Michael Klonsky posted on his blog these photographs of some of the Atlanta educators who were investigated for cheating; 11 were convicted and sent directly to jail to await sentencing (excepting a pregnant woman.) Superintendent Beverly Hall died weeks before the verdict was handed down. He said they were “taking the fall” for “Duncan’s Testing Madness.”
In an earlier post, I said that the lesson of Atlanta is “never never never cheat.” Don’t do it, don’t tolerate it.
But as I saw educators led away in shackles, as I saw speculation that they were facing 20 years in prison, I began to think again. Yes, cheating is wrong and should never be tolerated, but this punishment does not fit the crime. It is way too disproportionate to the charges. Some criminals get lesser jail sentences for murder and armed robbery. Since when did cheating in school become racketeering?
My thinking was nudged along by three important articles about this affair.
One was by Richard Rothstein. In this brilliant article, Rothstein argued that the 11 convicted educators were “taking the fall” for a thoroughly corrupt testing regime that set impossible goals and punished those who can’t meet them:
Rothstein writes:
Eleven Atlanta educators, convicted and imprisoned, have taken the fall for systematic cheating on standardized tests in American education. Such cheating is widespread, as is similar corruption in any institution—whether health care, criminal justice, the Veterans Administration, or others—where top policymakers try to manage their institutions with simple quantitative measures that distort the institution’s goals. This corruption is especially inevitable when out-of-touch policymakers set impossible-to-achieve goals and expect that success will nonetheless follow if only underlings are held accountable for measurable results.
There was little doubt, even before the jury’s decision, that Atlanta teachers and administrators had changed answers on student test booklets to increase scores. There was also little doubt that Atlanta’s late superintendent, Beverly Hall, was partly responsible because she had, as a state investigation revealed, “created a culture of fear, intimidation and retaliation” that had permitted “cheating—at all levels—to go unchecked for years.”
What the trial did not explore was whether Dr. Hall herself was reacting to a culture of fear, intimidation, and retaliation that her board, state education officials, and the Bush and Obama administrations had created. Just as her principals’ jobs were in jeopardy if test scores didn’t rise, her tenure, too, was dependent on ever rising test scores.
Holding educators accountable for student test results makes sense if the tests are reasonable reflections of teacher performance. But if they are not, and if educators are being held accountable for meeting standards that are impossible to achieve, then the only way to meet fanciful goals imposed from above—according to federal law, that all children will make adequate yearly progress towards full proficiency in 2014—is to cheat, using illegal or barely legal devices. It is not surprising that educators do just that.
And demanding that all students be proficient, by any date, was an impossible and incoherent demand. No Child Left Behind required that states make their proficiency standards “challenging.” But no goal can simultaneously be challenging to and achievable by all students across the entire achievement distribution. A standard can either be a minimal standard, which presents no challenge to typical and advanced students, or it can be a challenging standard, which is unachievable by most below-average students. Some states ignored the “challenging” requirement and lowered their standards so most students could pass a meaningless test. Others succumbed to hectoring by Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and his colleagues in the Bush and Obama administrations to raise their standards, essentially guaranteeing the cheating scandals that followed. Now, with tests coming online that are aligned with the tougher “Common Core” standards, along with new demands that educators jobs are at risk if all students don’t achieve proficiency, we can be sure that Atlanta’s cheating scandal will not be the last.
Rothstein notes that there have been many testing scandals in other cities, such as Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Houston, and Philadelphia, but no educators were indicted and convicted. He compares the Atlanta cheating scandal to the similar data-driven scandal at the Veterans’ Administration:
The most widely reported recent instance of this corruption was the Veterans Administration’s requirement that its staff schedule appointments within 14 days of a veteran’s request for one. That it was impossible to meet this standard because there were insufficient doctors to see patients within that time frame did not influence the VA to change its standard. So, systematically, nationwide, intake staff cheated, for example by reporting that patients had only called for an appointment 14 days before they received one, not the months that may have transpired. Many staff members also lied to federal investigators looking into the cheating; lying to investigators is a crime for which Atlanta educators were convicted, VA employees have not been similarly prosecuted. Instead of being put on trial, supervisors who permitted such practices have been allowed to resign.
There is another respect in which the VA scandal differed from the one in the Atlanta school district. VA supervisors permitted to resign did not take the fall for those ultimately responsible for enforcing the corruption-inducing standard. Last May, Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki, who had ordered that appointments be scheduled within 14 days, himself resigned because of the scandal. I offer no opinion about whether similar accountability would be appropriate in the Department of Education.
Another article that caught my eye was posted on Yahoo in the financial news. It made the point that our society has different justice systems: one for ordinary people, like the Atlanta educators, and another for the financiers who nearly destroyed our economic system.
The author, David Dayen of The Fiscal Times, writes:
One of the defining issues of this millennium has been the bifurcation of the criminal justice system, with one set of rules for ordinary people and another for elites. We’ve learned that justice is a commodity to be purchased rather than a universal value delivered without prejudice.
That’s the proper backdrop to the news of convictions in the Atlanta test cheating case. Eleven educators were found guilty of racketeering charges — something typically reserved for organized crime — for feeding students answers to standardized tests, or changing test sheets after they were turned in.
If you don’t remember these kinds of creative prosecution strategies during the financial crisis, that’s probably because no prosecutor ever used them. Teachers ordered to falsify tests and the superiors who demanded it, amid desperation to save schools from destruction, deserve no mercy from the court. Bankers who ran a criminal enterprise to engage in the largest consumer and investing fraud in world history deserve our thanks….
None of this excuses the misconduct, it sets a context for it. And it matches almost precisely what went on at every level of the mortgage market before, during and after the housing bubble. Mortgage brokers used Wite-Out and exacto knives to falsify income tax data for unqualified borrowers to get them into loans. They employed Coke vending machines as light boards to trace forgeries, putting people into garbage loans they didn’t purchase. The loans got sold to Wall Street banks, which routinely lied to investors, who purchased bundles of mortgages packaged into securities, by telling them that the loan quality exceeded underwriting standards.
When the loans predictably defaulted, mortgage servicing company employees were instructed to lie to customers, claim to have lost loan modification applications when they actually shredded them, and push customers into foreclosure, which maximized servicer fees. One set of workers at Bank of America testified that they received Target gift cards as bonuses for causing foreclosures among customers.
