I just finished reading a compelling book about the famed Atlanta Cheating Scandal. It is titled None of the Above: The Untold Story of the Atlanta Public Schools Cheating Scandal, Corporate Greed, and the Criminalization of Educators. I found it hard to put down.
It was written by Shani Robinson, one of the teachers convicted in 2015 of racketeering, for changing her students’ answers on a state test, and journalist Anna Simonton. It is Shani’s story, and with Anna’s help, it is a very good read.
Shani was a Teach for America teacher who taught first graders at Dunbar Elementary School in Atlanta. She was one of dozens of teachers and administrators accused of cheating to raise her students’ test scores. Being arrested, charged, threatened, tried, and convicted was an ordeal, which she describes in detail. Throughout this ordeal, she maintained her innocence. She very credibly insists that she never changed her students’ test answers. Her student scores were not counted towards the school’s “AYP” and had no bearing on the school’s rating because first grade scores were not part of the No Child Left Behind dragnet.
She never received a bonus or any other monetary reward. Yet she and other educators were accused and convicted on a racketeering charge (the federal RICO statute that was designed to snare members of the Mafia and other organized criminals). She did not conspire with anyone, she writes, and to this day she insists upon her innocence.
What is especially shocking is her account of the “justice” system. At every step along the way, she and the others who were accused were offered the opportunity to get out of the charges if only they agreed to plead guilty. They got off scot free if they were willing to accuse others. Repeatedly she was told that she had a choice: If you stick with your plea of innocence, you face 20 years in prison; if you confess your criminal behavior, you will get probation, community service, and a nominal fine. Those who were convicted lost their job, their reputations, their careers, and in some cases, their freedom.
Others whom Shani trusted confessed to crimes they had not committed. She insisted upon her innocence and refused to lie to win her freedom. She cannot help comparing the longest trial in Georgia’s history with the cheating scandal in Washington, D.C., where no one was charged and there was no trial or punishment, nor even a credible investigation.
Somehow the whole procedure sounds like a story from the old Soviet Union, but this is American “justice” as practiced in Georgia.
What makes the story even more interesting is the way she connects her personal dilemma with the history of racism and injustice in Georgia and with the manipulation of politics by corporate interests. She notes again and again that the media created a feeding frenzy because of allegations that educators cheated, but were not interested at all in reporting how corporate interests shifted or stole hundreds of millions of dollars from the schools for real estate development or gentrification.
She describes Atlanta’s history as the first city to build public housing, which became home to many thousands of black families, and the first city to tear down all of its public housing, ostensibly to woo middle class families back to the city (and to push out poor black families).
She became disenchanted with Teach for America as she saw its recruits—funded by out-of-state billionaires and trained by TFA’s Leadership for Educational Equity– organize a takeover of the Atlanta school board so as to make way for corporate education reform, especially charter schools.
She details the efforts of for-profit Charter Schools USA to open a charter in Atlanta, and the determination of the black community to keep them out.
Hypocrisy?
She writes:
“I tried to keep my cool as I came to terms with the fact that some very bad things had happened in my school district, worked to remain self-assured that my name would be cleared, and attempted to quell my outrage at the naked hypocrisy of some of the public figures who scrambled to condemn educators for ‘cheating the children.’ There were so many ways that children, particularly black children, were being cheated out of a decent life. During the decade that some APS staff members were tampering with tests, most teachers were doing the best they could with few resources for contending with kids who suffered generational trauma stemming from urban renewal, racialized violence, the drug epidemic, mass incarceration, and the obliteration of public housing. Meanwhile, real estate moguls and financiers were finagling ways to line their pockets with the education dollars that should have been going to the classroom.”
The most memorable line in the trial was uttered by the utterly reprehensible Judge Baxter, who said that the cheating scandal was “the sickest thing to ever happen in this town.” Shani wonders if he never gave any thought to slavery, Jim Crow, and the many other attacks on blacks as equally “sick.”
Shani Robinson’s appeal has not yet been heard. She may yet be sent to prison. Her book is a persuasive argument that some of the worst criminals in Atlanta were never tried for their crimes against the children of Atlanta.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Don’t have the information to know whether Shani Robinson changed answers or not, but the RICO racketeering charge was out of all proportion with what happened.
And the whole thing was a direct result of Campbell’s law.
Justice” in this country is quite literally “Just us” where the “us” are the wealthy and otherwise powerful.
Witness the billions in fraud by bankers at big banks like JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs which went unprosecuted (fines are not prosecution) because bank CEOs like JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon had friends in the White House.
