AJC reports on the intensive investigation that "names 178 educators, including 38 principals, as participants in cheating. More than 80 confessed." There was "confirmed cheating in 44 of 56 schools" that were examined.
“APS is run like the mob,” one teacher told investigators, saying she cheated because she feared retaliation if she didn’t.
Do you pity the underlings who were pressured by their own self-interest?
The cheating cut off struggling students from the extra help they would have received if they’d failed.
At Venetian Hills, a group of teachers and administrators who dubbed themselves “the chosen ones” convened to change answers in the afternoons or during makeup testing days, investigators found. Principal Clarietta Davis, a testing coordinator told investigators, wore gloves while erasing to avoid leaving fingerprints on answer sheets.
Well, do you pity those employees, caving to the job-pressure they felt, or do you turn your back on them, as they betrayed a sacred duty to the children, whose interests had to be put first and were not?
At Gideons Elementary, teachers sneaked tests off campus and held a weekend “changing party” at a teacher’s home in Douglas County to fix answers.
Cheating was “an open secret” at the school, the report said. The testing coordinator handed out answer-key transparencies to place over answer sheets so the job would go faster.
When investigators began questioning educators, now-retired principal Armstead Salters obstructed their efforts by telling teachers not to cooperate, the report said.
“If anyone asks you anything about this just tell them you don’t know,” the report said Salters said. He told teachers to “just stick to the story and it will all go away.”
Disgusting betrayal...
parties.
Principal Gwendolyn Benton, who has since left, obstructed the investigation, too, the report said, when she threatened teachers by saying she would “sue them out the ass” if they “slandered” her to the GBI....
“In sum, a culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation permeated the APS system from the highest ranks down,” the investigators wrote. “Cheating was allowed to proliferate until, in the words of one former APS principal, ‘it became intertwined in Atlanta Public Schools ... a part of what the culture is all about.’ ”
And let's remember that the state compels children to go to school. Children are held captive for endless hours of their young lives, in part so that teachers will impart cultural values to them. And look what their values were!
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The reason that we have this New Age bullcrap is because we have a population that has not been taught critical thinking skills. The education system is partly to blame for this as well as all the promotion of these crackpot ideas through movies, television and endorsement by celebrities.
Educated people with a good foundation in history, science and the ability to think critically about the crap they are being spoon fed, would not buy into the New Age group think.
Group think works well when you can't think on your own. Generations of students have been indocrintated to take the easy way out and not think outside of the herd.
ve: sperm
wow
Crack has it covered; well done.
The problem is a systemic one. Thomas Sowell described how corrupting welfare was to black families. Moynihan showed how destructive.
It's not race. How easy it would be to think so.
Barack Obama: "We do have to make sure that there are computers in a computer age inside classrooms and that they work and that there's internets...
That's right, half the little fuckers can't read but they need to have internet access. And, yes, he said "internets" but that's not funny because he's so smart and articulate.
GM: science, history and art curriculums are being neglected because those don't "count" in the test scores
I am very tired of the plaintive whine that we are sacrificing "well-rounded" education to overly restrictive testing. It is not as if the "quality education" is actually teaching these subjects. In fact, society as a whole would be better served by dropping these subjects if we could successfuly teach basic literacy and numeracy. I have nothing against teaching art and music or anything else, but first teach the basics.
Carol:
It was the "Ministry" [not school] of Silly Walks. Heh. I have a framed pic of its Top Research Scientist [Monty Pythons' Graham something}.
I think all the kids, today, have cell phones.
So it goes without saying, you've got kids who can read and write. Even if they're failing these tests at school
Heck, no instructions are required at all. Because ALL the kids with cell phones know what tr;dl means.
I had to find, out by looking this up on my "acronym finder." But, still, never found the meaning for lulz.
I know it's not a problem with the kids.
The problems are with the politicians. They're the ones who take the money from the lobbyists.
As to "flash mobs," the first ones I saw on YouTube involved white people. Adults, no less. Who were drawn to Grand Central Station. To dance.
Now, if you want kids to be successful students, you have to make sure your home has a good place (it can even be the kitchen table). Where the kid can do homework, unmolested.
If parents don't care? You can blame welfare. But it's an education ethic. Even parents who are immigrants, and who don't speak any English. Can still have kids who will excel at school. Because the "work gets done."
Blame administrators all you like.
There will always be a percentage of students, in every single class, throughout time. Who were dummies. And, sitting in class didn't improve them one iota.
Ministry of Silly Walks.
Summerhill.
The British have always led in the field of education.