In the foreclosure process, these same companies, with help from “default services” specialists and “foreclosure mill” law firms, fabricated and forged the legal documents required to enforce the terms of the mortgage, because all that documentation was either lost or never recorded. Workers would sign each other’s names, use each other’s notary stamps, pretend to work for other companies, and assign mortgages from the company they didn’t work for to the one they did.
The job pressures faced by the Atlanta educators differed little from the job pressures faced by line-level workers at mortgage origination, securitization, servicing, foreclosure mill and default services shops across the country. In both cases, the workers performed their jobs under threat of termination. Supervisors watched everyone to ensure compliance. The fraud became institutionalized. And after a while, people stopped asking whether what they were doing was in any way legal.
So let’s see how the justice system dealt with these two cases. When mostly African-American educators at poor schools in Atlanta cheat on tests, they get the book thrown at them …..
“The darkly amusing part of all this is that the harsh sentence in the Atlanta case is seen as a necessary counter to the temptation to cheat caused by the testing regime. So prosecutors devote huge amounts of resources (the district attorney called it the most complex case of his career) and judges dole out long sentences, all to keep teachers in line. No similar deterrent has been created for the industry that sells Americans the most important financial product of their entire lives. We send messages to teachers; we send bailouts to bankers.
“You don’t have to consider the Atlanta teachers innocent to know something has gone terribly awry in the country when filling in bubbles on Scan-Tron sheets can get you 20 years, but stealing people’s homes and defrauding pension funds can’t get you indicted. The only way you could see what the justice system has granted bankers as in any way commensurate with what it does to ordinary people is if you grade on a curve.”
The third article, on Huffington Post, expressed even more astonishment at the contrast between the justice meted out to errant educators and the pass given to financiers who ruined the lives of millions of people.
Jason Linkins writes:
There’s really no doubt that those convicted did a Very Bad Thing — like, you know, The Worst Thing “since forever” OMG — if for no other reason than that their actions will scandalize other public school educators, who are currently described so frequently in media accounts as “embattled” it’s like their homeric epithet. The only people more demonized by political elites from either party are sadists who attempt to set up demented death-cult caliphates.
And sweet fancy Moses, did they ever lay the wood to those folks they convicted! Per the AP: “Over objections from the defendants’ attorneys, Superior Court Judge Jerry Baxter ordered all but one of those convicted immediately jailed while they await sentencing. They were led out of court in handcuffs.”
They took them out in chains! That’s hardcore. That’s humiliating. That’s a sight that will make other people think twice before committing similar crimes — it’s what real accountability looks like.
Linkins reviews numerous high profile cases in which bankers were not prosecuted because the are “too big to fail.” Their misdeeds were egregious, but they got a light slap on the wrist.
He concludes:
“In the end, I think that these Atlanta teachers have learned a lesson: Be a banker. Or a polluter. Or run a for-profit education scam. Or snooker people with predatory mortgage agreements. Or rip off people with penny-stock schemes. Or run a college sports cartel. Or create a super PAC. Or “torture some folks.”
“Just don’t ever change the answers on a standardized test.”
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
I read this more than once and all I can come up with is WOW!. Confucious once said “Don’t use a cannon to kill a mosquito”. I believe in this case a cannon was used to kill a mosquito.
The RICO laws were imposed during the Savings and Loan debacle of the early 80s to punish those crooks who defrauded the nation and the investors. Seems our government under Bush and Obama decided these current major crooks (since 2007), using derivatives/credit default swaps, CDOs, etc., to defraud the entire world and bring down the economy of the US and many other nations, have been held harmless by ostensibly corrupt Wall Street friends who run the DoJ.
Equating 11 educators with these banksters is beyond shocking. It shows how demeaned our laws can be when the money motivated foxes are in charge of the US hen house. Why has Michelle Rhee not been charged along with these teachers? Why has not one of the banksters been charged for huge economic fraud and theft?
I agree Ellen..this is way out of wack. There will be some backlash. I am so ready for every educator in this country to say they have had enough.
I wrote this last week.
https://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/when-does-the-teacher-abuse-stop/
David…thanks for your link…says it all.
As we see in Diane’s post, every face of the teacher ‘perp walk’ is African American. Put this together with the nationwide police actions against black men, and the fact that about half of the prison population is black men, and we see that we have not come far from the history of the Civil War.
When economic times are hard (by manipulation of those at the top), as with the failure of our economic system imposed by the cheating banksters in the past decade, and now with their rush to kill all unions (as with Vergara and the teachers’ unions), it is always the underdog who pays the price. In the US, it seems to be the black population of our citizens, and in Europe it is once again anti-Semitism. History recapitualates the excesses of the wealthy oligarchs against the populace.
Today we see new installations of the Defense Dept., to protect against the Russian air force, and a rise in calling for defense against this newly instigated Cold War. By the US being invested in world wide wars, it keeps the weapons manufacturers rolling in dough…which is defined as our tax money…which would be better used to universally, without cost, educate our students …which was Jeffersona’s plan.
The Cheney’s and their supporters still seek to rewrite our history books and make Manifest Destiny and those who rape the land and steal freedom from the rest, as the heroes.
Rahm Emanuel: Symbol of a Sick America
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Eight San Francisco Cops Suspended for Racist Texts
Andrew Emett, News Report
After being caught exchanging racist and homophobic texts regarding coworkers and citizens, eight San Francisco police officers were suspended. An investigation is underway, but the police chief is asking for their immediate termination.