“Rackets”
Racketeering was the charge
For teachers sent to jail
Racket clubs, with full wet-bars
For bankers sent to Vail
SDP,
If you read the book, you will see that there is no evidence that she cheated. She says she didn’t. The best evidence that she did not cheat is that she refused to take a plea deal, admitting she was guilty and then getting off with a suspended sentence, a fine of $1,000-$5,000, and community service. Others took the deal to avoid a jail sentence. She refused the deal and faces a year in jail, maybe more. She has a young child. Should she have lied? She would now be freeto go on with her life. She said no and decided to appeal and fight.
I was simply stating that I don’t know.
But as I indicated, even if she did, the punishment is out of all proportion to the crime.
SDP,
She points out in the book that RICO, meant to catch and punish mobsters, was ridiculously excessive and was not invoked in the many other places where test cheating was found and not punished (DC, as an example), where there was the same set of circumstances and everything brushed under the rug.
exposing exactly why we all know that the strategic occassional attacks are simply part of the larger scam
Unfortunately, the people behind the policies that favor cheating
(via Campbells law) are never held accountable.
People like Michelle Rhee.
This was a riveting post. I’ll have to get the book and add it to the dozens I intend to read this summer. All I want to say is that she had nothing to gain and nothing to lose by cheating. Administrators did. The problem is high stakes. Lord knows you can’t raise test scores by teaching.
I sometimes play golf. It’s very easy to cheat at golf — the orange president does it all the time — but I don’t cheat because it would make the game meaningless to me. If I were playing to keep my teaching job, though, I’d like to think I wouldn’t cheat, but who knows.
Good to see you, SomeDAM; you’ve been a bit scarce.
Wow. Great piece, SomeDAM!
Shani Robinson, I salute you and empathize with you. I know this story is not about me, but in my 16 years of working in inner-city schools, anxiety about just this kind of miscarriage of justice has never been far from my mind. I have served under five different principals: all were incompetent and three of them were corrupt. Indeed, of that cohort of three, one opened, then ran a school into the ground, one was removed from her position for gross incompetence (among other things, she attempted to conceal an act of arson in the school), and one retired under cloud that included an investigation of financial malfeasance and corporal punishment by the New York City Department of Education’s Office of Special Investigations.
In my current posting, at the High School of Commerce in Springfield, Massachusetts, I am serving under a principal who makes the above look like paragons of integrity. I keep telling my colleagues that my principal (pun intended, once I thought about it) goal in this school, beyond doing the best I can by the kids in my classes, is to escape with my integrity and reputation intact.
I sure don’t want my name associated with this screw-up of a principal. who has run this school into its current dismal state.
New teachers, I strongly encourage you to investigate the history of any principal with whom you may work. These bureaucrats can destroy your career as surely as they destroyed Shani Robinson’s.
Am I mistaken to think that teachers deserve better than this?
I don’t call the majority of supposed administrators adminimals for nothing.
I have always appreciated that locution, Duane.
Many of them are, themselves, stuck like flies in treacle in the muck that is education reform.
Diane Ravitch posted two pieces so far today. One is on Ken Robinson’s book about the egregious consequences of high-stakes standardized testing. The other is about the Stalinesque way in which the “justice” system works in a small town in Georgia.
These two phenomena are related. I hope you will stick with me here, because I’m going to present an argument, and you will have to read fairly closely to follow it.
Ed Deformers based their “data driven accountability” systems on a key idea, which we might call the Fundamental Axiom of Ed Deform:
You get what you measure.
The unelected monarch of Ed Deform in the United States is Bill Gates. Find a shill organization or federal legislation promoting standardized testing, evaluating teachers and schools based on standardized tests, or promoting “common standards” to make testing easier, and the probability is quite high that the Gates Foundation will be its primary funder or, at least, one of them.
Gates is a computer guy. So, he is doubtless familiar with the triple bar symbol (≡) from symbolic logic, which means “if and only if.” What experience has shown is that foundational principle on which Ed Deform is based should be rewritten as
Outcome ≡ measurement
In other words, in high-stakes, data-managed systems
You get what you measure AND ONLY WHAT YOU MEASURE.
The last part of this (“and only what you measure”) is REALLY important because IT CHANGES EVERYTHING.
The Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] make lip service to students reading substantive works of literature. But the standards [sic] themselves consist entirely of statements of “skills,” and these AND ONLY THESE are what is measured on the high-stakes standardized tests. Furthermore, they are measured in a particular way: students are given a snippet of random text and are asked a question that requires them to “apply the standard” to the text. So, that’s what you get: you get the devolution of education in ELA into depersonalized learning software and textbooks and worksheets, print or online, that present students with random snippets of text and ask them to apply the skills standards to these. In other words, you get this vast distorting or devolution of ELA pedagogy and curricula.