Funny that you should bring up the new math curriculum. This "integrated" math program has been in place in the school district my son is in for three years now. It is being phased out beginning next year. Odd, that. The fail rate has been tremendous. I am not indicting integrated math, I'm indicting the roll out for the program. Advanced degreed Math teachers don't understand the proper teaching methods, how could the classrooms full of sub-standard, fetal-alcohol/fetal-drug poisoned minions, who have been promoted through the grades instead of partitioned off into a different educational trac, possibly understand it? Teaching to the least common denominator is killing education, and the lcd needs to be seperated from the herd in order to change this.
Forest gumps mama sho did care about his education. Now Forest's mama don't even need to go to a meeting with the school counselor, because Forest sho nuff gonna be mainstreamed. For the good of the children.
WV: coyseeit:
Pretending you didn't.
William Bennett says they must all be fired.
Every. Single. One. who cheated.
Sounds right to me.
(And this was based on no knowledge of what color anyone was -- )
It sounds like a disaster!
What are you going to do about it(besides writing a blog post that's going to be seen by thousands of people, most of whom don't live anywhere near Georgia)?
I have to say screw Bill Bennett- he is the prototypical big govt Republican and is responsible for putting the the Dept of Education on pace to be one of the Beltway's biggest waste of taxpayer money.
Oddly, as I re-read some articles about this, I see that the former superintendent of the Atlanta Public School System is unavailable for comment because she is on vacation in Hawaii.
Go figure.
WV: misife:
Misife forgotten where I placed your get out of jail free card; perhaps it's in Hawaii.
In Jurisprudence (a college course in legal philosophy) the two basic lessons are the simplest ones:
A law that is not enforced is not a law. and
There are no laws against what no one does.
That is about it.
Okay.
Remembering back to my own childhood, and those school years.
I remember being able to "dink out."
I could move my head to the window. And, whatever got said by the teacher made no impression. Because my imagination took flight.
Kids, today, are no different.
The first lesson at school is to learn to sit in your chair. And, not let your head hit the desk, as you fell asleep.
There are lots of ways to "cheat" at these tests. One way is to manipulate who takes the tests. If you examine the data at the link, you will notice that 2005 had low scores with loads of students taking the 10th grade test. 2006 had fewer students taking the tests, and much better scores. 2007 reverted to the norm. Previously, DPI only shaded the "Advanced Proficient", "Proficient", and "Basic" levels. By shading the entire bar, it is harder to visually detect changes. The blue and green are the desired colors. Beloit Memorial High School, Math
Some students manage to fail the 9th grade, and then earn enough credits to be promoted to the 11th grade, and so avoid ever being a 10th grader. The 10th grade test is only taken by 10th graders.
Not trying to have the last word, but I'm an Atlantan; I had a kid in these terrible schools (we sued the school district and now the district is paying our son's private-school tuition); I spent the last three years as a parent-insider, serving on school committees and trying to find out why Atlanta Public Schools employees could not do even basic tasks and could not meet minimum standards of professionalism (such as returning parent phone calls and emails); and I learned a great deal about the district's systemwide dysfunction during our short-lived lawsuit (in which the district almost immediately capitulated and settled on our terms).
What I learned was this: too many employees not only willingly bought into superintendent Beverly Hall's "get the numbers no matter how you have to do it" mantra, they were shockingly cynical in their treatment of children and parents. They felt they could never be questioned, much less caught, because they believed the "Black Female Mafia," as Bev Hall's inner circle came to be known, was all-powerful and could never be toppled.
Well, it has all come crashing down now; Bev Hall's clay feet are fully exposed. But many of us are not surprised.
It's not like we parents couldn't see her for what she was--we could. I sent her my first outraged diatribe almost three years ago (it went unanswered) and I've been railing about her amoral, corrupt leadership for 2.5 years--and I'm just one among many parents.
But the problem is, our disgraced con-artist of a superintendent had already charmed and disarmed every single power broker in the city, and they were drinking her Kool-Aid literally up until this week.
It's awful; it's a mess; there's an unmistakable racial component (it's hard for me not to compare Hall with one of those ministers from black churches who drives around in a gilded Cadillac, having successfully duped his dirt-poor and fairly clueless congregation into paying for the car, the leather, the GPS and the rims because, he insists, he is the only one who knows The Truth--in each case, a con artist has duped an all-too-credulous throng)...
It's important to note that Atlanta is becoming whiter (after decades of white flight, returning whites are about to regain a majority vote in the city proper). Affluent returning whites were not about to send their kids into the cesspool that is the Atlanta Public Schools-even with inflated, dishonest test scores, the district's overall performance remains abysmal.
