Eleven of the former educators were convicted of racketeering charges, The Associated Press said, in a decision announced [today] in a Georgia courtroom. Only one of the 12 educators on trial was acquitted of the racketeering charge; verdicts on the theft and false statements charges were mixed.
April 1, 2015
"This case is garbage. It’s a garbage case. It’s a RICO case that means nothing."
Said one of the lawyers in the case against Atlanta teachers who were accused in a systematic scheme falsifying students' scores in at least 44 schools.
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58 comments:
Today you laugh,
Tomorrow when RICO comes after you, we'll see who's laughing.
This was quite a little industrious project involving scores of people and razor blades to open the tests and special pens to make erasures and pencils to mark the correct answers and glue to put the tests back together again. Quite a story. No one, of course, is guilty of anything. 100% of the accused are black. Nearly all of their students are black. No problem. Really, it is not a problem. The kids needed better scores and the teachers needed better scores. Win win.
A shameful episode not to be blamed on the evil requirements for better scores and the use of standardized tests. Nope. Blame should be laid at the feet of the over paid teachers who have never been doing a good job of teaching this cohort and who, at the end of the day, abandoned any shred of ethics for a few bonus dollars.
"Lawyer says clients aren't guilty (and even if they are it's a garbage case that means nothing)."
That's news? What did you expect the union's lawyers to say?
It's only a non-garbage case if the defense lawyer prevails. Then it's This was a case when my superior skills won the day.
"Lawyer says clients aren't guilty (and even if they are it's a garbage case that means nothing)."
Maybe he's crafty smart like a fox - have it overturned on appeal due to incompetent defense counsel.
Nah. Too many attorneys these days get their degree from the Sally Struthers School of Law.
Andrew Young is a major disappointment to me. Apparently he cares much more for the careers of under-performing school administrators than the poor black children who are the true victims of this "garbage case."
No one in a position of responsibility in the Democrat party seems to much care about the education of black children. I wonder why that is the case?
Tomorrow when RICO comes after you, we'll see who's laughing.
Philadelphia principal, four teachers charged with faking test results
It's the common "Faking Scores" virus. I understand that it has spread to Pittsburg
"Some community leaders, activists and civil rights icons like Ambassador Andrew Young argued criminal investigations and trials were an unnecessary approach to holding those accountable for their actions."
Ah, yes. Holding people accountable is an unnecessary approach to holding them ... er ... accountable.
A state-commissioned report found organized, widespread cheating. Investigators found cheating in Dougherty County, but prosecutors did not indict any teachers because they said the cheating was not organized."
If you want real organized cheating, you need a public union.
I dunno. It was a crime. And it was organized.
Rico is a dangerous law, easily abused. I'm sorry they used it in this case, because the crime is a very serious one.
RICO was designed to be used against Mafia hoodlums, not against corrupt school teachers. I would send each one to jail for maybe 3 months (they will never get a decent job again, which is also pretty big punishment), but I would not threaten them with up to 20 years in prison. That's the type of punishment we reserve for violent rapists. I despise these teachers. But I despise over-charging prosecutors in this country a lot more; they have done a lot more damage to our society than these idiot teachers.
I am not sure about RICO which was meant for organized crime, but it is very helpful for society to see some of the supposedly untouchables (i.e. government workers - up and down the chain) get either put in jail (best) or seriously fined.
"Rico is a dangerous law, easily abused. I'm sorry they used it in this case, because the crime is a very serious one."
A dangerous law, yes. A narrowly-tailored statute on cheating in schools would be better.
In practical terms, it's not clear how serious the crime was. Truthful reporting might have funneled more resources to some schools or required reorganization under NCLB but, as far as I can tell from casual newspaper reading, the case did not involve evidence on likely impact on ultimate outcomes for the children affected.
RICO to me means that someone has done something the powers that be don't like, but can't prove it was illegal, or exactly what the crime was.
Aside from ensuring basic safety, education is the most important thing we do in society. It is the primary means by which we try to provide equal opportunity. These criminals put their own needs above their duty to provide children with an education. They essentially robbed these kids of some of their potential. Make an example of them so that there don't do anything similar.