In real life, when you read Orwell’s 1984 or the Constitution of the United States, you don’t read it primarily to apply a skill from Mr. Coleman’s list to it. You read it because the experience is moving and unforgettable and because you are interested in the important things that Orwell or the Founders had to say and want to join in the ongoing cultural discussion of these. So, the approach forced upon us is utterly unnatural. It leaves all that out. Here’s a little experiment you can try: read Melinda Gates’s new book, The Moment of Lift, and then write a review of it. However, limit your review to discussing how, in the book, Ms. Gates’s choice of particular words affected the tone and mood of her piece and to giving examples of this (CCSS.ELA-LITERACY-RI.8.4). Then see if you care at all to write such a piece or if anyone would care at all to read it.
In short, the Gates/Coleman approach, which I call New Criticism Lite, leads to completely unnatural InstaWriting and InstaThinking and reduces the process of reading and responding to literary and other written works to a Procrustean, highly constrained exercise IN TRIVIALITIES. The whole reason for reading and writing—the commerce in ideas and experiences–is devalued or lost. It’s not going to be on the test.
But there is another modification we need to make in the Fundamental Axiom of Ed Deform before it actually reflects how it plays out in practice. Data-based accountability, Ed Deform style, depends upon the high stakes. You don’t get what you measure and only what you measure in the absence of high stakes accorded that measurement. In other words, you need violence and the threat of violence: give me what I am measuring (and only what I am measuring), or you will be fired, your school will be closed and replaced by a charter or, and your student will not graduate or be advanced to the fourth grade. So, the fundamental tenet of Ed Deform, revised:
You get what you measure and only what you measure if not getting this is accompanied by state violence.
So, what does the Fundamental Axiom of Ed Deform have to do with justice as practiced in that small town in Georgia? Well, the same axiom is at work. Increasingly in the United States, the criminal justice system is data-driven, and what is measured are guilty pleas and convictions, not whether justice was served. And so, under threat of state violence, you get what you measure and only what you measure—more guilty pleas. That’s why the “land of liberty” now has a higher percentage of its citizens under penal supervision (in jail, in prison, or on parole) than does any other country in the world (almost 3 percent of the adult population). Think of the sickest, most repressive regime out there. We in “the land of liberty” imprison people at a rate greater than it does. There are, today, more black men under penal supervision in the US than there were black men who were slaves in 1858. We are becoming one nation, accountable to data, like something out of Orwell or Kafka.
So, what sounds on the surface of it like a good idea (“We need real data-based accountability!”) ends up having these horrific consequences in the lives of actual people. Little Yolanda hates reading because she thinks it’s a guessing game in which you find which of the four tortured sentences in the multiple-choice question about standard CCSS. ELA-LITERACY.RI.666 is “most correct,” and then she grows up to be unable to get a job when she’s 30 because she was caught when she was 18 with her boyfriend’s roach clip in her pocket. She’s held accountable, forever. When she was 18, she went to a party, and she met the wrong guy, and so, of course, her life should be ruined going forward.
“If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.” George Orwell, 1984
I didn’t mean to suggest that my argument would be difficult to follow, only that it would be fairly long and so might not garner sustained attention. I so wish that there were an edit button for these posts! Aie yie yie.
Not at all difficult to follow, Bob. Again, you’ve created masterful synthesis of the kind I’d like to teach my students to make. Congratulations on this, and please: MORE! I’m just too tired most days (especially this time of year) to think through something like this.
Gates occasionally gives breezy interviews in which he talks about the “experiment” he is conducting with his “higher standards” and how he will know in a decade or two whether they will be successful. And this is what people who don’t know what they are doing but are incredibly sure of themselves do and say. They rush in, for their own reasons, where angels fear to tread, and they make a mess of things. Meanwhile, every educational publisher in the United States now starts the planning of every project by making a list of the Gates/Coleman standards [sic] in the far-left column of an Excel spreadsheet and, in the next column over, a list of the places in the product where the standard [sic] will be “covered.” In other words, the standards [sic[ have become the default curriculum. They, and only they, are what is taught and what matters. In the past, when states had competing standards, the publishers worked in this way instead: they created a coherent product–a survey text in British literature for 12th graders, for example, and then “correlated” it with all those competing standards. The correlations were often quite fanciful, but the product was coherent and and unified and substantive. But now, it has been narrowed to teach the standards and only the standards, and bright folks like my friend, who care deeply about kids and the teaching of English, quit their jobs in disgust. So, Mr. Gates’s actions have these very real consequences–they narrow the curriculum and destroy careers that would have been spent doing good in the world.