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my reaction is this kind of analogy; the “downtown office personnel’ want the street cops to wear body cameras… they sit in their office spaces and many have never done any “street” duty or “community policing” themselves; in their emails you will see the remnants of their racist jokes and attitudes all the while they are setting policy for “cameras” attached to the police officer and setting “quota” as to how many arrests should be made in a city and dictating the policy. We have a similar situation with many in the state bureaucracy who have never done any “stand up ” time in front of 40 children and have their elite degrees and dictate what the classroom teacher should be doing. Sometimes it goes a little too far as it has with these current artificial “objectives” that they are calling standards; we have white color crime and corruption in the professional educators’ domain and this is what I am describing; all the time they will tell the teachers “get those scores up” and they give the attitude “I don’t care how you do it because I don’t respect you or the kids”… While we have these “white collar crimes” , how can we not expect that younger people or people with less experience in the district policy realm will not succumb to the idea of “quotas” in a numbers only world where the quality of your work is disregarded? and “stipends” or “bonus incentive” if you work in a school classroom? I am totally on the side of the teachers on this issue. If you want to know why I am so vehement, google John Barranco former CEO/superintendent in the Boston Globe in Massachusetts and see how he siphoned off over 30 million dollars from special education funds. His white collar crime finding the loopholes to do this is even more abhorrent to me than the individuals who altered test scores or test answers to get a $bonus$…. I worked under merit pay in 1960s and it led to some fierce competition (not reaching to this degree but it certain;ly could).
The key word is white. I’m sure the punishment was this harsh because the defendants were all minorities. I know people who have cheated who were suspended without pay and then reassigned. I know teachers who have acted inappropriately with a student who have been forced to resign or even lost their license to teach, but not jailed. Of course, they were white. You can get less time for murder in some states. Whatever they did, they did not deserve to be treated in this manner.
Ellen #NotAHangingOffense
“I’m sure the punishment was this harsh because the defendants were all minorities”
And your evidence for this is…? Let’s not inject invective unnecessarily. A better question would be, what are the conditions in urban schools that might have made this kind of behavior seem like a lesser-of-two-evils-option for those professions who chose this path, and how are those CONDITIONS violations of educational equity?
What I also would want to know is this — of the 178 charged with cheating (or AT LEAST of the 82 who confessed, see http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Education/2011/0705/America-s-biggest-teacher-and-principal-cheating-scandal-unfolds-in-Atlanta) what is the race breakdown? If 49 of the 82 were White, for example, but none of the 20 or so ultimately imprisoned are White, well, then at least you’ve got some suggestive statistics. Right now, it seems, all there is is an inkling and perhaps a cathartic predisposition to attribute things to racism — which, while occasionally, perhaps even often, accurate in retrospect, is not yet called for here. Yet.
It’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it.
Ellen #ProveMeWrong
The behavior of the judge, shown in his demeanor, comments, and his decision that the teachers be handcuffed immediately, makes me believe I saw animosity towards people of color.
The prosecutors who brought RICO charges, against the teachers, are, IMO, suspect as well. I view the charges as prosecutorial overreach. Of the possible reasons for discriminatory treatment, one can speculate. Based on what I perceive to be a national increase in tolerance for bigotry against Black people, I think the most likely answer is, anger that that these Black teachers tried to stay in the middle class The 1% are using the politicians/government that they control, to eliminate fairly-paid jobs that have security. The poor/middle class are being targeted and among them, racial minorities are currently most vulnerable and therefore attractive for attack.
Rhetorically, if the claim is that Atlanta students were victims, why doesn’t the charter school debacle in Ohio merit legal sanction and federal over sight? And, why wasn’t Indiana’s school superintendent et.al. charged under RICO, for inflating the grades of charter schools?
I’m replying to myself; sorry about that. They sit in a state bureaucracy or even a local district office and they say “get those scores up” but many of them have no idea how to describe to a teacher any improvements in the classroom work. They have no experience of having done it…. or ever improving any program themselves and that is why they fall back on “rigor” and use it 15 times in a TV interview. And, the tools they supply to the classroom are tests and more tests? There is no substance to the message and they cannot be believed if they have not themselves worked through a classroom and shown any sustained effects of the work over a time frame. This is not what an R&D program should look like ; but the hundreds of millions of dollars have already been spent with more to follow and each state expected to kick in their shares (as PARRC disintegrates each state will have to come up with more of the R&D base you can believe that). Why are the R&D funds being squandered in this fashion?
No, they did not get equal justice before the law. What they did is wrong, but the punishment does not fit the crime! I would say unbelievable, but nothing is unbelievable these days regarding the whole testing mess…
I think it was way over the top, too. I wonder if this really draconian response is intended to “send a message”.
The only “message” it sends me is Atlanta outsourced their schools to a bunch of consultants and national ed reformers and no one in power was paying any attention to how sick and twisted the school culture had become, on the ground. As long as the scores came in, no one cared what was actually happening in these schools.
I read the investigator’s report. These schools were miserable places to work- it was all shaming and punishment and fear and a screwed up incentive system that valued test scores above all else. . If they were miserable places to work they were probably not great places for kids, either- REGARDLESS of test scores.
I am sure they wanted to send a message with the harsh sentence. Unfortunately, the message they sent was black teachers can go to jail for a long time for “racketeering;” white cheaters in the financial sector get a a “pass go.” Justice for all, horse feathers!
Yes, Chiara…this government wants to send the message that any kind of citizen stance against its’ edicts like CC and RttT will be met with overkill sentencing.
It is the RICO equivalent of the heat weapon they devised to break up street protests. This weapon was advertised during the Occupy movement as a threat to us all who joined in support of Occupy Wall Street. Please also remember that Bloomberg led a group of mayors including Tony Villaraigosa of LA, to use weaponry to successfully kill that movement.
I am diametrically opposed to the NRA and their gun loving society, but I am getting ever more jaded about my government being here to protect free speech and freedom of assembly.
“What the trial did not explore was whether Dr. Hall herself was reacting to a culture of fear, intimidation, and retaliation that her board, state education officials, and the Bush and Obama administrations had created…”
“In the realm of politics, by the time of crisis George W Bush’s clueless hick routine had satiated the American taste for reckless whimsy and a more polished snake-oil salesman was needed to restore state-sponsored capitalism. Barack Obama restored the façade of competence and his twice won election proved him up to the task of effective misdirection. Between bank bailouts, automaker bailouts, scam mortgage relief programs, the ACA (Affordable Care Act), illegal surveillance, militarization of the police, ‘humanitarian’ interventions and trade agreements intended to undo environmental agreements, Mr. Obama proved himself a capable steward of façade restoration…” Rob Urie Crisis and Economics
***Facade of competetence… testing testing, one two***
As I pointed out in an earlier comment, it’s not just the eleven convicted educators in Atlanta, nor was it just disgraced Atlanta superintendent Beverly Hall.