Yes, RICO was originally supposed to be a weapon against the mob, but because no one in Congress seems to be able to write a law properly (no Obamacare wasn't the first), it's been used against non-mobsters almost from the start, because the penalties are so severe they encourage surrender -- I mean plea-bargaining.
Many years ago I was handling a fairly routine civil case on behalf of a landlord who was being sued by some former tenants. We'd gotten through discovery, and it was clear the plaintiffs had zilch. Their lawyer was making settlement noises. So the plaintiffs fired him and brought in a new guy. At our first meeting, the new lawyer announced that he was planning to amend the complaint to add a civil RICO claim (attorney fees, treble damages, whatever). I laughed. This wasn't gamesmanship: I really thought the idea that this little case could possibly support a RICO claim was just laughable. The new lawyer settled on pretty much the terms the old lawyer was ready to.
Afterwards I did some research and concluded that RICO was not as funny as I thought it was.
Hey, the teachers were willful in what they did and there should be severe punishment for their actions. The little darlings that were affected will notice that there is severe punishment for cheating. Maybe they, themselves will learn a lesson for their own future.
Ever read stories about how much cheating happens in college? You think these little snots don't take the message forward - hey, my teacher in high school did not have to pay a price for cheating- why should I?
Stop making excuses for people who want to be known as professionals, get paid as professionals and get tenure like professionals!
And, oh yeah, how ever, what ever method you have to get them punished, get them!
Al Capone was charged with tax evasion, right?
My favorite part of the article is where it says the scandal caused "some"--"some" being a first-person pronoun when used by journalists--to question the wisdom of standardized testing!
Just like when a bank is robbed, it causes "some" to question the use of paper currency as a medium of exchange!
Tying teacher compensation directly to student test performance was always going to be problematic.
Imagine a teacher who is completely honest but simply spends every hour of school time forcing the kids to prep for the state-wide exam. If you are teaching in a medical school this strategy can be justified, since one major goal of a medical school education is to get the students to pass the board exams. Yet, even in this professional teaching setting there are arguments about just how far you should go in tailoring the education to fit just the exams. In grade school it is not a reasonable teaching strategy. The kids need to explore and ramble around the world of learning. This process is inherently inefficient. Learning is like play, it is not always purposeful and can't be easily systematized. Yet, if my pay was tied to the kids test performance, the students would be doing a lot less rambling and a lot more test prep. Not sure that this is a good thing.
If we don't allow cheating, how are we ever going to close the achievement gap?
I volunteer as executioner.
@ARM: We tried it without the standardized testing for decades, and got a tripling in constant-doller per-pupil spending with no increase in proficiency to show for it.
That's why the standardized testing went in. When Ted Kennedy sponsored No Child Left Behind it's not because he hated schools and teacher and wanted them to be crappy.
Pretty much only Ron Paul voted against that. Now that NCLB is considered a failure, of course it's now an orphan.
And the very same experts are behind Common Core, which will also spend a lto of money and do nothing. At which point its thousand fathers will send it to the same orphanage and they'll come up with a new initiative, and the circle of crap will continue.
Tying teacher compensation directly to student test performance was always going to be problematic.
You have any better ideas?
Teachers have taught terribly for years. They fuck boys over (and, in far too many cases, LITERALLY fuck boys as well) and have atrocious spelling and grammar.
I have to work HARD to encourage my sons to respect their teachers because, damn, I don't.
Teachers were given decades and failed, miserably, in spite of a shit ton of money heading their way.
One of them was acquitted. So it was a garbage case against that person.
A RICO act violation that addresses individual corruption, without the systemic protections afforded by other agencies, and corporations, including Unions, cannot be considered complete or adequate.
Gabriel said...
That's why the standardized testing went in.
Not arguing about the usefulness of standardized testing. The question is how sensible it is to tie teacher compensation to the standardized tests.
The value of the standardized tests, from my perspective, is to get an understanding of how the students are doing and use it to address broad problems in the system. It is a very noisy signal at a class room level. And where there is uncertainty there is fear, and when there is fear people start doing stupid shit.
"If you are teaching in a medical school this strategy can be justified, since one major goal of a medical school education is to get the students to pass the board exams."
There is something to this but medicine boards have a huge universe of topics to use, not like reading and math in elementary schools. If you teach to the medicine boards, you teach all of medicine.
