Give credit where it is due.
The AP reporter who broke the Tony Bennett grade-fixing scandal was Tom LoBianco.
We need more investigative reporters covering education.
This scandal is the tip of the iceberg.
When so much money is riding on test scores and grades, follow the money and keep digging.
When so many political careers are invested in achieving certain results, keep your eyes open.
Education reform is no longer about children or improving education.
It is about money, power, control, reputations.
Way to go, Tom LoBianco.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
It’s very encouraging to see reporters who will dig for stories rather than simply repeat whatever Campbell Brown says without questioning or researching anything.
Very well said. The contrast between this real act of journalism and the lazy, insipid NYC press – especially the Daily News – is instructive.
The statement in Bennett’s email, “They need to understand that anything less than an A for Christel House compromises all of our accountability work.” seems rather ironic.
It really gets tricky when the reformers have to work so hard to create a web-of-lies system to make schools and teachers look bad-and then also get caught when policy-makers start protecting the profiteering friends and campaign donors who have swooped in to create “schools” – making claims they can’t honestly fulfill.
Under Stalin’s rule uranium mines used to keep two sets of books. One for Stalin and the inspectors and one for the actual amount mined and enriched. Surpluses would be horded away and brought back when needed. This was done to avoid high stakes penalties such as death in a Siberian gulag.
Many decades later this became a real big problem after the Soviet Union broke up and nuclear materials were being sold, dismantled and most importantly – accounted for.
Which book was the uncooked one? What if only one book was available? Cooked or not cooked? How many weapons were made? where did they go? Why are there some missing? Are they REALLY missing?
High stakes ANYTHING has huge ripple effects that we cannot foresee.
Bob the science guy: A chilling example of Campbell’s Law at work.
And a reminder that we need to be careful when dealing with the numbers and stats and grades provided by educrats and apparatchiks alike who follow the Marxist playbook: “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you’ve got it made.”
You know, THAT Marx—Groucho.
🙂
Can’t understand why anyone thought all of this “reform” was about anything but money! Whether for the charlatans (Rhee, etc) to enrich themselves or the political leaders (Bloomberg etc) looking to cut costs.
Michael, this faux-reform is about money and about spreading free-market ideology. http://edushyster.com/?p=2985
I know this is serious, but I find this hilarious:
“I am more than a little miffed about this,” Bennett wrote. “I hope we come to the meeting today with solutions and not excuses and/or explanations for me to wiggle myself out of the repeated lies I have told over the past six months.”
Good Lord. The “solution” was to change the color on the graph? This is the best and the brightest in Chiefs for Change? Surely we can do better, in our pursuit of excellence.
When I read some of the “side-effects” of the deforms and I too laugh, it’s All so insane and outrageous! Whoa…nuts is in charge.
Does Mr. LoBianco have an email? I want to thank him personally.
The best I could find is his twitter handle:
@tomlobianco
Thank you, Mr. LoBianco. I and my journalism degree thank you for restoring credibility to reporting.
Tom could create a meaningful career related to education investigative reporting related to “reform.”
Those poor tenth graders. The entire “accountability movement” was riding on their shoulders, apparently. How are they doing after this devastating failure on a math test? Hopefully they’ve moved on, to a place where there are some sane adults.
Tony LoBianco should be named AP reporter of the year. This story is absolutely nauseating. Thank you for reporting this scandal. I would advise you to start investigating the charter movement in Michigan. It is disgusting too. A new charter from a failing company was just opened in a defunct Target building. Who in their right mind would want children to attend school in an old Target? Where is the playground? The gym? This is why the state needs actual educators with experience to oversee education. It is easy to exploit unknowing parents. Just plain sad.
We need more investigative reporters period. So many “journalists” are just stenographers to the government/corporate powers that be. And if they do well at that, then eventually they get to be pundits whose opinions come straight from those same government/corporate powers.
Investigative Reporters you say?!!!!!! You bet! There needs to be a group of reporters
who come from enough specialized interests to put this whole rotten picture together.