All kinds of educational organizations have failed public education miserably. The American Association of School Administrators (the association of school superintendents) named Beverly Hall as “superintendent of the year” in 2009, crediting her for “significant gains in student achievement over the past 10 years.” Uh huh.
The AASA has singed onto the Common Core.
Other educational “professional” organizations and unions – from the AFT and NEA to the national PTA and ASCD, from to the National association of Elementary School Principals to the National Association of Secondary School Principals – have also endorsed the Common Core, and all it represents, too.
These groups have been – are – to sound public schooling what Rolling Stone magazine – with its UVa rape story – is to sound journalism.
And what about Michelle Rhee, and the DC cheating scandal? The Washington Post backed her all the way. Its editorial page still juices over the kinds of “reforms” that Rhee implemented in DC.
How about ACT, Inc, and the College Board? Both were instrumental in the development of the Common Core. Both have “aligned” their products to it. Both still insist that “reform” is need, and both have perpetrated a massive fraud on the American public by insisting that their tests are valid measures and predictors of success. They’re not.
And what of ‘A Nation at Risk?’ Its whole premise was that American public schools were a direct threat to “national security” and “economic competitiveness.” It set in motion ‘standards-based “reform” and all the nonsense that followed. As I’ve noted here on occasion, the Sandia Report took apart the accusations of ‘A Nation at Risk’ and concluded it was inaccurate. It was bogus. But that report was suppressed at the George H.W. Bush’s Department of Education. As Tienken and Orlich (2013) explained, “Bush needed to pin the recession on something other than faulty trickle-down economic policy.”
Bush didn’t get re-elected, but who – exactly – at the DOE was ever held “accountable” for suppressing that report?
As Rothstein pointed out, our schools have been “corrupted…everywhere.”
And the culprits are far more numerous than just the eleven Atlanta educators.
I agree that too many “professional” associations have been complicit in creating the conditions for this Atlanta cheating case, either by supporting the demonstrably outrageous testing regime and policies or by looking away and saying nothing.
Now, consider that Elizabeth Warren the one savvy critic of Wall Street corruption also supports testing in the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). Why? She thinks that the standardized tests are needed to ensure schools are ” accountable.”
Please, if anyone has access to this great defender of the ordinary citizen against the backers of toxic practices in finance, send her the message that she will be complicit in creating more of these testing scandals if she supports the ESEA testing requirement. I doubt that she is even aware that the testing industry is totally unregulated.
Rothstein’s, post is brilliant. Without in anyway violating the overrated concept of “test integrity” there are thousand of teachers who are being handcuffed by the same absurd policies and expectations. Teachers are defacto prisoners who have also been prejudged as incompetent, unaccountable, untrustworthy, in need of constant monitoring for compliance with rules and bizarre expections set by others who so not have to live with the consequences..least of all the prospect of twenty years in jail.
Laura…I posted this yesterday. Am very unhappy with Warren right now.
Ellen Lubic
April 5, 2015 at 1:41 pm
Feel very sad to post this…
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Sunday, April 5, 2015
Liz Declines Presidency, Officially Joins Ruling Hypocrisy
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Laura, I suspect that Elizabeth Warren – like many of those who’ve “succeeded” at high levels – truly believes that the tests she’s taken in the past were, indeed, valuable. Look at how many people think the ACT and SAT tests are good predictors of success in college. How many people think AP courses are better than sliced pizza.
And let me assure you, there are many teachers who buy into the nonsense too.
But as I noted, our educational “leaders” have not done public education many favors.
Maybe they are the ones who need to be held “accountable.”
“And what of ‘A Nation at Risk?’ Its whole premise was that American public schools were a direct threat to “national security” and “economic competitiveness. It set in motion ‘standards-based “reform” and all the nonsense that followed. ”
in the Teacher Wars by Dana Goldstein, she links some of these times that I had forgotten about. Glad that you tie in this link here. Goldstein’s Chapter 9 is called “big measurable goals” and details are very interesting…. I didn’t mean to start you out at Chapter 9… also, look at her depiction of Title I under Clinton (1994 Improving American Schools Act) and how GOP re-framed things and denied resources… There are some very persuasive links in the Goldstein book… One particular quote that I copied out is from page 205: “some students tend to experience slower academic growth than their middle class peers no matter how good their teachers are’ …
I was talking with teachers from Lawrence MA (the city that A. Duncan is claiming to be a “miracle” that Cuomo should adopt)…. the school day in Lawrence has added about 3 hours for them; I’m not sure that any research has backed up the longer school day as being instrumental for the overall efforts; “niche” and “charter portfolio” whatever recommending the students in poverty in Lawrence — none of these seem to address mobility of students (if they are constantly on the move they don’t get the program your district offers because they moved out somewhere). Adding high mobility of staff (with current policies of Duncan to fire staff) just compounds the mobility of students from district to district.
There are several big lies that have had serious consequences for our country:
1. Trickle-down (supply-side) economics creates jobs and leads to prosperity for all.
2. Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and an invasion of Iraq was critical to American national security.
3. Public education is “in crisis, it’s “broken” and needs to be “fixed,” and if strict measures are not taken then American “economic competitiveness” and national security are at risk.
I want to add #4:
The Vietnam war and its escalation was based on another lie.
When presidents lie to make a war (The Guardian)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/aug/02/vietnam-presidents-lie-to-wage-war-iraq
my sister tells me on her radio in CA everything is “War, war war” and I’m tired of this Perma-War….
I know I’ve used this Rick Perlstein quote here before but he was quoting a young student who said “Once there was a president who didn’t lie but he’s dead”… and it reminds me of the cynicism and skepticism that I feel towards each and every policy statement coming out of state and federal; my elderly sister and I would joke that “only Martha went to jail”… but now we have this supposed example of teachers who must go to jail? The author of “House of Cards” has some good analogies in his book — taken from the debacle with the banks — I think a lot of the expressions apply to what we are experiencing in the educational profession …. example: “Abusive algorithms”……”layering and spoofing” in the markets; computers that would run a scenario that would be illegal if you did it on the trading floor … and he says the “Flash Boys ” of the “flash mob” put the economy in jeopardy… Well Arne Duncan’s policies have put our kids in jeopardy. This is not my field so I have quoted and paraphrased him as best I can from House of Cards and he also has an article in the current April issue of Vanity Fair. (author William D. Cohan and he also wrote The Last Tycoon)
Obviously, the national ed reformers who were handing out awards had no earthly idea what was actually happening in these schools.