A confrontation was inevitable.
As the city's racial balance shifted, Hall's veneer of competence--her "minister act"-- started to crack.
But it was already too late. Black Atlanta had embraced a venal, immoral child predator who led a gang of thugs in perpetrating the largest black-on-black crime in US education history. White folks had to come in and shine a spotlight on it because of the unfortunate insistence by blacks in general never to air their dirty laundry in front of whites. Regrettably, this has become partly about race when it should have only ever been about victimized children.
Was there too much pressure on teachers to cheat? Yes, but only because our district's leaders were irretrievably corrupt and venal and because there was literally no one to check their power. (Such people would, one hopes, not be allowed to rule unchecked in other districts). I have to believe we had a perfect storm of thugs in charge of the district and morons in elected government willing to believe whatever the thugs told them.
But did the pressure cause teachers to become cheaters? No, it merely revealed them as such.
It's awful; it's a mess; there's an unmistakable racial component..
I wouldn't be surprised if Atlanta local politics is RACE RACE RACE 24/7.
MarkG said:
"I wouldn't be surprised if Atlanta local politics is RACE RACE RACE 24/7."
And you would be correct, sir. Atlanta is the Black Mecca. If you don't believe that, just ask a black woman. They'll tell you. It is an uncomfortable thing sometimes, for a white man, who visits his black friends, and is harrassed by black cops for driving while white. Upside down world.
WV: syllu:
I gots to know! I gots to KNOW! is it syllu harrassin' me?
Thanks Rick Lockridge. I was about to write that I wished we had the perspective of a native black Atlantan. Well, I still do. Well-written post, and it sound very similar to some of the complaints in Washington, DC, and I'm sure other cities. I've never been able to figure out if Michelle Rhee did any good or not. Cheating went on under her reign, and I haven't yet figured out if/how she was involved.
Well they did increase test scores, wasn't that the goal?
Educated people with a good foundation in history, science and the ability to think critically about the crap they are being spoon fed, would not buy into the New Age group think.
Otherwise "intelligent" people fall for new agey crap sandwiches all the time. Take Oprah for example.
Rick: Thanks for sharing. I can't beleive you won that lawsuit. Didn't the teacher's union already stack the courts with their allies.
Brennan,
Educated people with a good foundation in history, science and the ability to think critically about the crap they are being spoon fed, would not buy into the New Age group think.
Otherwise "intelligent" people fall for new agey crap sandwiches all the time. Take Oprah for example.
Correct. The MORE educated you are, the more likely you'll fall for NewAge. (Which is why I tell some here, to their surprise, they're NewAgers.) Just as the state of the current economy is driving everyone back to reality, poverty seems to act as some kind of bulwark against allowing yourself to fall for bullshit - unless it's voodoo or something else with a culturally ethnic component.
Being educated just allows someone to arrogantly assume they're protected, though they're up to their neck in it.
Namaste, y'all!!!!!
Black kids are different by middle school. The thug culture has ahold of them by then, and they idolize the wrong people. They all honestly believe they will be rappers. Then you have the remedial kids who get insulted if you suggest thinking of work in mediical technology and not just focusing on being a doctor. Also, there is an instant dislike of white teachers that radiates from a majority of black kids and their parents.
With all this, I'm talking about thug culture, not middle-class. The inner city schools would shock you. And no, "being creative" won't solve the problem of kids who sit and talk about last week's party while you're taaching. (I've seen classes where kids sit in the back and play cards or dance. See, you cannot send them out or to the office --- not allowed in most places these days, especially with the inner-city kids -- it's all political.)
Discipline? We vets sneak it in, but we're really supposed to only do "positive discipline," meaning no negitive consequences. Parents and administrators don't like them. If we ever have merit pay, the young, maleable teachers who believe all the BS from ed school wiil get the high pay, and the vets who don't fall for every fad will not.
I've taught in 5 states in my career. The best is the 50,000 population, mostly white school in the heartland where I am now. The worst were in OH and IL, where schools were in poor areas, about half black and half white, along with tiny, rural schools where the parents have known each other for generations and don't like "outsiders" grading their kids. In between were schools in CA and Seattle where there was a wide range of ethnicities so the black kids didn't get to rule everything (and they do, like it or not, in the ghetto. Young teachers even do dumb stuff like praise misogynistic rappers as if they were world leaders. All the kids know Harriet Tubman, but not Thomas Jefferson).
That's my rant, after a liftime of teaching. Take it as you may.
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