Bob, when does Gates’ decade of experimentation end? Is it a forever decade?
Excellent synthesis, Bob, and really right on.
My Lord, someone actually read this post!!! So grateful, Mark. Thank you.
The drive to “measure” everything (including stuff that actually can’t be measured) is a sickness that is propagated by pseudoscientists (economists, psychometricians, computer “scientists”).
The people pushing this stuff have no respect for real science.
It’s numerology–but it well serves the purposes of command and control
You are right.
It’s all about control.
It’s actually very ironic that some of the worst offenders — the computer “scientists” — are working madly(and I mean that in the multiple senses of the word) to produce the machine that will eventually take control over humans.
It’s actually very funny in a macabre sense.
These people are the very definition of crank
One of the most bizarre aspects of it all is that the rest of us not only allow computer “scientists” at places like MIT to develop such machines but that we actually pay them to do so.
They will be the death of us all.
SomeDAM, you don’t understand. It’s just a COINCIDENCE that Ed Deform is funded by Gates and is about standardized testing on computers and depersonalized education software and vast databases for cradle-to-grave surveillance, tracking, and evaluation of proles and their teachers and their schools. You’re not seeing the cosmic synchronicity of this! One Nation, Under Data. In Data We Trust. Out of Many, Data. Keep Your Eye on the Data. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all people are reducible to data. It doesn’t matter WHAT data, ofc. It can be any data whatsoever, as long as it can be dashboarded and will sell computer software. The data is just the hand the audience keeps its eye on during the shell game. It’s magic.
In all seriousness, we really need to wake up because the crazies at CS departments at places like MIT and Stanford are really driving us all toward the cliff.
There is a reason why REAL scientists like the late Stephen Hawking are so concerned about the development of strong AI.
By and large, the computer “science” cranks are either too enamored with their own influence and power or too stupid to see the potential consequences of their own actions.
Data driven
When data are driven
Along for the ride
They never are given
The chance to decide
In fact, most of them don’t even know what real science is
Oh, SomeDAM, how I would love to have a beer with you and talk AI! Yeah, things are going to get very weird indeed!!!!
One of my stories about this subject: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/stories/algorithm-a-short-story-bob-shepherd/
And another: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/stories/the-baseless-fabric-of-this-vision-a-short-story/
AWrenchintheGears.com (10-9-2016) tells us what to fear, “Questions We Should Be Asking about Future Ready Schools”.
Recently, Ohio’s SETDA cited the state’s involvement with Gates-linked Future Ready. School superintendents are asked by Future Ready to pledge an oath to the program.
One thing you have to give the Deformers: they are very good at coming up with names and slogans. I am a “Future-Ready Superintendent.” I signed the Future-Ready Pledge.” Instant qualification, something to add to a resume, even if it actually means, “I have committed to spending vast amounts of money not on teacher salaries and supplies and facilities and nurses and libraries but on depersonalized learning software.”
Here’s the “Future-Ready Pledge.” I’ve taken the liberty to add a few notes in brackets. I guess that there are not copyeditors at the Department for the Privatization and Depersonalization of US Education, formerly the USDE.
I, _______________________, Superintendent of _________________________ [You need a comma at the end to close the appositive.] do hereby affirm the commitment of this school district to work with students, educators, families, community members, and the FRS network of support to continuously create [split infinitive] learner-centered environments in all schools served by the district. In doing so, [Misplaced modifier. The areas of focus are not doing the doing.] areas of focus include the following:
Foster a culture of collaborative leadership.
FRS district leadership teams are composed of leaders at all levels [Sense? What about the lowest level in an organization? Does it contain leaders of the organization that then join the team? This is certainly a novel and revolutionary idea but probably not what you intended.] who work collaboratively to transform teaching and learning to a more learner-centered approach [Awkward].
Provide rigorous academic content for all students to build life skills [Sense? Rigorous has a couple common meanings, neither of which applies here. In mathematics, it means “validly and algorithmically demonstrated or demonstrable.” In general usage, it means “difficult.” Do you mean that you want the content to be difficult? And, usually, academic content (e.g., knowledge of Sumerian history) is distinguished from life skills (knowledge of how to put together a household budget], so it’s odd to conflate these.
In a [Wrong article. Which article you use depends upon how the substantive modified by the article is pronounced. In this case, it’s “an F.”] FRS district, curriculum, instruction, and assessment are tightly aligned with and designed to engage students in personalized, technology-empowered, deeper learning experiences that build life-long learning skills [OK. Here you are talking about “life-long learning skills,” but above you refer simply to “life skills.” Which is it?]
