Jon Stewart of “The Daily Show” will be greatly missed when he steps down in August. He is the only national television figure who really gets what is happening in education, perhaps because his mother worked in the public schools of New Jersey.
In this segment, he contrasts the treatment of the Atlanta educators convicted of “racketeering” for changing answers on students’ tests with the treatment of Wall Street fraudsters. He is the best.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Thank you for this!
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Back when this news broke, what was Duncan’s take on the Atlanta cheating scandal?
Mehhh, it’s no big deal.
ARNE DUNCAN (blase): “This is an easy one to fix: better test security.”
Watch the August 2011 video:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/07/atlanta-cheating-scandal-_n_892169.html
Oh, I’m so glad Arne got to the bottom of this whole problem, and identified the cure. We can all relax now.
This interview is great. Apparently, this was just some local Atlanta reporter, but she asked some pointed questions.
She asks him if the unrealistic expectations of NCLB are part of the problem, and he’s totally non-responsive… he doesn’t give a yes or no to this. Instead, he just says, “There are great teachers who are amazing… beating the odds… blah blah blah”
Later, she says that “a lot of this is about money”, and asks if punishments and monetary rewards “need to be de-coupled from student learning.” Instead of owning up and admit this obvious reality—painfully obvious, in the light of what just happened in Atlanta– Dun-an says… oh no… not at all. We need to do this MORE.
Check out this word salad (including the usual Duncan smarmy “snow job” of praising teachers and principles… the same folks whose profession Duncan has destroyed):
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DUNCAN: (at 02:30) “Well, I think rewarding teacher excellence is important. I think I would argue the opposite (i.e. don’t “de-couple”), that far too often we haven’t we haven’t celebrated great teachers. We haven’t celebrated great principals who are making a huge difference in students’ lives. You just want to make sure that they’re doing it honestly, and again, the vast majority of teachers are doing an amazing job, often in very difficult circumstances, in helping students beat the odds every single day. I think we need to do a better job of spotlighting that, and incentivizing that, and encouraging that, and learning from that.
“In education, we’ve been far too reluctant to talk about success. We just need to that. We just need to make sure that we’re doing it with integrity.
“Not too hard to do.”
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Really Arne? “Not too hard to do”? “Merit pay” and basing personnell decision on test scores has been tried countless times for over 100 years, and it has always failed.
What you claim is “not hard to do” HAS NEVER WORKED.
IT WILL NEVER WORK.
In fact, when it’s tried, it actually causes severe harm—narrowing of the curriculum, turning schools into test prep factories, etc.
Duncan’s corporate reform masters need testing to drive privatization, corporate profteering, and union-busting, and so Duncan will defend to the death the misuse, the over-emphasis on testing, the massive over-testing in general, etc.
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jon stewart does really get it! is there any chance he can help the good guys fight the good fight?
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Jon Stewart has helped us. He invited me onto his program twice. When educators and parent groups organized the Save Our Schools rally in Washington D.C. in 2011, Jon Stewart taped a message for us. Our friend Matt Damon spoke at that rally, and he was brilliant. Watch Matt Damon take down the libertarian Reason TV reporter and cameraman here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WIv7Xk8BjA
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Diane, have you ever asked Matt Damon if he’s interested in producing a film on education to enlighten people about what’s really going on? He’s so knowledgable and willing to confront the issues. A breath of fresh air and an inspiration!
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Michele Boyd, not sure about Matt Damon, but I have heard that another major producer has a film in the works that will gladden our hearts.
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http://portside.org/2015-04-23/numbers-are-staggering-us-world-leader-child-poverty-developed-countries
America is a ‘Leader’ in Child Poverty
Rich people’s reform missed the target again.
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Thank you for that clip Diane. Nothing like watching the awesome Matt Damon smack down some Libertarians! But wow…it was like shooting fish in a barrel….the reporter and cameraman were so clueless it was actually funny.
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Brilliant! Spot on!
Thanks for that.
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Everyone was probably thinking it. It’s the first thing I thought of when I saw that for-the-cameras perp walk they conducted, months ago.
I don’t know how long it can go on. People think wealthy and powerful people just don’t go to prison, no matter what they do. I don’t know: are they wrong? They see this stuff constantly. What are they supposed to think?
What’s with the fining these banks instead of trials? Can regular people get that deal? Pay a fine and just go on their merry way? Why are banks paying the fines if there’s no merit to the allegations? If there’s merit to the allegations why don’t we ever have trials?
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Only the powerless are held accountable.
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Ira Shor, you surely know the old axiom (I paraphrase) that if you steal a billion, you are a tycoon, but if you steal a loaf of bread, you go to jail.
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Has Jon Stewart been added to the hero list yet?
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I should definitely add Jon Stewart to the hero list!
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Yay!!!!
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He was raised well by his mom, Marian L. who was a highly respected educator in NJ.
