Earlier this year, Adell Cothorne won the Kenneth S. Goodman “In Defense of Good Teaching” Award at the University of Arizona. I was not aware of this honor when it happened but wanted to take this opportunity to salute Adell.
Adell was the whistle-blower in Washington, D.C., who called attention to the cheating that was happening during the regime of Michelle Rhee.
This was the citation:
“Adell Cothorne, teacher, administrator, and teacher educator, is the 2017 winner of the In Defense of Good Teaching award
“The award is given every year, in honor of Dr. Kenneth S. Goodman, to an educator who has stood up for students at great personal and professional risk. Ms. Cothorne blew the whistle on standardized test cheating in one of Michelle Rhee’s “success story” schools in Washington, D.C. because she did not want her students to miss out on access to a high-quality education. This decision ultimately led to loss of her career in K-12 public education, reflecting how much she is willing to fight for her students.”
Cothorne was principal of the Noyes Education Campus from 2010-2011. She discovered cheating, reported it, and was fired by district officials. After she tightened test s3curity, the school’s test scores plummeted. She blew an inconvenient hole in the “miracle” of Adam.C. Success under Rhee. She was featured in John Merrow’s last PBS documentary.
Mercedes Schneider invited Adell Cothorne to tell her story here.
She joins the honor roll of this Blog.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is what the frauds behind the privatization of our public schools do when they can — fire anyone in education (if they are in a position to fire them) that reveals their lies and fraud.
To further their greed is god (not good) agenda, the vampiric privateers for profit-and-wealth of everything public have managed to make dark money as secretive and legal as possible so they are free to fund any candidate or support any legislation (that ALEC wrote) to fool the public and get that legislation passed even behind closed doors and in secret if that’s what it takes.
They have bought and/or built (the Alt-Right media machine that generates fake/alternative news) as much of the media as they can and turned that media into a lying, conspiracy theory generating machine to fool as many people as possible (FOX news is the perfect example).
They are funding a massive PsyOps campaign to fool voters that vote and/or drive voters away by angering them into thinking voting is a waste of time when the only choice you have is the so-called lesser of two evils.
I’m sure we could add to this list and make it longer and longer, and longer … without end.
I am reminded of a statement from a colleague about how our nation is losing memory of a time when schools were not run through endless data manipulation. When, as you write, school reformers methodically “fire anyone in education (if they are in a position to fire them) that reveals their lies and fraud…” slowly but surely all memory of how the institution of public education USED to run is erased.
On top of that, most Americans have very short memories. The more screen time they spend linked to the internet, the more their brains decay and they lose the ability to think critically and solve problems.
“Gray Matters: Too Much Screen Time Damages the Brain”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/mental-wealth/201402/gray-matters-too-much-screen-time-damages-the-brain
And what do Zuckerberg and Gates (et al.) want to do with our children? Get rid of human interaction between professional teachers and their students and put those children in front of screens for several hours a day for so-called “individualized instruction” that is nothing but an algorithm.
And algorithms are subject to the biases of the humans that p[rogrammed them.
For instance, Math Babe says “Donald Trump is like a biased machine learning algorithm … Controlling robots ignore people’s will and just follow their inner agendas. Then the question becomes, who sets that agenda?”
https://mathbabe.org/2016/08/11/donald-trump-is-like-a-biased-machine-learning-algorithm/
I’m sure we could add to this list and make it longer and longer, and longer … without end….. I agree. There are many profiles in courage. This one was early, spot on, and needed. I hope that Adell Cothorne finds work in an environment where her integrity is respected and savvy about data, including misuse, is put to good use.
She is a hero and deserves to be feted, particularly given how poorly she was treated by DCPS. In fairness, however, it should be noted that such cheating takes place many places–probably many more than we ever hear about in the news. And, many of those places are public schools. I would argue that it is endemic in all of US K-12 education, due to our generally loose test administration procedures.
Richard, you are wrong “in all of US K-12 education, due to our generally loose test administration procedures.”
Where did you learn that ALL of the US K-12 public education systems had loose test admin procedures?
I can’t speak for the other 49 states, but when I was still teaching (1975 – 2005), testing procedure was detailed and lockstep by lockstep — it was stressful. We had to check out the testing material and make sure we got everything we signed for, and we had to turn it all in as soon as testing was completed. When we returned all the material, it was counted to make sure all the numbers matched.
Once testing was over each day, we locked all of the testing material up because if we were “loose” (careless) with the testing material and lost some of it, that was grounds for dismissal.
