam at the end of May.

The Education Department is awaiting marking of the test, to see if the marks at Sturgeon Heights or any other schools in Manitoba are out of line with students’ previous work or with the provincewide performance.

Provincial officials say there is a possibility that some or even all of the 7,000 students could see their exam set aside and be marked entirely on class work, or offered the opportunity to take the test in late May. It is worth 30 per cent of the final mark.

Commonly called a process exam, the English test starts on the first day with students receiving a theme, readings, and questions. By the end of the fourth day, they’ve written on the theme, and are marked on their writing skills, their comprehension, and their analysis.

Reaction has been swift among Grade 12 students.

A Miles Macdonnell student created a Facebook site this weekend called Students Against Rewriting Manitoba Provincial English Exam. The site had 398 members by late Monday afternoon. Only a tiny handful of site members said they believed rewriting the four-day exam would be the proper thing to do.

Most students reacted angrily or scornfully, blaming the teacher, the school’s principal, and/or Sturgeon Heights students, questioning the validity of the exam, and dismissing the value of knowing the theme ahead of time — in a variety of often-questionable grammar, spelling, and syntax, sprinkled liberally with four-letter words.

Provincial Grade 12 math tests are scheduled to be written Jan. 18 and 19 for students taking applied math, pre-calculus Jan. 21, and consumer math Jan. 21.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

 

Repeat unpopular

LOL dude, here’s a sampling of what high school students are saying on Facebook about the leaking of the provincial Grade 12 English exam’s theme.

 

Brittany (St. Laurent School): I spent too much time and effort on that exam! Tuesday-Friday like come on. All Gr.12’s in the province shouldn’t pay for one teacher’s mistakes.

 

Darren (John Taylor Collegiate): The people who knew the topic before hand did have an VERY slight advantage I’ll admit, but it would be extremely unfair to punish everyone by a rewrite. Its not like the questions or stories were leaked. I think that if you put time into researching the topic before hand you deserve to earn the extra marks because you have actually in fact learned something.

 

Rachel (St. John’s-Ravenscourt): lol we should have all just refused to write it in the first place in support of being environmentally friendly and not hurting any more trees.

 

Sean (St. Paul’s High School): the teacher should be thrown into the borneo rainforest for one year to live with the fleas and geckos. if he makes it out alive he can come back

 

Arista (Westgate Mennonite Collegiate): teachers have been leaking information for years to students before the exam, this is just the first time the paper has decided to write a story about

guess there wasnt enough news that day