I teach a very limited area of medicine and I use the model of the OSCA which is a form of board exam except it's practical, not written. If the kids practice the OSCA, they are practicing what they are supposed to be doing anyway.
OSCA = Objective Structured Clinical Assessment. That model is now used in all national medical schools and the national boards although it began at USC in 1960. Actors and actresses are taught to simulate disease.
"Andrew Young is a major disappointment to me. Apparently he cares much more for the careers of under-performing school administrators than the poor black children"
People try and understand. Democrat black leaders have given up on educating black kids. They don't think its possible. Therefore, why humiliate the kids. Just give them passing grades and graduate them. And no, I'm not being cynical. It's just reality.
"Some community leaders, activists and civil rights icons like Ambassador Andrew Young argued criminal investigations and trials were an unnecessary approach to holding those accountable for their actions."
The problem is that without a felony conviction, all these folks, including the super get to retire with full pensions and laugh all the way to the bank.
The unions have made it far to hard to discipline a school employee.
If the plea deals, which were offered and most took included forfeiture of pensions, then I'd be fine with 30 days in jail and probation.
Every Big City has its share of corrupt mid level bureaucrats getting rich and no one wants to know about it. But even in Chicago there is the need to maintain a standard from the top that says it will not accept corrupt actors IF they get caught... which means people forgot the necessary code of silence.
That is what was missing when Atlanta went out to hire Professionals from NYC to corrupt their system. The amateurs admitted to it.
AReasonableMan said...
Tying teacher compensation directly to student test performance was always going to be problematic.
. . . Yet, if my pay was tied to the kids test performance, the students would be doing a lot less rambling and a lot more test prep. Not sure that this is a good thing.
No matter what you do, no matter how good of a teacher you are, you can't pour a gallon of knowledge into a one quart skull.
We have decided as a country that the half of the country that are below academic average should be deemed average regardless.
We then prescribe college as the solution that will make this all work out.
Meanwhile the vast majority of the college-educated can't fix their own car, their home's roof or their home's pipes.
Their is an intelligence in the hands of a tradesman that we ignore.
Trigger warning:
Take EVERY FUCKING scholarship dollar of the liberal arts and fund trade schools for a few years.
We have enough baristas that can't change a tire.
I am Laslo.
there / their. Etc.
I am Laslo.
No matter what you do, no matter how good of a teacher you are, you can't pour a gallon of knowledge into a one quart skull.
As a high school teacher, I can tell you the problem is not so much "can't learn" as it is "won't learn".
As the parent of an APS student who has lived through this whole clusterfuck -- and who challenged school officials (all the way up to Bev Hall's Chief of Staff) about the cheating from the moment the local newspaper (AJC) first caught a whiff of wrongdoing more than 6 years ago, let me share some observations:
1. Bev Hall's unpardonable sin wasn't pressuring teachers to do better. That was a feature, not a bug. No, her sin was to deny the rampant cheating existed even after it became obvious to all, and then try to cover up the evidence. She even used her personal Gmail account to circumvent our Open Records law. Does that sound familiar to anyone?
I'm sorry Hall died before she could wear her own pair of bracelets. Many of us were eagerly awaiting that moment.
2. Our hapless school board was complicit in this whole thing, from refusing to confront Hall to actively trying to whitewash the initial "investigation." Georgia's governor rightfully ignored our Board of Ed's so-called "Blue Ribbon Panel" when it concluded "nothing to see here," and ordered the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to get involved. The GBI subsequently raided the schools involved and started a REAL investigation. But because of our spineless Board, Bev Hall was allowed to serve out her contract and retire with her (fraudulently obtained) six-figure bonuses intact.
3. Andrew Young, a man I used to admire, thoroughly disgraced himself by his conduct during the scandal. Many other black leaders (including former mayor Shirley Franklin) to this day refuse to admit how wrong they were about Hall, and how much damage they allowed to happen by continuing to support Hall even when the evidence of cheating became impossible to ignore. Andrew Young himself said--and this is a direct quote: "I don't care about no damn cheating." Now that's moral leadership.
4. It is clear to me that the educators involved in the cheating (and there were hundreds; many more than actually faced charges) believe poor black children are uneducable... and are nothing more than an inconvenience they must deal with on a daily basis in order to collect salaries that are totally disproportionate to their abilities.