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If you plunder and rob the working class, you are glamorous, rich and successful, and free to live in mansions.
If you plunder and rob the rich, you are a criminal, dirty, and a communist, and you will finish out your days in jail.
Most people don’t even know they are following and live by those tenets every day. Although I think they are feeling the effects of it.
(Copyright 2015 Robert Rendo / All Rights Reserved)
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“Rackets”
Racketeering was the charge
For teachers sent to jail
Racket clubs with full wet-bars
For bankers sent to Vail
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SO CLEVER! Brilliant!
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Fantastic!
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I have rarely seen a report so succinctly sum up the double standard of so-called “justice” that has come to rule this country since the Reagan years.
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Some would contend that the current double standard of justice has its origin in Ford pardoning Nixon, setting the stage for the here and now.
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Jon Stewart, We’re going to miss you!
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He is a master at pointing out the hypocrisy in our society while making us laugh at the absurdity.
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There is only one explanation for the different outcomes between the two sets of cases — the “Erasers To The Top” harmed corporate interests while the Financial Finaglers served corporate interests. Dame Justice is not so blind that she fails to see which side butters her bread the most.
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Money can deafen,
All charges vanish from sight
Green is lucky color
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We can’t fail to notice that the Atlanta educators were mostly black women (and men), and I’d bet that most of our Wall St. fraudsters are white men. Hmmmmm…..
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I haven’t failed to notice that. I also haven’t failed to notice people who accuse these black teachers of having done the most outrageous things to these black students (“robbed them”; “abused them”) by succumbing to the pressure to come up with good test scores, only to turn around and cheer on opting mostly white students out of taking the same sorts of tests.
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Excellent point, Plantsmantx
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Your point is a good one, but I suspect that many (if not most) of the people leveling the extreme accusations against the black educators would actually be opposed to opt-out under any circumstances.
Their thinking is rooted in a “conventional” (rule-abiding) morality (Lawrence Kohlberg’s stages of moral devlopment) which makes no room for the consideration of the broader context in which something occurred and makes no provision for the possibility of unjust or even unconstitutional laws.
Those in charge of the current test and punish regime seem to be at the “conventional” — some, even pre-conventional [what’s in it for me and how can I avoid punishment?] — stage of moral development while many (if not most) teachers and parents involved in opt-out have progressed to the post-conventional stage.
I think there are probably many parents who would actually like to opt their children out but who will simply not do so under any circumstance because they have been told (in some cases falsely) that it is “illegal” to do so and they would ever violate the law to do so.
In my opinion, the people who falsely claim that opt out is illegal when they know that it is not are particularly reprehensible because they are purposely playing on people’s morality to attain their own goals. That’s what propagandists excel at.
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I think Jon Stewart misses a lot of the point. He showed a quick snippet of Anderson Cooper talking about teachers feeling pressured to do this to keep their jobs, but when it came to the actual comparison, he didn’t compare the threat those teachers faced to Wall Streeters who refrained from dirty dealing, he compared them to Wall Street whistleblowers or would-be whistleblowers- people who threatened to tell.
And as far as doing it out of greed is concerned, when you consider how little money all those Atlanta teachers and administrators gained in bonuses as a result of falsifying test scores- $363,000 over the course of more than a decade, spread out to all of them- it’s hard to believe they did it for the money rather than to keep their jobs.
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The cases were fundamentally different and Jon Stewart simply cherry-picked the clips (from mainstream media sources!) to make them look virtually identical (except for the punishment, of course)
That would certainly not be OK for a journalist (which Jon Stewart isn’t), but I don’t even think it’s OK for a comedian who has the broad reach that Stewart does. Cherry picking is ALWAYS a bad thing because it distorts the picture, sometimes completely changing it.
There were very large (negative) incentives to cheat in the case of the educators (school closings,loss of jobs, probable ill effects on communities, etc) some of which were not even predominantly self-serving that were simply not present for the Wall Street folks. The system was stacked against the educators in a very big way and they had essentially been placed in a no win situation (cheating or no cheating) by those who had imposed an impossibly harsh testing regime.
I like Jon Stewart but people have to remember that he is not a journalist. He’s a comedian. Is he a more reliable source of news than the news media? on some things, probably, but that is a pretty sad indictment of the latter.
The Atlanta case is much more complicated than can be represented by a couple-minute comedy routine and though Stewart made a good point about the unequal treatment of the two groups, he did that at the expense of an accurate portrayal of the situation.
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The New Yorker had an article on the context of the Atlanta scandalWrong Answer and the Atlanta Journal Constitution has also done many articles on the scandal which place it in the larger context.
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http://www.gainesville.com/article/20150421/OPINION03/150429966?p=1&tc=pg
Jennifer Anhalt in Florida hits all the reasons why the FSA testing is wrong, and some comments at the end mention opting out. There may be hope in Florida after all!