Which should give all of us pause when we read reports from national ed reform groups.
This is a quote from a DC ed reform consultant on Ohio public schools. Can someone tell me how this guy knows what’s happening in Ohio public schools and why an Ohio newspaper would contact a consultant over an Ohio principal or superintendent?
“As Ohio schools transition to new, tougher state tests, this is bound to be a trying year, experts say.
Scheduling struggles, glitches on the online tests and other issues are going to come up in the first year, said Chad Aldeman, associate partner at Bellwether Education Partners, a nonprofit research and advisory group based in Washington.”
An Ohio newspaper can’t find a single local source to comment on Common Core testing? We have to ask a DC ed reform org how our schools are doing? Ridiculous.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2015/04/06/experts-first-year-of-testing-no-picnic.html
“Tortured Teachers”
Tortured by the test
They gave expected answers
As Campbell would have guessed
The system led to cancers
Don’t forget abuse and neglect.
Puh-leeeease, everyone knows the best political commentary is rendered in haiku… 😉
Number two pencils
Mightier than any sword
Who cares who gets cut?
The punishment for the crime is way over the top. These educators were used as scapegoats and it sends a terrible message. If they felt so strongly about the acts committed, it would have been enough to take away their license, barring them from teaching. As has already been stated, people commit violent crimes against children and receive sentences less harsh than what has been handed down in this case.
Richard Rothstein’s words should be printed front and center of every major newspaper in the US. It bears repeating over and over that the only way to start a change in a national policy gone askew on so many levels is through CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM. What happened to “We the People”… These Atlanta teachers could be any human across this nation. When a system is so corrupt as to force people to do things that are completely contrary to human decency (and I am not referring to cheating here but to following policy like Duncan’s “ed reform”), it ironically forces them to act in ways they never would so as to “comply”… and when a system is bad enough it forces people to choose one evil over another instead of a wrong vs a right. Perhaps the example used over and over again is Nazi Germany. When is choice not a choice??? “Small operators” put people into ovens because their families would be shot if they didn’t. Neither was a good choice and perhaps self sacrifice would have been the higher moral decision – but let’s face it – neither decision was good! Choosing between two evils is not a choice at all and those who force underlings (in this case teachers) between two bad choices should be held accountable to the full extent of the law. But oh wait… our laws are now seemingly handed over to the highest bidders. As Rothstein pointed out … there are laws for the elites and then laws for the common man. Which presidential nominee is truly going to work on “campaign finance reform”??? This would be a start at changing an ever-so-scary national policy that we have now.
Where’s the similar picture of twenty or so white people in housing lending or financial trading? Like Gil Scott Heron said, Wintertime in America.
I don’t know what happened. It’s like they decided they aren’t prosecuting anyone after Enron. They pay a get out of jail free fine and they’re down the road.
I worry about it. I worry about if the prosecutors are as captured and corrupt as the politicians.
Chiara…the prosecutors certainly seem to be as corrupt as their legislator bosses. DoJ Holder (a Wall Street lawyer) had years to prosecute the banksters. Not one has been indicted. Articles some years back showed some had even hired defense lawyers expecting to be prosecuted…so who has been paid off, and how, to avoid any penalities for fraud and theft?
Its an issue of collateral damage. Destroy a bunch of teachers, or a few public school districts, and a small number of folks loose. Lock up Bernie Madeoff and a few folks loose, send the top level of HSBC to jail and the worlds economy goes to pot. Such is similar to the reasons why Pearson etal cannot be held to account, the collateral damages are too large for society at large to deal with. Over time it will play out in the charter school arena too… the massive entities will be exempt from accountability, the smaller ones will take a header for the smallest error.
Consider a relativity argument, a la Einstein. To wit: if the justification for viewing their sentences as unjust and harsh resides in the fact that “Some criminals get lesser jail sentences for murder and armed robbery,” is it not perhaps worth considering that the problem is not the severity of the sentence for the cheating scandal, but the relative lightness of the sentencing for more “traditional” serious crimes? When I hear someone say, “Well, murderers get off with less!” I too am outraged, but my first thought is NOT that all sentences for other offenses should be reduced as a result; I think the murder sentence should be more severe!
That said, punishments for PROFESSIONAL crimes should fit the crimes, and the penance should be paid within the context of the industry/field, and be both symbolic as well as apropos. Here’s my suggestion:
1. Immediate and permanent revocation of all educational credentials within the state;
2. Immediate and permanent surrender of an equal number of years’ service in the state teacher retirement system equal to the number of years the scandal carried on;
3. Immediate and permanent ban on the convicted individuals’ presence on any school or district property, and excommunication from any boards, committees, or organizations of which they were a member in whole or in part due to their affiliation with the school district;
4.Imprisonment for a maximum number of years, up to the number of years it takes in that district to earn tenure. (What they did was fraud, after all, and Georgia felony fraud statutes do call for 1-10 years, PER count. I think 2-5 years is not unreasonable, with time off for good behavior, it could be as little as 6-12 months.)
But at LEAST #1-3…
Andrew, I hope you are being sarcastic, because your options are way too harsh.
If we threw everyone in jail who cheated (in any capacity) there would be no one left to watch the inmates. I’m glad you are such an upright citizen that you’ve never broken any rules, but the rest of us are only human.
Ellen #YesOfficerImGuiltyOfJayWalking
Of course the sentencing of these educators to prison is way over the top. I would hope that some type of appeal on civil rights basis is done. Does this sentence send a message? Yes, that the justice system in America is racist and unequal. Would teachers who were white be sent to prison for years over cheating? Does this guarantee that people won’t cheat again? No, just more sophisticated methods of cheating will continue or be invented. The problem is putting this much pressure on people to pass test if passing dictates whether you keep your job or other livelihood.
Can you imagine second and third grade teachers in prison with drug kingpins and murderers? It sounds more like Gilbert and Sullivan than American jurisprudence.