The cynicism of the educators was, to me, the most shocking part of this scandal. Any discussion of racism here in Atlanta must start with the black-on-black racism in the school system. It is a cancer that causes and reinforces generational poverty.
5. There was plenty of evidence against the defendants convicted today. They should have taken plea deals, but were arrogant enough to believe they could count on enough black jurors to give them the OJ treatment. Didn't work out that way. I don't mind telling you, I'm very surprised that it didn't. I thought there would be some OJ bullshit here, for sure, especially as the jury deliberations dragged on.
This kind of "gundecking" to pass an inspection would get you court-martialed in the service. Educating our children? Eh, it's just binness as usual.
"One of them was acquitted. So it was a garbage case against that person."
Or they had a defter hand with an X-acto knife.
Rick Lockbridge
Even black jurors have children who have been woefully abused by the cheating and the bad teachers.
The teachers looked stunned that they got the verdict they did. Truly surprised that they wouldn't walk.
Shameful
I don't know. Normally I'd roll around in the dishing of out of a little cosmic karma for all the ugliness that some teachers and their unions have spread.
But something doesn't feel right here. I'm surprisingly sympothetic to ARM's comment above.
"It is clear to me that the educators involved in the cheating . . . believe poor black children are uneducable . . . and are nothing more than an inconvenience . . . The cynicism of the educators was, to me, the most shocking part of this scandal. Any discussion of racism here in Atlanta must start with the black-on-black racism in the school system. It is a cancer that causes and reinforces generational poverty."
I can't judge how widespread the rot in ATL was or is.
But even assuming for the sake of argument that these generalizations are in the ballpark, the dreadful question is: are they cynics or realists? What evidence was/is there that their students could have done substantially better in reaching the NCLB standards? And what evidence is there now that, but for the cheating, their educational achievement would have been substantially different?
holding people accountable is garbage? see, stereotypes of leftists exist for a reason.
" Learning is like play, it is not always purposeful"
Yeah, lets have the kids just sit around and make paper airplanes in math class.
Gahrie said...
As a high school teacher, I can tell you the problem is not so much "can't learn" as it is "won't learn".
How can you tell the difference?
And, consider that those who "won't", are often covering for the fact that they "can't".
jr565: "Yeah, lets have the kids just sit around and make paper airplanes in math class."
Paper airplanes?
Oh no. Nothing that ambitious.
Try collages for math assignments. That's where we have arrived today with public education.
...Atlanta teachers who were accused in a systematic scheme falsifying students' scores in at least 44 schools....Only one of the 12 educators on trial...
Wait..."at least 44 schools" and only 12 "educators"?! They might be crooked, but let no one accuse teachers of being lazy!
How can you tell the difference?
And, consider that those who "won't", are often covering for the fact that they "can't"
Because many don't care enough to cheat. Even when you make it easy.
I was once told by my principal I was failing too many kids. I asked my department admin what I was supposed to do. This is what I ended up with:
Homework is 30% of the grade. You can turn it in late..sometimes months late.
Tests are 70% of the grade. I created and passed out a study guide for every question on the test. I gave them answers if they asked while they worked on them in class. (One group I just flat out gave the answers to the study guide.) I LET THEM USE THE STUDY GUIDES DURING THE TEST (If they bothered to bring them)
An F on my grading scale was a 50% if you turned in anything at all. So even if you got every question on the test wrong, you still got a 50%.
I made myself available before and after school for anyone who wanted to retake a test for a better grade.
I still had students fail.
A dangerous law, yes. A narrowly-tailored statute on cheating in schools would be better.
You couldn't realistically have narrowly-tailored statutes outlawing every possible illegal act.
RICO should be struck from the books. As it happens the prosecutor does't need it anyway, since it's designed to put people in jail for crimes they didn't commit. Or rather, if he does need it he can't prove they're guilty.
I would think fraud is a perfectly reasonable thing to charge these teachers with. They ought to do a little time and lose their teaching credentials. The idea they should be facing twenty year is outrageous.