There are enough people around this country who have been following this unraveling for over thirty years who would be happy to talk and give up the information that could shape the story for a coherent message to the public. From the begginning of this blog you have some of those folks lending their information and signaling a call to arms and especially to the ears and desks of investigative reporters. When John Merrow showed the way to revisiting his own work and saying he saw the light with regard to the deceit of Michelle Rhee and others, that showed reporters a way back from the hype of the entrepenuers, the privateers, who were helping to drive the media towards their interests. Not the interests of the general public and the future of this country for the entirety of it’s population. The folks like George Bruzzetti who let others know about the Parent Trigger protections. The BadAss Teachers who are willing to give up each of their disheartening stories. Oh yes! There is enough just through the articles in this blog and the Diane Ravitch Network.
The following was written for another article in this blog but I thought it appropriate instead for this as it speaks to the comment above on many sides of the journalistic investigative interests. So here it is………..
So let me get this straight. Vallas fails in three states and moves on to another paycheck because his failures don’t count but his titles do? Okay! Let me rethink this. Hmmm! An example of a student who is identified as having multiple learning disabilities put into an Inclusion setting without supports and is given a C to get him passed with the comment on his report card after the big C “I think he is getting it! and He is trying.” I call that legal (but immoral and unethical) push through and let the next guy worry about him or let him sink or swim through his own challenges. The same can be said for school districts. Most especially when the plan is to starve out and force the have-nots into global migration and out of the cities to be rebuilt by them, but captured for the ownership (once again) for the wealthy. Follow the money!! This is about using children, education, city blight and loss of manufacturing anything other other then a take over of profit and comfort for the 1%, because in their mind’s they are the deserving value-added haves, as opposed to the undeserving value-less nots. Harsh?! Yep! True?! The proof is in the pudding. Look at the Humpty Dumpty effect of the cities like Detroit, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc. Yet! As they come tumbling down the Kings and their men say they can be put back together…after they are bailed out and rebuilt on the federal taxpayer’s dollars for….guess who?!!!! The cities were deliberatiely abandoned until the brink of destruction and now they apply their Urban Shrinkage Plan. Brilliant!!!
Then there is the reform movement in medicine that moves us to the nurse practitioner (not disparaging of the nurse practioner but they are not trained doctors)
who is good enough for those that can’t afford a doctor and do not know enough to challenge when told they will get a nurse practioner once having seen a doctor one time. Hmmmm! Let’s see! Oh,yes! Then there are the pharma decisions on generics or discontinued meds for some but available for those that can find them elsewhere and afford them. Oh!I forgot the psychiatric care for those that can afford and a waiting list for years for those that can’t afford immediate care. We do have For Profit Prisons for the waiting victims out of control just in case. Manufacturing does exist within the For Profit Prisons with low wage earners and enough of them to have taken the business away from workers on the outside. Oh,Well! Too bad say the folks who can get the doctor, voucher/private/charter education, pharma, rehab and psychiatric facility/job, city services, decent legal representation, so forth and so on. That is just the way it will have to be.Sink or swim. Live or die. Your problem.
Of course, I forgot the vigilante environment this breeds (either side of this to protect what some have and to find a way to get what is needed). Gives you a thought why laws like the one that protected Zimmerman in the Trayvon Martin case exist.
Needs and wants. The distance between the have folks and have not folks are a universe apart. Have I gone off the beaten track of all the conversations of specific concerns in this blog? Well, maybe. But it all comes down to the same thing. Follow The Money! Power! Redistribution! Human/social engineering for the future and the uses of each. Make a difference journalists and investigative reporters and tell the story, the whole story….the truth. Seems like everyone is a dime short, I just hope
we are not a day late.
Get ready to gag:
On Tony Bennett’s “grading-gate,” avoid the rush to judgment
Michael J. Petrilli / July 30, 2013
http://www.edexcellence.net/commentary/education-gadfly-daily/flypaper/2013/on-tony-bennetts-grading-gate-avoid-the-rush-to-judgment.html
My comment below…
Looks like the Fordham Institute obviously has a propagandist working for them…
So now the grading system is both and art and a science… How come these evaluation systems are strictly a “science” when it comes to grading other schools? Apparently it’s also predetermined that the charter is an excellent school because the writer points out that even an excellent school can be incorrectly graded as a C. Why is that only the case for this particular school and not for any of the others?
Thanks for posting the blog.
Thanks, Joe, the A-F grading system is a farce.
Those who can magically turn a ‘C’ into an ‘A’
By Steve Benen
http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2013/07/30/19774267-those-who-can-magically-turn-a-c-into-an-a?lite