Parents mobilized to defeat the so-called “parent trigger” in three states.
They referred to it as the “corporate empowerment” bill.
It could also be called the Corporate Enrichment bill.
Archives for category: Georgia
A reader writes:
“Yes, a lawyer is the acting interim Superintendent, Joe. His name is Dorsey Hopson. Before coming to Memphis, he was general counsel for the Atlanta Public School system (during the same time as the cheating scandal).”
Will he be called to testify about the organized cheating and the inflated s ores and the unwarranted bonuses that occurred when he was general counsel to the Atlanta Public Schools.
Accountability begins at the top, as it should.
This smart blogger read all the investigators’ reports from the Atlanta cheating scandal.
He or she realized that Atlanta was doing everything that reformers say is important.
The educators there were focusing on test scores above all else.
The teachers who got higher scores got bonuses and those who did not, got humiliated.
Incentivizing the workforce, yes?
The teachers had no tenure, so whistleblowers had no job protection and were easily fired.
The blogger writes: “So what rank-and-yank, cash incentives, all that leadership, and high expectations got Atlanta public school children was test scores so gamed that the schools lost Title One program improvement money, and children who needed special education services were disqualified from them because of their remarkable testing prowess.”
Atlanta is a textbook case of the corporate reform approach to education. What makes it different from other districts following the corporate reform textbook is that the governor sent in professional investigators.
Veteran journalist Sol Stern looks at the Atlanta cheating scandal from a different angle.
Pay for performance plans send big bucks to certain adults, he points out.
And those plans lead some people to cheat.
It is up to the people in charge to investigate.
He shows how in one egregious example in New York City, where the scores zoomed up, then collapsed, the city didn’t even bother to investigate the principal in charge of the school. She retired with a tidy boost to her pension. The city investigators said they couldn’t interview her because they couldn’t find her. Case closed.
A reporter did find her, however, at her listed address.
When the people in charge don’t want to know, they don’t find any smoke or fire or smoking guns.
Arthur Camins has written numerous thoughtful essays about the current ruinous trends in American education.
Here he reflects on some important lessons from the Atlanta cheating scandal.
He writes:
“I’m waiting for the national editorials, leading policy makers and major foundations to speak out honestly about the lessons learned from the Atlanta cheating scandal. I’m waiting for them to change course. But, I am not holding my breath.
“From Enron to Arthur Anderson to the sub-prime lending debacle we have unambiguous evidence of a lethal combination. Unquestioned hierarchy, the arrogance of power and a singular focus on short-term metrics yield no integrity and subsequent cheating. When fear and financial rewards are combined honesty is lost.
“Cheating, especially of the erasure kind, is not new and was certainly known to Beverly Hall. Back in the 1990’s, when she was rising through the ranks, I worked as a District Science Coordinator in New York City. One day during the annual spring testing period we were summoned to the District Office and sent out to proctor testing in the classrooms of teachers who had been identified by the Central Board’s testing division as having an unusually high percentage of erasure marks on previous tests. The pressure was high then even without the threat of job loss or the promise of bonuses. Even then, there was no “speaking truth to power.”
“I was struck in the reporting this morning that Beverly Hall’s reign in Atlanta was characterized by fear. In the end, it is the absence of democracy, the primacy of bureaucracies over learning organizations that allows and encourages cheating. To paraphrase Isaac Asimov from one of his Foundation Trilogy novels, “Despotism is the last refuge of the incompetent.” I think some people rise to power for many reasons and at a certain point realize they really don’t have answers, but do not have the courage to admit it either to themselves or others. That’s when the cover up and self-righteousness take over.”
Arthur
Count on G.F. Brandenburg to read the fine print, have a long memory, and share what he has learned with his readers.
The excerpts from the Atlanta indictments may remind you of the PBS Frontline special about Michelle Rhee. Remember how she interviewed each principal and asked, “How many points will your scores go up?” “What can you promise?”
Maybe it is time to look at that episode again.
Here is a link to the episode, the PBS ombudsman comments, and the controversy that followed.
According to the story in the New York Times, the schools in Atlanta where the scores soared lost federal aid for struggling learners. One school where cheating is alleged lost $750,000 that could have been used for reduced class size and to provide enrichment classes and tutoring. And that was only one school among many.
The rise in scores gained Beverly Hall a bonus of $500,000.
That must be one of the strategies that the Atlanta school board learned when they received training by the Broad Foundation about reaching targets and using incentives to succeed.
Remember the stories about the “New York City miracle”? That’s when the passing rates went up so fast and so high that very few children were eligible for extra tutoring. When the state revealed in 2010 that the state scoring was defective, the “miracle” disappeared. But the children never got the extra help that they needed as officials crowed about “their” accomplishments. NYC even won the Broad prize in 2007 for its vastly inflated test scores. The prize was announced just a few weeks before NAEP reported that NYC had made no gains at all.
Erich Martel of D.C. posted the documents from the Atlanta investigation.
“These are the four Atlanta Public School (APS) Investigation Report documents:
There are some unexpected surprises. Supt. Hall hired two “experts” to do a review of a few schools in response to concerns. One is a well-known consultant, author of “Unpacking the Standards.” His report was very approving (he visited 8 schools in one day, during his 3-day stay). Supt Hall posted it on the APS website. The other, critical report she “lost,” claiming that she never received it. Go to p. 311 of the “Exhibits to Report.”
The New York Times has an extended story on the indictments of educators for their alleged participation in cheating on tests.
Ex-superintendent Beverly Hall was one of 35 Atlanta educators indicted in the biggest cheating scandal in public school history.
A third-grade teacher agreed to wear a wire for the investigators:
She “admitted to Mr. Hyde [the investigator] that she was one of seven teachers — nicknamed “the chosen” — who sat in a locked windowless room every afternoon during the week of state testing, raising students’ scores by erasing wrong answers and making them right. She then agreed to wear a hidden electronic wire to school, and for weeks she secretly recorded the conversations of her fellow teachers for Mr. Hyde.”
The scandal reached all the way into the superintendent’s office:
“Dr. Hall, who retired in 2011, was charged with racketeering, theft, influencing witnesses, conspiracy and making false statements. Prosecutors recommended a $7.5 million bond for her; she could face up to 45 years in prison.”
Many lessons here. Cheating is wrong. It should be punished. It cheats children. Lying is wrong. It should be punished. A system that incentivizes cheating and rewards cheating is wrong and should be changed.
The odds are that the cheaters will be punished, as they should be, but the system that encouraged the cheating will remain unchanged.
Another lesson from Georgia: Cheating scandals should be thoroughly investigated by professional investigators.
A report in the New York Times says that Dr. Beverly L. Hall was indicted by a grand jury for her role in the Atlanta cheating scandal.
The story says, in part:
“Investigators laid blame for the biggest standardized-test cheating scandal in the country’s history on the superintendent, Dr. Hall, who led the 50,000-student school system from 1999 until her resignation in 2011. Dr. Hall, who was hailed as National Superintendent of the Year in 2009 for her role in making Atlanta’s once-failing urban school district a model of improvement, had “emphasized test results and public praise to the exclusion of integrity and ethics,” the report said.
“The report asserted that Dr. Hall, while not tied directly to cheating or the direct target of a subpoena, tried to contain damaging information and did not do enough to investigate allegations, especially after 2005 when “clear and significant” warnings were raised. As superintendent, she received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bonuses tied to bogus improvements in test scores.”