Empower personalized professional learning opportunities [Improper modifier. It’s not the learning opportunities that are being empowered; it’s the students. And in what sense is replacing a teacher with a piece of software “personalization”? Isn’t the learning, thereby, being depersonalized?].
FRS districts strive to provide all educators with access to professional learning experiences that are personal and authentic.
Help schools and families transition to anytime, anywhere learning.
High-quality, high-speed technology and infrastructure within a [See note on the article, above.] FRS school district are essential to advancing authentic, learner-centric experiences.
Rethink the use of space and time [needs a qualifier; the person is not being asked to pledge to “rethink the use of space and time” IN GENERAL, lol.].
Learner-centric experiences in a [Wrong article] FRS district require changes in the way instructional time is allotted and how the learning space is [The generic use of the singular (‘the learning space is’) is associated with hortatory language; as used here, it sounds like puffery.] designed.
Implement thoughtful data and privacy policies and protocols [You mean “well thought-out data and privacy policies and protocols.” This is another improper modifier. The protocols are not doing the thinking.].
Data privacy and security are foundational elements of learner-centered digital learning. FRS districts ensure that sound data governance policies are enacted to ensure privacy, safety, and security of confidential data. [meaning of “sound data governance policies”? By this, do you mean policies that allow private student data to be accessed by, used by, and sold to corporations without parental consent? In what sense are such policies “sound”? An Orwellian one?]
Focus on long-term sustainability.
In FRS districts, the transition to learner-centered, technology-empowered experiences requires strategic short- and long-term budgeting as well as creative leveraging of resources. [Keep that money rolling out to the software and hardware vendors!]
Share and mentor for continuous improvement.
FRS districts understand [Improper verb. “Understand” can be used only with animate subjects.] that transformation is a process, not an event [Events are not processes? Isn’t every event a process and every process an event? You need a qualifier to make this make sense—e.g., “a single event.”]. No matter where FRS districts may [The auxiliary is unnecessary.] fall on the implementation continuum, they are working diligently toward a system of continuous
improvement districtwide, with emphasis on its [Improper shift from plural—“districts,” “they”—to the singular—“its.”] lowest-performing schools and student subgroups [So, let’s get this right: you are saying that the lowest-performing students should spend the most time sitting in front of computers doing depersonalized worksheets on a screen? Perhaps that’s why Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe send their kids to schools with real teachers in them.].
GrammarFuture ReadyIn days of old
Our teachers told
Their students to learn grammar
But Twitter days
Have dumped the ways
And grammar’s in the slammer
Bob-
The sale of shoddy, harmful products requires obfuscation e.g. tobacco, “be an independent person- smoke”. Then, as a result, the smoker develops the greatest dependency possible.
I really will be interested to read this book. There was an interesting interview on a Democracy Now website I read. Your analysis of the situation seem spot on to me, and well worth reading. I have some specific comments:
“The Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic] ”
You misspelled Sick four times.
“standard CCSS. ELA-LITERACY.RI.666”
My more superstitious friends would zero in on the triple 6. Was that a joke?
Now for a comment on the references to measurement. I had a conversation with an admin friend of mine this afternoon. I was commiserating with his incessant dealing with testing, one phase of which was over today. Eventually, he suggested that we had to measure learning, but he wished we did not test so much.
I understand why he said this. He has never been exposed to the logical problems of “measuring” learning. As an old coach, it makes sense to him that you have to define the game to play it.
Duane Swacker has already told us the truth here in this blog. His book about malpractice in Education is a really good read on the matter. Bob’s essay on his website refers to the same impossibility of measuring learning.
Part of our problem is that the society we live in is used to measurement. Companies measure things with social science to determine whether products are being sold in response to commercials. Many of our brightest minds are convinced that we can do the same number magic when it comes to school.
I visited a place in South Dakota called Mammoth Hot Springs. It was an archeological dig where hundreds of Mammoths, mostly young males, had slipped into a pool from which there was no escape.
I claim we slipped into this pool in education when we accepted the idea of behavioral objectives. Attempting to place the process in a pigeonhole lead inexorably from passion to pig mess. Teachers passionate about history or literature gave way to teachers who could accurately describe student behaviors that suggested that they understood. we were on the way down.
With testing we are in the waters of the pool. The only escape is the rejection of any measure of learning. ” ’twill be a hard way to hit”
Misspelling of “sick”: LMAO.
The 666 was intentional. Yes, a joke.