In California, if you broke procedure or had too many erasures, you could be investigated and lose your job.
And to make sure we didn’t have an opportunity to cheat, other staff members were assigned to each of our classrooms to keep an eye on us. We seldom had any idea who was going to join us each day. Some of those district employees came from the district office and there job was to observe and report any infractions of the testing rules.
“had too many erasures”? Why were teachers being allowed to erase anything?
Leaving aside the issue of cheating, consider the length and complexity of test security rules and procedures. Some test security manuals I’ve read are dozens of pages long, single spaced. To expect that every teacher and every school will follow the procedures the same way, regardless of intentions, is unreasonable.
Countries where large-scale test administration is handled by a separate agency simply do not have the problems we do. In the US, we have non-school proctored test administration only with the NAEP, as far as I know.
Richard asked, “Why were teachers being allowed to erase anything?”
I never said that the teachers were allowed to erase anything. Teachers were not allowed to do that. Teachers would have lost their jobs if they did that.
It was students that erased and changed answers because they changed their mind on some answers but not many. Back then, tests were not done on computers. They were done on Scan-Trons.
But if there were too many answers changed on too many Scan0Trins, then there would have been suspicion that someone other than the students were changing answers. I taught for thirty years and never heard of any teacher at the schools where I taught being accused of changing the answers on student tests.
We also did not know what the answers were. There were no sheets with answers. We didn’t know anything about what was on those tests. The morning the testing started and we arrived early to check out the testing material.
Most teachers do not CHEAT! Most teachers are professionals and they are probably some of the most honest people in the country unlike that serial liar, cheat, and con-man in the White House.
What was I doing when the testing was going on besides monitoring? After the test was underway, I often corrected student work. Because there were two adults in the room, me and the other one sent to keep watch, I had the freedom to correct papers and I needed that time.
My work week for most of the thirty years ran 60 to 100 hours a week and most of that time was spent planning lessons and correcting work. For instance, when I had duty after school at a sporting event (teachers were not paid extra to attend sporting events — we were there to make sure no one caused any problems to disrupt the games.), I took a clipboard and a stack of student work to correct. I never had a problem to deal with so I always managed to get a lot of work corrected. I also took work home to correct and only stopped correcting papers when my vision blurred and I was too tired to keep working.
Agree, teachers are not the problem, though teachers are too often made scapegoats. If teachers were treated better in the US, as they are in many other countries, our system as a whole would be better. Where there is lax test security, the fault lies higher up.
I believe that teachers have more than enough to do already, and shouldn’t have to be test proctors, too.
This issue about testing has already been resolved as useless and misleading except by Bill Gates and the pirates/frauds, and liars that are out to destroy community-based, democratic, public institutions like the transparent, non-profit public schools.
Bubble tests are incapable of determining how effective a teacher was/is in the classroom.
Bubble tests have no way to determine what a teacher taught and what students forgot or didn’t bother to learn.
The best tests are tests created by teachers and used by the same teachers to help them improve the lessons they are teaching.
That’s why Finland is not ruled by a testocracy funded by the likes of Bill Gates who has a Intel computer chip programmed by a faulty, biased algorithm for his brain and supported by the private sector, for-profit corporations that make money off those tests … tests that are often wrapped in deep secrecy and are often faulty.
It is a waste of time to debate the issue of testing because high stakes testing that closes public schools and punishes unionized, professional teachers, but doesn’t touch private sector corporate charter school where children are bullied and teachers abused, no matter how horrible they are, is a crime.
High stakes tests improve nothing if the results are used to punish, punish, punish and then punish some more.
The first step is to improve the quality of teacher education to learn from Finland where “School improvement and professional development focus on enhancing personal work and organizational performance and they normally have strong emphasis on teamwork, collaboration with teachers and schools, and shared leadership. Enhancing social capital is as important as improving human capital in Finnish schools.”
https://www.edutopia.org/blog/teacher-education-in-finland-merja-paksuniemi
“Highly trained, respected and free: why Finland’s teachers are different
“Extensive training is the basis for giving teachers the autonomy to work the way they want. The result is a highly prized profession and an education system always near the top in international rankings”
NOTE: There would be no Teach for America or high stakes testing that punishes public schools and teachers if we learned from Finland.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jun/17/highly-trained-respected-and-free-why-finlands-teachers-are-different
“The Dangerous Consequences of High-Stakes Standardized Testing …
High-stakes testing misinforms the public.