Maybe all school districts could have “teacher jail” like in LA. For punishment they have to create numerous behavioral objectives for each of the common core points and grade the essays from sample ELA questions for the entire district.
I also think that “racketeering” is not a wholly inappropriate leap, given that the government has made tens or hundreds of millions of dollars available based largely upon standardized test success. So it is a massive coordinated scheme to defraud, not just educationally, but also financially as well.
I still like my suggestions, #1-3, above, though.
“Racketeering” is only appropriate if you consider the Atlanta Public Schools to be a “crime syndicate”. “Racketeering refers to criminal activity that is performed to benefit an organization such as a crime syndicate. Examples of racketeering activity include extortion, money laundering, loan sharking, obstruction of justice and bribery.”
FWIW, after two decades teaching 7-12 in urban settings (in my case, SF Bay Area and Syracuse, NY), it should not be a terrible leap to label an urban public school district a “crime syndicate.” I was in Emeryville, CA, tucked right up next to Oakland,, during the reign of Dr. J.L. Handy, the fellow who bankrupted Compton in the early 90s and fled North to reinvent himself (he as eventually indicted for his shenanigans at EUSD, too). And don’t even get me started on the corrupt mess that is the Syracuse City School District.
But seriously, I’m no lawyer, so forgive my terminology mishap 🙂 My point was it wasn’t just copying off the next kid’s paper – there is/was/continues to be a humungous financial incentive, and the punishment should reflect the magnitude of that reality.
Right on, Dienne. Speaking of ostensible crime syndicates, and racial divides….If racketeering is the charge, then this complicit government should also use RICO statutes to prosecute cheating and lying Superintendents like John Deasy, Vallas, Bennett, and others, and their puppet masters like Eli Broad and the Waltons and Rupert Murdoch and the Kochs.
How does erasing some answers on a test compare with breaking fingers and knees, and whacking people, to do the bidding of the crime bosses? How does Bernie Madoff fraud and Meyer Lansky murder compare to a teacher changing test answers in order to comply with the Master racketeers in DC?
Amdrew expands of this below.
Sorry…Andrew expands in the comment just above.
I would amend #1 to cover all 50 states.
#2 will be very hard to determine “how long” the cheating has been going on.
#5 Register with the cheating data bank, like registered sex offenders
I’m having a hard time deciding what the appropriate sentencing should be because of the inconsistency in who has been charged and what their consequence was.
Drext727 – each state determines the requirements for their teachers, although some states have reciprocity. You can’t ban a teacher from all states, at least not at this point. However, the way the federal government is trying to dictate educational policies, this might be a future possibility.
Nobody condones cheating. The source of the climate that creates cheating is the high stakes testing with punitive consequences for teachers and students. Attaching pay bumps to those that get a certain number to “pass” fuels the fire of cheating. Punitive consequences such as loss of pay, job security all promote an unhealthy competitive climate. I have had to give standardized tests to ELL students for many years. When a student didn’t score well, I did not lose a job or pay. The most anyone had happen was a degrading conversation with the principal that asked, “What could you have done differently?” To my knowledge these conversations only happened after NCLB. Now the climate in public education is toxic and threatening with fools like Cuomo trying to double down on the negative consequences. All this negativity promotes a climate of cheating.
I take away a different thought, “Don’t be black and……….” Which is the real story that we ought to grasp.
Cheating by teachers got 20 years? And our Indiana Tony Bennett who cheated on test scores was able to get hired in Florida but had only to resign when caught there.
Yes, scales of justice are not always equal.
I love Rothstein’s strong hint that Duncan should resign as a result of these scandals, since the VA’s Shinseki resigned. Amazing articles!
My thanks to the owner of this blog, the bloggers and writers she cites, and those commenting on this thread.
My visceral reactions led me astray. Thoughtfulness, compassion and good sense are especially important when the consequences for people are drastic.
I much appreciate this posting.
“It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.” [Eleanor Roosevelt]
😎
P.S. 😕
You CCSS ‘closet reading’ folks again with the confused face emoticon?
Sheesh! Ok, “candle” = this blog and this posting and the comments on this thread.
Do I really need to explain who was doing some cursing in the darkness?
Rheally¿!?!¿!?
I have better things to do with my time and energy…
I think some historical context may be in order. The Atlanta teachers threatened the premise of the political status quo of reform, therefore them must be harshly dealt with. It isn’t the crime itself that is being punished, but rather, the threat it poses to the reform narrative; impossible goals can only be met by cheating. This threatens the premise of the Rhees of the world and threatens to show reality and end the ponzi scheme of school reform and testing. The oligarchs can not allow this.
I disagree with the last bit of advice: “Just don’t ever change the answers on a standardized test.”
It should have said: Just don’t ever change the answers on a standardized test unless you are a Michelle Rhee and have protection from the corporate education reform movement.
Since it was erasures that got them caught, how much do want to bet that in the future they’ll encourage students to leave lots of questions blank and they’ll fill them in later. Erasure analysis only works if there is an erasure 🙂
Hard to do if the tests are done on computers in the future.
My opinion after I have followed for years the educational cycles is they are my heroes acting only in such a way that that could not hurt their students and communities. What! You say? History will be on their side. When we address the root problems of schools and students, then, just then, will we ever have equal opportunity in our basic rights which include the right to an education. They, every last one labeled criminals, are my heroes for standing tall and strong, with their Supt. of Schools watching over them from beyond. Wake up, America. Charters are now the new weapons of racism…
Mary Patee marypatee@comcast.net
The disconnect between the “crime” and the sentence reminded me of a line (lines actually) from Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant Massacre 49 years ago during the height of the Viet Nam war protests.
“I filled out the Massacree with the four-part harmony. Wrote it down there
Just like it was and everything was fine. And I put down my pencil, and I
Turned over the piece of paper, and there . . . on the other side . . . in
The middle of the other side . . . away from everything else on the other
Side . . . in parentheses . . . capital letters . . . quotated . . . read
The following words:
“Kid, have you rehabilitated yourself?”
I went over to the sergeant. Said, “Sergeant, you got a lot of god-damned
Gall to ask me if I’ve rehabilitated myself! I mean . . . I mean . . . I
Mean that you send . . . I’m sittin’ here on the bench . . . I mean
I’m Sittin’ here on the Group W bench, ’cause you want to know if I’m moral
Enough to join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein’ a
Litterbug.”