One can do measurement in education, but one has to take the results with a grain of salt and understand the issues involved. Some things can be measured pretty darned easily: do you know your times table from 1 x 1 to 9 x 9? Some things can’t: do you have a command of the Romantic tradition in English and European literature? Do you have a defensible reading of Madame Bovary? Is this person the right one for the job? These matters are nuanced and complex. It’s like the saw about statistics–that you can say anything with them. Well, no. You can say anything with bad statistics, using bad data and bad arguments, and what you can say with statistics is limited, and a lot of the business of doing statistics well involves understanding the limitations of a given statistical analysis. The Ed Deformers do numerology and call it science.
I’m with you about that book. Definitely going to have to order a copy.
Strange you should use a mathematical skill to illustrate an intellectual thing that can be measured. Setting aside the question for a second, it is interesting to note that memorizing multiplication tables was the result of the need for checkers and weighers I mines and businesses. I have read somewhere that Jefferson did not know his tables, but referred, like others of his day to a written device where they could be seen.
Considering the question of whether you can measure mathematical understanding, I taught math for 29 years and struggled with fair testing the whole time. I think the jury is out on math, but I will not belabor the point.
“I struggled with fair testing the entire time.” This shows how genuinely reflective you were, Roy. It’s the folks who don’t think there are any issues that aren’t thinking–the ones who just take on faith that the unseen high-stakes standardized tests actually measure what they purport to measure (they don’t) and do so validly and reliably, yielding “data” on which particular decisions (this student should be retained or not graduated; this school should be closed; this teacher should be put on probation and this one given a bonus) can rationally be made. Ofc, at every step, the system fails. The tests are not valid or reliable. They don’t measure what they claim to measure. They don’t provide useful data. The decisions made on the basis of them don’t follow–are non sequiturs. Totally irrational. Numerology. Another mystical pseudoscience, like tarot card reading and phrenology and astrology. And yet millions take this nonsense seriously.
I’m still looking for that great book that compares two “data-driven pseudosciences”–high-stakes standardized testing and eugenics. Both using poor science and corrupt data and terrible reasoning to make false inferences leading to horrific social consequences. Periods of madness. One day we shall get beyond this one, too. I hope. The alternative–the world of the ubiquitous LMSs (the Lives Management Systems)–is just too awful to contemplate. But many are busily creating that world, even as we chat.
Bob
I don’t think we will ever get beyond the current obsession with quantification and (faux) measurement.
In fact, all indications are that things are getting worse, not better.
The money is driving the technology, which is driving the move toward a more “measured” society in nearly every regard.
The crazies are in charge and for some odd reason, we are not only letting but actually helping them do whatever they please.
Many parents are having their children return home without a college diploma because they can’t do the work. The parents are outraged and think that the kid is just lazy when in fact, the kid hasn’t been able to think for years. Most of these parents reveled in their children’s test scores (SAT,ACT,AP) and seemed to love the rigors of the Common Core. I kindly tell them that the tests were never developed to measure the child’s intelligence (because intelligence is something that really can’t be measured)….the tests were developed to measure how well the common core standards were being implemented. The common core is about as bad as it gets. Loved your post and I understand it all. It’s too bad that most parents don’t understand.
Thank you, Lisa. The tests were developed to sell tests and computers for students to take tests on and database systems to post test scores in. They were very successful in this. Quite the scam, these tests. A product we buy but can’t look at, with no pedagogical value, that costs billions of dollars each year.
Just heard from another yet friend of mine, today, who has quit working in educational publishing out of disgust at the dumbing down of textbooks and online instructional programs due to the Common [sic] Core [sic]. The ones who stick with it tend to be the morons. In fact, support for the Common [sic] Core [sic] is a pretty good rough-and-ready test of a) intelligence or b) knowledge of the English language arts. It takes major deficiency in one or the other for anyone to take David Coleman’s puerile bullet list at all seriously. But people get inured to bs and, after a while, don’t see it for what it is, don’t submit it to critical examination because it’s too familiar.
Lisa
Hard as it is to believe at this late date, I don’t think most parents even know what Common Core is about.
I have talked at length to siblings about it and was rather surprised at how little they knew. And they are generally very interested in the education of their children.
They probably get tired of my endless rants about Common Core, David Coleman and Bill Gates.Maybe even think I am crazy.
And they may be right. One has to be a little crazy to follow all the deformer logic.
SDP,
One must be immersed in the education issues to understand that every term means the opposite.
If anyone cares to see it, here’s that note about Ed Deform in a cleaned-up version: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/05/01/ed-deform-follies-yes-you-get-what-you-measure-or-be-careful-what-you-wish-for/
“Wilson replied that during her tenure, [Beverly] Hall held more decision-making power than any other superintendent in the state, thanks to an amendment to the city’s charter created by Kasim Reed when he was a state senator.”