People have a right to know how well schools are doing. However, tests fail to provide sufficient information. The new federal requirement that only assessment scores be used to determine whether schools are improving will make the situation worse.
Teaching to the test causes score inflation (score gains that don’t represent actual improvements in learning) which misleads the public into thinking schools are improving, when they may not be better – and due to teaching to the test, may even be worse.
Most tests are secret, so the public cannot know what students are expected to know. State academic content standards typically are too long, often too obscure, and much of what is in them is not tested.
Tests are a narrow slice of what parents and the public need to know about schools. They don’t include non-academic areas and they are weak measures of academics.
Test results don’t take into account non-school factors that affect learning, such as poverty, hunger, student mobility, lack of medical care, safety, community resources, parents’ education – all of which must be addressed if “no children are to be left behind.”
http://www.fairtest.org/dangerous-consequences-highstakes-standardized-tes
A rather broad brush used there, eh Richard, that “cheating . . . is endemic in all of US K-12 education”. And that the cause of that cheating is “our loose test administration procedures”.
Yep, the edudeformers’ blame the teacher meme in one of its myriad forms. Now. . .
It wouldn’t be because the onto-epistemological bankrupt, invalid testucation* that dominates the K-12 landscape, so distorts the teaching and learning process into bits of nothingness that are supposedly “measured” with standardized tests that have no validity whatsoever (see Wilson’s 1997 dissertation) that a few feel a need to “game the system”, the testucation, that you so willingly and wholeheartedly support, Richard? Nah, the supporters of the standards and testing regime malpractices aren’t to blame, it’s the K-12 educators who are to blame in their trying to cope with the impossibilities imposed upon them by those malpractice demands.
I’ve challenged you before, Richard, to answer to the critiques of those malpractices by Wilson, Hoffman and me and you’ve faded into the background. Why? Because you can’t answer to our damning critical analysis of your favorite education malpractices, the standards and testing regime-testucation. Your two books that support standardized testing say NOTHING about those critiques.
Crickets, cicadas and tree frogs from my tinnitus is all I expect to hear. Certainly not a peep out of you Richard P Phelps.
*Phil Cullen’s term
Cheating is cheating, whether one considers it justified or not. The fact remains, where test administration is handled completely by a neutral third party the types of problems Ms. Cothorne faced simply do not exist.
Yes, cheating is cheating. And not answering to my challenges is a form of cheating by omission. Your silence on all the errors and falsehoods identified mainly by Wilson* that renders any usage of the results of standardized tests completely invalid shows a lack of intellectual honesty in not addressing those concerns. And for me that is no different than an adminstrator turning a blind eye to what you consider “cheating” in the standardized testing process (to give just one example). You are willingly turning a blind eye to valid critical analysis of the standards and testing malpractices.
So if I may offer the challenge again, please refute and rebut Wilson’s 13 (of many) errors and falsehoods inherent in the standards and testing process. And to my analysis that nothing is being “measured” in the process and that the standards and testing malpractice supporters misuse and abuse the terms standard and measure in an apparent attempt to lend a supposed certain scientific/objective sheen to a process that is rife with subjectivity-assessing what a student supposedly knows. As I used to say to my students when giving a teacher made test or quiz “Have at it and have fun!”
*“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
If you would like a copy of my book “Infidelity to Truth: Education Malpractice in American Public Education” please contact me @ duaneswacker@gmail.com
Should soldiers with assault rifles deliver and proctor the tests on NSA cleared devices in armored vehicles? Maybe Betsy DeVos’ brother’s private mercenaries would be a good neutral third party for giving tests. Test Proctor Inc or LLC sucking more money out of instruction? How about a Big Brother camera mounted on a drone hovering over each test taker? Maybe a galvanic skin device on every finger?
Thank you, Señor. I agree with you. How far off the deep end have we gone in our obsession with standardized test scores when there are people calling for third party testing? Destroyers of Public Education know no bounds.
Congratulations, Adell. What a great honor to receive the Ken Goodman In Defense of Good Teaching Award.
Great post and so uplifting, too. May there be many more like Adell. Thank you, Adell.
What is courage?
I was first reminded of what a very old and very dead and very Greek guy said:
“Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws, and asks no omen, but his country’s cause.” [Homer]
But I felt dissatisfied with my own reaction. Then I remembered what a world-class American wit said not nearly so long ago:
“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.” [Mark Twain]
Adell Cothorne had, and has, that rare kind.
😎