Arlo was lucky that he didn’t get 20 years:
“But we had fun fillin’ out the forms and playin’ with the pencils on the
Bench there.”
Sounds like the judge was too.
The racial aspect of this is extremely troubling and deserves more investigation–and more publicity!
When the VA couldn’t keep up with the allowable wait time benchmark, they cheated and created a second wait list that wouldn’t show up on their performance measures. It’s possible people died or were permanently affected. Did anyone go to jail? How similar to have a performance measure you have no hope of meeting and do something quite dishonest to cover that up. Not right for sure, but handcuffs led out of court? People need to rally around helping teachers as they work away at the problems of society that are ALL of our problems, and erode our students’ success. These are not the schools’ or teachers’ problem in isolation, that’s for sure.
I an going to the airport and do not have time to look at this one, yet, seen goth title, t I am reminded of the banisters and criminals that robbed the national wealth and got to settle — and this in the NY Times; ” As the financial crisis shows, the S.E.C.’s penalties often proved to be nominal costs of doing business for reckless institutions or their employees. The agency is clearly hamstrung in its efforts to generate recoveries on behalf of harmed investors.Isn’t it time to ensure that when the S.E.C. comes knocking, the fine fits the crime?”
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/business/victims-of-financial-wrongdoing-need-a-more-muscular-sec.html?emc=edit_th_20150405&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=50637717&_r=0
No one went to jail… just those bad teachers that knew ‘a crock’ when they saw it.
How about the teachers who blew the whistle ? They couldn’t get work as a gas jock after the admin fired them fir doing theur mandated duties .
How comeni ine U.S. bejng jailed for the egregious scams like Joek stein who signed up NYC for Amplify befire he resigned and partnered up with Murdoch. The roll out was a nightmare justlikeinLA , where Deasy has done so much Rico it’s not funny . We call Briad Broad Father because no refises his offers withoursuffering the swarm of snakes’ wratth : the emperor Broad commandeered taxpayers $$$ to build a shrine to himsekf abd ge should be inducted just on the Academy’s fraud , Corruption yaps at his heels . So Gates us monopolizing abd Stein kets JIM off before he leads into Education gumbo . Wire taps, torture, cheating teachers , exploiting & endangering children , grifting , grafting , , rackets like BIC, PARs , E4-E , , astroturf … For f***s saue MICHELLE RHEE whay’d you do to keep your not so lucrative job? Murderers get less than 11 years …
As Ellen noted , those sub prime loans derive Amerucans to homelessness abd Suicide. Heaters local LA rag just said it in an article : la teachers are old and cost too much.
We need headlines like US PLUTOCRATS take over the world . stem Cells cut off and wealth caps reconsidered they’re all black too. Would Swift write better satire?
Equal “Justice”…All are “Equal” under the “Law”…
The example of the Atlanta Teachers clashes with the notions. On the other hand,
what would be a realistic expectation, or outcome, when the “powers that be” claim
a monopoly of definitions of legality?
Black educators (including one Asian educator) in Atlanta took the fall for a systemic nationwide problem that was created by NCLB! Hmmm!! Mostly black FEMALE educators too and one died while being prosecuted!!! SMH in utter disgust. How come there are no WHITE male and female educators going down for this across the nation??????????
Someone pointed out the race of the teachers who were convicted and then noted that one of these women died . I think it is important that we distinguish Beaverly Hall ( who lost her battle with cancer before she could be tried ) is NOT the same as these teacgers . A Broad Academy graduate and source of great pride to ARNE Duncan even as the scandal raged and to she was indicted , Hall was the school district’s leader and benefited greatly from the chatting . She won many bonuses totaling more than a million dollars . She is the top that issued the draconian orders that drove teachers to desperation . If you read the civerage in ATlanta Journal , uyou will see how sime teachers were punished for reporting the cheating to administrators who were also pressured to produce or else , the investigative journalists who exposed this horrible scandal did so by way of those whistleblowers, whose interviews are revealing . It was so stressful and dysfunctional at schools , even students were well aware that things were going very wrong at these schools . Most of the whistlblower ss were terminated for ethics viollations which is very ironic . There is no Union for Atoanta teachers , but it is unlikely that would have made a difference as NYC and LA have unions that work against them notf for them and that is likely true in many areas . However , it is distressing to hear these teachers were NOT reinstated or even afforded an apology . In fact , I read that at least one of them has become homeless . Getting work after losing your job as a teacher is next to impossible because of that myth that unless you are harming a child , you teachers cannot be fired .
Beverly Hall and her minions destroyed the lives of decent teachers who did what they are supposed to . That theme is pretty common . For the court to recognize the plight of Beverly Hall as it did was understandable given be serious illness , but honestly, she was likely afforded much more than compassion as critics suggested she was probably going to get acquitted due to her high powered affiliations claims of innocence .
She created that culture of fear and intimidation as so all Broad Academy Graduates . I think he rubs psych Evans in his applicants and gravitates towards his fellow siciopaths .
There were other elements in this case that should give us pause .
Why didn’t analysts note the unlikely spikes in the stats before the reporters were sniffing around? One said these gains were essentially impossible yet every year the district score were radically improved . Why didn’t anyone analyse that sooner?
Moreover , it these gains are essentially impossible , why are teachers being forced to set these goals in the first place ?
Beverly Hall was well rewarded for her corrupt operation as were other higher ups , but the teachers who were convicted merely got to keep their jobs , dare I say their careers , because they got fired if the they didn’t abide the whims of their so called suoeriours
Superiours.. Sorry . That is coercion and in my opinions they’re victims not criminals . I would not cheat , but I know there were eraser parties at my school when the Beoadie principal took over . This was about keeping grants in place so the district could spend them on whatever they wanted , which is not what they were meant for . But many people will cheat because they have a mortgage , some kids , student loans and other needs . Resisting corruption can and will cost you more than a job . I know this too well . As I said before , a teacher gets the boot and she may as well surrender to the reality that she may not Teach again and finding another job will be tough. In their minds , what these teachers did was wrong but they assumed it wasn’t really hurting anyone . Well, it hurt them and us. I hope some idealistic law students and Alan Berkowitz types jump on the case and show the racketeering wasn’t really teachers at all . It was Hall, her eager minions and of course, the Broad Father who were racketeering .
