The Punishment Definitely Doesn't Fit the Crime

The Atlanta cheating fiasco was bad and the educators involved deserved license sanctions, but really.

The banksters who helped wreck the economy are allowed to get away with all kinds of shit, but educators of course are held to a far different standard.

It's the outrageous demands by politicians, particularly in D.C., that opened the floodgates to cheating by school districts.

I am sure Atlanta is just a drop in the bucket.

Well aware that the case is a damning condemnation of the Obama administration’s anti-education policies, sections of the political establishment cautioned Judge Baxter to avoid prison sentences. This includes former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, who said 20 years of emphasis on testing had warped public schools’ mission and set a “trap” for the educators.

In an opinion piece in the April 12 Atlanta Journal-Constitution, two of the judge’s predecessors on the Fulton County Superior Court bench, wrote, “Judge Baxter should exercise his tremendous discretion in imposing sentences which reflect that any conspiracy involves our entire educational system in the high-stakes testing arena. These educators did not create the system in which schools have been corrupted across this nation by making standardized tests the chief measure of school, teacher and student performance. Certainly, incarceration is neither mandated nor appropriate in this case.”

It's scapegoating, something that school districts have done to teachers for many, many years.

Someone in the comments section of the linked article pointed to this piece about what it is like to be a test scorer.

Low-paid shit jobs with no benefits.

The REAL Criminals in the Atlanta Cheating Scandal

It wasn't the late superintendent Beverly Hall or the principals or the teachers who are really the crooks although they are the scapegoats in the case. The real criminals are the politicians and "reformers" who set public education up to failure by demanding unrealistic mandates for students or risk funding being cut off, closure, or turning the schools into bullshit charters.

People like Duncan and Obama should have been run out of town for their peddling this testing insanity, to say nothing of their predecessors, whose demands helped create the Atlanta cheating scandal back in the early 2000s.

Knowing education like I do, teachers could not speak up for fear of retaliation and dismissal. Contrary to popular belief, teachers have very few or no protections at all against administrators. It's either break the law and risk a career, or have no job and never teach again.

When the Atlanta cheating scandal first emerged in 2008, it was an indictment of the drive to tie school funding to students performance on standardized tests. Hall had been a poster child of the school “reform” movement, and Atlanta had been touted as a nationwide example of the efficacy of standardized testing and tying teachers’ pay to students’ test scores.

It Never Pays to Cheat

at least if you are a teacher. Eleven teachers were convicted of racketeering in the Atlanta test cheating scandal.

Then-superintendent Beverly Hall, who was embroiled in the middle of this mess but resigned in 2010, died last month.

In 2013, a Fulton County grand jury indicted 35 educators from the district, including principals, teachers and testing coordinators.

More than 20 former school system employees took a plea deal, WGCL reported.

A state review had determined that some cheating had occurred in more than half the district's elementary and middle schools. About 180 teachers at 44 schools were implicated initially.

The cheating is believed to date back to early 2001, when scores on statewide skills tests began to turn around in the 50,000-student school district, according to the 2013 indictment.

This is what happens when there is so much pressure by politicians too ignorant to understand teaching, learning, and education. They want teachers to work miracles when in fact they have very little impact on student achievement.

Ditto for administrators, although it is a safe bet the teachers who cheated were threatened with termination if they didn't comply.

All About the Recent Cheating Scandals

Good report I saw on YouTube:

Fall Into Disgrace

Former Atlanta schools superintendent Beverly Hall has been indicted in the Atlanta cheating scandal:

A grand jury Friday indicted Beverly L. Hall, the former superintendent powerhouse of the Atlanta School District, on racketeering and other charges, bringing a dramatic new chapter to one of the largest cheating scandals in the country.

The grand jury also indicted 34 teachers and administrators in addition to Dr. Hall, who resigned in 2011 just before results of an investigation into the scandal was released. It recommended $7.5 million bond for Dr. Hall, who could face up to 45 years in prison.

In a list of 65 charges against the educators that include influencing witnesses, theft by taking, conspiracy and making false statements, Fulton County prosecutors painted a picture of a decade-long conspiracy that involved awarding bonuses connected to improving scores on the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests, the state’s main test of core academic subjects for elementary and middle schools, and a culture where, in some schools, cheating was an acceptable way to get them.

I don't think Nancy Grace will cover this case at all. Not sexy enough or bloody enough.

Some Teachers Accused

in the Atlanta test cheating scandal have decided to "have their day in court" testifying in their defense in a rigged tribunal. They should know better than that because no matter whether they are guilty or innocent, they are presumed guilty.

I seriously doubt any teacher would risk his or her teaching license to cheat unless "encouraged" (read threatened) by a higher-up administrator.

That's no justification, but teachers don't do this kind of unethical behavior without getting orders from someplace.

This teacher was ultimately fired, but note this important detail:

It escalated when Parks Middle School Principal Christopher Waller asked Damany Lewis, a math teacher, to slice into standardized testing booklets.

It grew over four years into a well-orchestrated cheating scheme, where Parks’ staffers changed wrong answers to right.

It perhaps ended the first of many careers Wednesday. A tribunal of educators fired Lewis, making him the first APS teacher to be let go as a result of the massive test cheating scandal. Lewis asked the panel for a lighter punishment — and to consider the pressure he and other teachers were under to meet testing goals.

“We were told failure was not an option,” Lewis said. “Teaching and learning was the primary focus of the teachers. Results were the primary focus of this district and our administration.”

Of course he was pressured to do so by his principal. If he hadn't done it, he would have been forced out of his job anyway.