–Robinson, Shani; Simonton, Anna. None of the Above (p. 199). Beacon Press. Kindle Edition.
Although the amendment was to the school system’s charter instead of the city’s charter, reading the above statement prompted recalling this letter of mine back on…
17 September 2002
Atlanta School Board Charter Review Commission
c/o Dr. Thomas Cole, Chair
Clark Atlanta University
223 James P. Brawley Drive, Southwest
Atlanta, Georgia 30314
Dear Dr. Cole and Commission Members:
It is fitting you chose Crim High School as the venue for your final public forum to solicit additional and final comments on your Preliminary Report of 4 September 2002. Accordingly, I take this opportunity to present my comments via this open letter.
But first, a question, please: Who among you is knowledgeable of the works of Dr. Alfie Kohn, to any extent?
To the extent you are, you are poised to honor the late Dr. Alonzo Crim. To the extent you are not, you are poised likely to dishonor Dr. Crim.
Why? Well, you see, the paths of Dr. Kohn and Dr. Crim crossed on 23 March 2000 at Georgia State University School of Music, where Dr. Crim heard Dr. Kohn lecture.
Dr. Crim heard Dr. Kohn make the case that people who concentrate on standards, goals, performance, achievement, and such get school reform wrong. Such people opt for a demand model of learning rather than a support model of learning.
Dr. Crim heard Dr. Kohn make the case that people who concentrate on standards, goals, performance, achievement, and such get improvement wrong. Such people opt for maximum difficulty rather than optimum difficulty. Harder is better, they believe.
Dr. Crim heard Dr. Kohn make the case that people who concentrate on standards, goals, performance, achievement, and such get teaching and learning wrong. Such people opt to focus on uniform and specific skills rather than understanding.
Dr. Crim heard Dr. Kohn make the case that people who concentrate on standards, goals, performance, achievement, and such get evaluation wrong. Such people opt for critical reliance on standardized test results rather than helping kids become better thinkers and learners.
And Dr. Crim heard Dr. Kohn make the case that people who concentrate on standards, goals, performance, achievement, and such utterly misunderstand motivation. Such people opt to force kids to overly focus on how well they are doing rather than on what they are doing. Winning and top-rank is better than excellence, they believe.
At the end of Dr. Kohn’s lecture, I approached Dr. Crim, introduced myself as president of Atlanta Area Deming Study Group, and asked his opinion of the cases Dr. Kohn made. To my delight, Dr. Crim replied: “Alfie is right on. He gets it.”
With those words, Dr. Crim renewed my hope for the future of public education, in general, and Atlanta Public Schools, in particular. Still, I had one concern: has Dr. Crim the moral and ethical courage to lend his voice to the matter?
To put my concern to rest, I contacted the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter who covered Dr. Kohn’s lecture with the idea to interview Dr. Crim.
The AJC reporter did indeed interview Dr. Crim, and subsequently reported: “‘I think [Kohn is] right on the money,’ said one member of the audience, former Atlanta school Superintendent Alonzo Crim, now a GSU education professor. ‘Just as Kohn said, we’re trying to go back to the ’20s and make our schools factories.'” (“Uphill battle: Many teachers think using standardized tests to measure specific objectives will change education for the worse,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 16 April 2000.)
By your Preliminary Report of 4 September 2002 that shows the changed Atlanta Public Schools Charter you apparently aim to push through to the state legislature, my heart and prayers go out for you, for you obviously do not get it. Perhaps only the delusional dare to believe the charter, as changed, will serve to “improve the governance of the Atlanta school system in order to support delivery of the best education possible for the children of Atlanta.”
My comments enclosed are incomplete. Time did not allow me to write comments on all that I read. Still, my comments note glib exactness, numeral illiteracy, and nonsensical contention created where none existed before the changes.
Moreover, in your new Section 2-114, Roles of Board and [S]uperintendent, I noted therein this horrific responsibility among the others: “… the Board is responsible for … Adopting district-wide policies that provide incentives for progress and consequences for failure for all decision-makers in the district, as well as for students.” (Emphasis mine.)
This is behaviorism at its worst. If institutionalized, such responsibility will help to move Atlanta Public Schools “back to the 20s and make our schools factories,” just as Dr. Crim understood.
You of course have until 30 September 2002 to honor Dr. Crim, and prove his wisdom and your work worthy. It would be wrong of anyone to suggest otherwise. All it takes is the recommendation to leave the charter nearly unchanged and to seek avenues to improve learning and other matters unfettered by political expedience and the agendas of certain private and non-profit organizations. Do you have Dr. Crim’s courage to do so?