I don’t meean to speak ill of the dead , but Hall should be in prison . So should Duncan, Broad, Mr. & Mrs. RHEE, Tony Bennett , Whitney Tilson,Pearson, John Deasy , Kopp, Barr, Puck, waltons, Stein, Gates , King, Bloomberg, Murdoch, Arnold, wiengarten, Bloomberg, Emanuel, Mayor Tony , Jeb Bush, Lyntons, CAPUTO Pearl, Galatzan and a bunch of other white chalk criminals and shameless educRAT$ who have subverted public education into a free market free for all
Even if the results were legitimate, you would think someone would have wanted to study how and why that school was successful so the results could be duplicated at other buildings.
Someone wrote, “They took them out in chains! That’s hardcore. That’s humiliating. That’s a sight that will make other people think twice before committing similar crimes — it’s what real accountability looks like.” Really??? I don’t condone the cheating BUT question why there were no such investigations, prosecutions and convictions around and across the country. Hate to sound like a conspiracy theorists but you begin to wonder whether traditional teaching is becoming extinct now that computers can do it [cheaper and better] … they forget teachers play other more important roles in the lives of students beyond actual teaching. For many students, especially in low income and impoverished areas, teachers are the only father and/or mother figures they come in contact with on a daily basis. And MANY teachers actually parent many of their student more so than some of the parents of those kids whose parents are either incarcerated or deceased. America is making a BIG MISTAKE treating its teachers like the scum of the earth.
Very touched by your statement, Cornelius. So true!
I have seen this surrogate parenting in classrooms all over the US….mostly in inner cities. Yes, American oligarchs and their unthinking, ill informed, blind followers have created a disaster for children who need teachers as their only role models.
Not to condone the organized cheating that took place in Atlanta (but was conveniently ignored in Washington, DC), but everyone should keep in mind that teachers will increasingly be facing a cruel choice: don’t cheat and risk your job due to punitive evaluation systems tied to politically-gamed tests, or cheat and risk jail.
It’s been said that these teachers are taking the fall for a corrupt high stakes testing regime, and that’s true. The real racketeers, and the one’s who in a more just world would be facing RICO indictments, are the so-called reformers who are using exams as the primary lever in their hostile takeover of public education.
But these teachers weren’t cheating in order to help the students. They were cheating in order to get bonuses – Hall received $500,000 in bonuses. That’s what this is about.
Jobo, they had a choice: get a bonus or be fired.
Teachers don’t receive bonuses for testing, school districts and administrators do. I’ve been teacher for in the state of Georgia for 10 years with high test scores. I have never received a dime more than my salary.
For a brilliant expose of the different justice systems for the wealthy and everyone else, read The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi.
Sheila Resseger: thanks I will definitely look up that book today ; also Cohan’s books (he wrote “house of cards”) … Cohan has an article in the current Vanity Fair for April and I am learning the language and the idioms that they use in the jargon that have analogies to my field (such as “abusive algorithms” ) I know I like Taibbi’s work. If you start an on-line book club I will join….
this is Jack Hassard’s blog on the topic “http://www.artofteachingscience.org/atlanta-teachers-from-educators-to-racketeers-i-dont-think-so/
Teachers cheat every day…when we teach to the test. It is called survival.
Atlanta’s Fires Up its School to Prison Pipeline!
Read more:
1) http://www.nola.com/forums/schools/index.ssf?initial=true
2) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3021915/11-Atlanta-educators-convicted-test-cheating-scandal.html#ixzz3WyHc2a2n
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3) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSl4I59V3Y
4) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSl4I59V3Y&feature=player_detailpage
5) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSl4I59V3Y&feature=player_detailpage#t=57
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION for the ADVANCEMENT of AMERICA – 2015
They broke the law. Well educated people getting over on the system. They deserve to be in prison more than half people in there .
Nancy I have to disagree with you; there is a “system” of policy that exists with corruption, graft, and patronage and even fraud and “film flam”…. new people coming into the system see this in place and assume “this is how you achieve to the top of the profession”…. you probably have no idea of the competitiveness of merit pay? or “stipends” “bonuses” and how they influence incentives in any system? after I saw a former superintendent siphon off 30 million dollars through white collar crime I was more aware of these standing operating procedures that seem to be carried out with impunity when someone finds “loopholes” …. there is corruption built in and the human character will respond as human nature does — have you always been above temptation? There is a vicious political ideology and a seriously flawed educational psychology in place. there are a lot more examples but it is probably a waste of time to try to mention any at this point in any discussion
Ah, Les MIserables all over again. Rigid thinking is not very productive when thinking about the common good. I am one who thinks that they actually helped their students as well. Constant failure isn’t going to remake students into better achievers. No, I do not think cheating was the answer but I also understand the dilemma they faced. I’m beginning to think that is a liberal thing. Perhaps rigit thinkers just need to read more. Start with Les Miserables.
The really sad thing is that we read and we respond but we really don’t change anything. What’s the answer?
Northwest Mary, we read, we learn, we mobilize with others, we do change things. We don’t give up. Come to the Network for Public Education annual meeting in Chicago next week and meet your allies. google it.
Diane,
No, I’m sorry, attending a conference with like-minded folk is not enough. Chanting rallying cries for change is not enough. Attending Congressional conference hearings on educational reform is not enough. Posting blogs, printing articles, opening Facebook pages…
What happened in Atlanta was/is egregious, but it really happened. The lives of countless people have been all but ruined, but it really happened. Public officials sent other public officials to the guillotine on charges of misconduct associated with ethically unreconciled issues pertaining to our system of public education…and WE let it happen. We’ve let it all happen, over and over, little by little until now. If there ever was a “litmus” offered by the sycophants promoting the corporate agenda, it’s now. It’s one thing to vilify educators on Fox in order to dismember unions and eliminate due process, it’s quite another to execute in full public view. We sat by and watched.
When NPE members are ready to chain themselves to the gates, lie under the wheels, sit-in, march, hold vigil outside the prison walls…assist the broken families of the educators in Atlanta, count me in.
I think it’s pretty clear. Black people make Judge Jerry angry.