This smart blogger read all the investigators’ reports from the Atlanta cheating scandal.
He or she realized that Atlanta was doing everything that reformers say is important.
The educators there were focusing on test scores above all else.
The teachers who got higher scores got bonuses and those who did not, got humiliated.
Incentivizing the workforce, yes?
The teachers had no tenure, so whistleblowers had no job protection and were easily fired.
The blogger writes: “So what rank-and-yank, cash incentives, all that leadership, and high expectations got Atlanta public school children was test scores so gamed that the schools lost Title One program improvement money, and children who needed special education services were disqualified from them because of their remarkable testing prowess.”
Atlanta is a textbook case of the corporate reform approach to education. What makes it different from other districts following the corporate reform textbook is that the governor sent in professional investigators.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Bill Gates and his posse should be proud of APS’ achievement. Oh, yes they were proud, until they got caught. APS did everything to the letter. Teachers throughout reported cheating and many were harassed and fired. Gates and all his posse have this fine example of what they think education should be and what they strive for. We will all remember this well thought-out, researched and implemented process by the Reformers has a monument to their fine work, APS and Beverly Hall.
Children missed out tremendously. I hope the parents will step forward and open that secret box. APS & Gates owe them much more. Parents, you know there is enough money to compensate your children with intensive private education and massive interventions. It will never make up the crime committed against your children, but they can get personal help from here on.
Bill Gates, if you are not going to help children in poverty in the US, then go save N.Korea from itself. Stay away from education, and complete your own. It is painful to watch you make a mess of our children’s future and our teachers’ careers.
And the fallout of the Atlanta cheating scandal continues to be felt. The Governor’s Office of Student Achievement is currently investigating schools’ testing procedures for last school year if classrooms registered on the “excessive erasures” report. If a classroom was flagged as having an average of wrong to right erasures that was 3 or more standard deviations from the mean, then the school is investigated and police-state-like measures are enacted to ensure the school is not cheating.
It’s crazy down here and the nonsense only seems to get worse.
This may not seem relevant, but I believe that it is:
We need to start calling corporate education reform “the status quo”.
The blogger writes: “So what rank-and-yank, cash incentives, all that leadership, and high expectations got Atlanta public school children was test scores so gamed that the schools lost Title One program improvement money, and children who needed special education services were disqualified from them because of their remarkable testing prowess.”
This is extremely worrisome. I believe that our Supt. White knows that his manipulation of School Performance Scores to show improvement where there is none, the testing of special Ed students, and his new policy for increasing special Ed grad rates, moving Spec Ed kids into regular classrooms and then declassifying them to eliminate their funding as spec Ed is related to this. Correct me if wrong but didn’t U.S.Ed give flexibility for the use of Title I funds that would somehow also tie into this? Looking for reason where there isn’t any?
They ought to call it the Enronization of Education — or the Iraquification of education.
The abstract of a recent discussion list post “Counterproductive Targets” reads:
The recent Atlanta cheating scandal [(Gumbrecht 2013) at http://bit.ly/YRAVax and (Strauss 2013a) at http://wapo.st/Z2ebBB%5D, is a byproduct of the draconian consequences of failure to meet “Adequate Yearly Progress” http://bit.ly/Z0iq0o TARGETS of the “No Child Left Behind Act” http://bit.ly/XWtRGp. Such corruption is consistent with six empirical “laws” related to *Counterproductive Targets*, five of which were listed by EvalTalk’s Bill Fear (2013). They are epitomized by “Campbell’s Law”: “The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor.”
To access the complete 20 kB post please click on http://yhoo.it/YTuvYB.
Hate to play Devil’s Advocate, but “Isn’t Cheating a Choice?” http://oldschoolteach.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-cheating-scandal-isnt-cheating.html#.UV7-F5OTg4c
I, and many other teachers, are working to find a way to get rid of this system, without resorting to cheating.
A number of years ago Fulton County Schools wanted to absorb Atlanta public schools because they were having trouble meeting their quotas of African-American teachers. Atlanta had the best benefits and paid twice a month instead of once. Atlanta is, for the most part in Fulton County. APS said they would lose control of their schools to “the white folks” and would not merge. At the time APS was about 90% black for students and 75%-80% for employees. I wonder if they will be forced to merge now since the Republicans have taken over the state government or if they will be allowed to recover. I think they can, but it is going to take a whole lot of housecleaning.
Atlanta also did very well increasing scores on the NAEP assessments during this time period.
And why shouldn’t we assume those tests were also gamed?
NAEP testing is administered by proctors provided by staff hired and associated with NAEP. However, in APS,many of the proctors were retired APS employees. If there are questions about those test results, and scores are atypically high, then one does not have to look too far. Dr. Hall was always known to be very thorough and the depth and breadth of this cheating plan does not surprise anyone from Atlanta.
For all the accountabullies who just can’t seem to understand anything but numbers, numbers, numbers, here’s a little tidbit from one of the NYTimes pieces on the AtlantaPS cheating scandal. Let’s see, how much was sacrificed by the students in just one school for the rigged high test scores and Superintendent Beverly Hall’s rigged $500,000 in bonus money for getting those high test scores?
From page 2 of the article:
The falsified test scores were so high that Parks Middle was no longer classified as a school in need of improvement and, as a result, lost $750,000 in state and federal aid, according to investigators. That money could have been used to give struggling children extra academic support. Stacey Johnson, a Parks teacher, told investigators that she had students in her class who had scored proficient on state tests in previous years but were actually reading on the first-grade level. Cheating masked the deficiencies and skewed the diagnosis.
But hey! That shouldn’t stop any of the ‘strivers’ and ‘achievers’ who are worthy of having bootstraps to pull themselves up by, right?????
The link: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/30/us/former-school-chief-in-atlanta-indicted-in-cheating-scandal.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&emc=na
How amazing the governor called in the troops to stop this felony on our youth and society. Let’s thank that governor for this great action. Always slam them when they rip us off and thank them when they do the right thing. I am consistent with this even with those who do the wrong thing 95% of the time. When they do the right thing I call the office and let them know. They know who I am so it matters.