Frankly, I fail to see why you and the organizations you represent would choose to participate in this insidious affair. Why have you allowed yourselves to be appointed foremen of harm and destruction of Atlanta’s children? Why have you chosen servitude over freedom and innovation? What have you to gain?
Whatever your answers, know that your gain will in no way offset the damage effected through you. Dr. Crim knew this. May your God help you to know it, too.
I may have by now used my allotted three minutes. Still, I would be remiss if I did not leave you with the following short story. It is called “Bricks without Straw.”
[One] day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people: “You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don’t reduce the quota. They are lazy…. Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay not attention to lies.”
Then the slave drivers and the foremen went out and said to the people, “This is what Pharaoh says: ‘I will not give you any more straw. Go and get your own straw wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced at all.'” So the people scattered all over [the land] to gather stubble to use for straw. The slave drivers kept pressing them, saying, “Complete the work required of you for each day, just as when you had straw.” The … foremen appointed by Pharaoh’s slave drivers were beaten and were asked, “Why didn’t you meet your quota of bricks yesterday or today, as before?”
Then the … foreman went and appealed to Pharaoh: “Why have you treated your servants this way? Your servants are given no straw, yet we are told, ‘Make bricks!’ Your servants are being beaten, but the fault is with your own people.”
Pharaoh said, “Lazy, that’s what you are-lazy! … Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks.”
The … foremen realized they were in trouble when they were told, “You are not to reduce the number of bricks required of you for each day.” When they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them, and [Moses and Aaron] said, “May [your God] look upon you and judge you! You have made us a stench to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”
Enclosures:
1. Comments on Preliminary Report of 4 September 2002
2. Preliminary Report of 4 September 2002, reference lines and shading added
cc: The Honorable Roy Barnes, Governor, State of Georgia
The Honorable David Scott, Senator, State of Georgia
Members of Atlanta Board of Education
Mr. Sam Williams, President, MACOC
Wow, Ed! Outstanding letter. If only people like you had been listened to!
Poor people and people of color have long known this: once you fall under the eye of the system, you are screwed. The best possible outcome for you is horrific.
What happened to those public school teachers is the story of America’s justice system.
No one accused of a crime should be offered a deal that lets them go free (or a reduced sentence) if they testify against someone else who then is offered a deal if they testify against someone else.
The prosecutors are waiting for the individuals that refuse to take this deal because those individuals are unwilling to lie. Then the prosecutors go after those that refused to lie and make a deal. Even if the victim is found innocent in the end, they will probably end up bankrupt from the legal costs unless their lawyer is honest enough to go after the system to refund all of the victim’s legal costs and I have read that it is often if not always illegal to sue the government without the government’s approval.
Admitting guilt and getting off free while someone else goes to prison that might be innocent because of a lying witness who lied to go free should not be allowed.
Even if the inducement did not require an accusation against another person, the disgusting aspect of the trial is the idea that the accused are offered a choice: plead guilty and go free, or assert your innocence and face up to 20 years in prison. Given this choice and a judge who assumed they were all guilty of a heinous crime, it took enormous courage to insist on your innocence. Why would anyone risk 20 years in jail if the judge offered them a “get out of jail free” card?
Exactly, Diane. This is why Ms. Robinson’s story is, as you point out, so inspiring. It’s heroic.
Why would someone do this?
“Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!”
― John Proctor in The Crucible, by Arthur Miller
This book is, indeed, a must-read. I read it several months ago & the only part which gladdens me is that Shani is so courageous & principled & that she has a wonderful, strong & supportive family behind her.
& speaking of cheating, let’s see what kind of sentence(s) are handed down in the college admissions scandal, a real cheating occurrence.
Finally, a little off-topic, but I read this in today’s Chicago Tribune:
“WHAT OTHERS ARE SAYING
& this, in large part, would explain the ALEC-planned (agenda for over 48 years) teacher
shortage. “Humans are more expensive, & rich people are willing to pay for them.” Real, in-the-flesh teachers* for the 1%er’s children; computers for “other people’s children.” Personal shoppers for the rich; on-line & machine-driven check-outs for the 99% (& at least one or two of us have been in grocery lines behind elderly patrons who chat up the cashier, because this may be their only human contact for the day; that, too, is/will be taken from them).
*Who aren’t, actually, paid that much, but anything is considered expensive to the 1% skinflint money-grubbers.
Here is an interview with the author on the “Have You Heard” education podcast.