Businesses say they want schools to teach children marketable skills. What skill set can be of greater practical use in the business world than knowing how to lie, cheat and commit fraud? Just ask the heads of GNC, Target, Walgreens, and Walmart, whose companies were recently caught selling allegedly fraudulent store-brand dietary supplements.
having problem with RICO use in this case
=
denying black folks ability to organise their crimes
=
racism
Gahrie said...
This is what I ended up with:
Homework is 30% of the grade. You can turn it in late..sometimes months late.
Tests are 70% of the grade. I created and passed out a study guide for every question on the test. I gave them answers if they asked while they worked on them in class. (One group I just flat out gave the answers to the study guide.) I LET THEM USE THE STUDY GUIDES DURING THE TEST (If they bothered to bring them)
An F on my grading scale was a 50% if you turned in anything at all. So even if you got every question on the test wrong, you still got a 50%.
I made myself available before and after school for anyone who wanted to retake a test for a better grade.
I still had students fail.
Sorry, but you should not have lowered your standards. That made you 'part of the problem', despite good intentions.
You do see that, don't you?
Everybody keeps talking about what "RICO was intended for" or some such. Come on. Please name one Federal law that in any way might resemble today in its reflected enforcement what was (supposedly) intended. Even the Constitution itself was modified under Roosevelt without any words changing their order, votes, or even different justices on the court. Fortunately, natural law is not subject to the claims of men.
Rick Lockridge said: Our hapless school board was complicit in this whole thing...
Of course. Trustees represent the Teachers' union, not the taxpayers.
Here in Texas the TEA touts the "Team of Eight" - Seven elected Trustees and the Superintendent they hire.
This concept obscures that the JOB of the Trustees is to SUPERVISE the Superintendent.
Typically School Board candidates are themselves employees of a neighboring school district, or the spouse/sibling of a local District employee.
These people are elected because:
..mostly only District employees bother to vote (the elections being off normal cycle and in unusual poling places);
..other voters who show up go for the candidate who "is a teacher and understands what students need."
Sorry, but you should not have lowered your standards. That made you 'part of the problem', despite good intentions.
That particular group of students were already failing my class, and this was my way of proving to the administration that it wasn't my fault.
ARM has a point (my fingers are bleeding from typing that) in that any sort of objective measurements for evaluating teachers (or anyone else) is an invitation to cheat or at least game the system. But the trouble is that the current system, which rewards good teachers and bad alike for longevity in the system has its own abuses.
My sons attended majority minority schools, I think at one point the elementary school was over 50% "free and reduced" lunches. Some poor black kids seemed to understand that education was a way out of poverty and buckled down. Others didn't, and some of those others actively set out to impede the rest of their class from learning. But's not a black thing because I grew up in a quarry town and some of the white kids from poor families were as bad. That fathers did manual labor in the quarry, and they envisioned the same for themselves.
That, in a nutshell, is the problem to be solved, and it's a blunder to focus on skin color. Standardized tests have to be part of solution, I think, but there's way more to it than that.
Gahrie:
Decades ago I taught in an all black college and experienced the same dilemma you were confronted with. I would say that half of my students were singularly unprepared for college and were at the functional illiterate level.
It was clearly not the fault of the college that these kids were unprepared. It was the fault of the college for admitting them.
It was during those years that I came to believe the best thing for "education" would be to issue an ivy league degree to every child at birth. They could then choose to educate themselves in the free school system, or they could choose to do otherwise.
Gahrie said...
>>Sorry, but you should not have lowered your standards. That made you 'part of the problem', despite good intentions.
That particular group of students were already failing my class, and this was my way of proving to the administration that it wasn't my fault.
Oh, I completely sympathize. It is often not the teacher's fault. How to prove that, though? An honest conversation about the root of the problem, would have to include the studies that show that the mean IQs of the main Races (using actual names of colors) are in this general order, high to low: yellow, white, brown, black.
And isn't it interesting that many teacher's personal anecdotes from across years of their teaching career, would confirm that order in achievement?
And to the response - "yes, but that order is also the relative order that those 4 cultures put emphasis on education in the home and community" - I would say "yes, but do they stress education in that degree because they are innately equipped for it? In other words, are they smart because they study, or do they study because they are smart?
Big Mike said...
ARM has a point (my fingers are bleeding from typing that)
Come on. You enjoyed it. You know you did.
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