>
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More fear-based marketing of the Common Core tests:
“Gov. Christie on Thursday strongly cautioned parents against opting out of the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test, warning that schools with high rates of refusal would face “ramifications out of my control.”
Look at that language he uses. Grim, grim, grim. There’s no joy in reformville.
It’s also amusing how he’s setting this up so he can dodge responsibility. Anything that happens will be out of the Governor’s control. He just wants to make that clear at the outset 🙂
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And let’s not overlook General Petraeus, who just got probation for leaking security secrets to his sweetheart. Just a minor item. Guess Condoleeza was right – educators are the single biggest threat to national security and have to be dealt with accordingly. Sickening…
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Exactly, Priscilla!
And he should be indicted for war crimes/crimes against humanity.
But he did the bidding of the war mongers and profiteers so he doesn’t even get a slap on the hand when he should be hung, along with the rest of Bush’s and Obomber’s deadly cabal
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Did you hear his press conference? He’s ready to move on with his life. That’s nice. I wonder why less powerful people can’t just “move on with their lives” after paying a fine?
He’ll turn up again. Once you’re a member of the club you’re in for life.
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The white-washing of Petraeus’ crimes was essential so that he could continue to be of benefit to his employer, private equity firm, KKR.
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“The General Gist”
In case you might have missed
The General Petraeus gist:
“Betray us for a kiss”
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Send this clip to the Senate and Congress
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The Atlanta Journal reported the average bonus for the charged teachers was $2,600.
And, the paper reported the now deceased superintendent’s bonus, over 10 years, was more than $300,000. Similar to Enron’s Kenneth Lay, the superintendent claimed she had no knowledge about the cheating.
Pseudo-left wing columnist Mary Sanchez,”…Educators Robbed Students”, ought to feel shame, when the Atlanta educators win their appeal.
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No one should believe this from Governor Christie, because it doesn’t make sense:
“Noting that it was only the first year that the test was being offered, Christie rebutted that “I would like to the results of the PARCC test first before we all decide it is no good. If it turns out not to work, we’ll change it – just like we did with NJ ASK (it’s predecessor assessment)…But it does not seem to make sense for us not to be testing our children.”
The Common Core testing is being adopted by colleges as the measure of readiness. As the Common Core test scores are used for more and more functions within the broader system, it will be all but impossible to dump it. We already know this. The whole point of the thing was so they could use it across states and across systems. The more it becomes interwoven into the system, the more difficult it will be for anyone to criticize, change or dump it altogether.
I personally haven’t seen anything other than unrestrained cheerleading for these tests. When does the analysis part come in? After the tests are completely adopted across systems? That’s not going to happen.
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“Linda
April 24, 2015 at 8:47 am
The white-washing of Petraeus’ crimes was essential so that he could continue to be of benefit to his employer, private equity firm, KKR.”
He apologized though, so it’s fine.
Anyone who says the Atlanta teachers did this for 3600 dollars didn’t read the investigators’ report. The report said that they were shamed and humiliated and threatened- they worked within a “culture of fear”. It was absolutely toxic. Putting aside the cheating for a moment, imagine going to school every day in that toxic environment. It was horrible for the adults. How was it for the kids who were in it?
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Agree, Chiara
Erasing and shading in circles, became a job requirement for those charged. The Guardian reported that the superintendent had replaced 90% of the principals, because bubble tests showed too many wrong circles, blackened. The jury and judge punished the Atlanta educators, with, the convenient and erroneous reasoning, that the defendants had the rights and autonomy of professionals.
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I just came across this April 3 article by David Dayen this morning (via Naked Capitalist):
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/04/03/biggest-outrage-atlanta-s-crazy-teacher-cheating-case?onswipe_redirect=no&oswrr=1
In his lead paragraph he writes “We’ve learned that justice is a commodity to be purchased rather than a universal value delivered without prejudice” and he concludes with this thought:
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.
Too bad the money we spent bailing out bankers wasn’t made available to fight poverty.
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Oh, if only this were funny…..
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Matt Damon did a very powerful documentary about the teaching profession called American Teacher in 2011 for those interested.
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One more EXCELLENT article on this topic from the Black Agenda Report: http://blackagendareport.com/big-lies-big-plans-behind-atlanta-cheating-scandal
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Stewart is spot on here. I wonder how many Wall Street Bankers would use their bodies to shield customers from a shooter. Teachers, unfortunately have and, indeed, Americans expect it.
Like many others I’m irate that teachers have been demonized by our governments (Unfortunately, I’m from Indiana.), have been forced to use tools they know do not work and can even harm their students while their incomes have been spitefully reduced.
The educators from Atlanta should be held accountable as Stewart suggests.However, prison time is a travesty of justice! Perhaps real justice would be for the judge to be sentenced to teach for 20 years in the most impoverished, drug infested, overcrowded, high school classroom in the country. His pay: the pittance any beginning teacher would get.
Of course, we couldn’t punish his students that way.
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