APS teacher forced to crawl under table at faculty meeting because of low test scores

The pressure to meet data targets didn’t create cheaters–it revealed them. Just as Bev Hall’s reaction to emerging reports of cheating didn’t cause her to become a lying con-artist–it just revealed her as one. There were plenty of honest teachers who didn’t cheat. Let’s give some of them the soon-to-be-vacant principal jobs.

• Link
• Report this comment

Since discussions are moving to different links, I’m posting here too.

Has the Governor’s team investigated the role that the Atlanta Board of Education played in this fiasco? If I recall correctly, didn’t the AJC print several stories saying that former ABE Chair LaChandra Butler-Burks and Dr. Beverly Hall met with the Chamber of Commerce to plan how and who should conduct the initial investigation BEFORE the issue was brought up at a board meeting? Didn’t they even go so far as to identify the names of those BUSINESS members/companies they wanted to put on the committee? Didn’t this heavily involve APS’ public towncrier/pr group, the Atlanta Education Fund?

Beyond the actual classroom cheating, those who took part in the initial investigation by trying to stack an investigatory commission with clearly biased business leaders should also be subject to any punishments meted out to those who cheated. Why? Their actions allowed those not identified as cheaters to continue cheating children. They are part of the CONSPIRACY to Rob the Children of Atlanta of a public education.

Also the parents who have so negatively spun the actions of the 5 in voting former Chair Butler-Burks out, clearly jumped on the APS/Business bandwagon helping to play music to help cover up this mess. If I were betting on this, I’ll bet you see those parents who were decrying the 5’s leadership change now as a victory for the students.

If the 5 couldn’t get anything done about this before now, it was because the 4 muddied up the water with their self-righteous lawsuit which they settled in the judge’s chambers when he told them he would rule in favor of the 5. We’ve spent wasteful months hearing about how evil and unethical those board members were….now that the truth is out, I look forward to these media savvy parents to STEP UP and LET EVERYONE IN ATLANTA KNOW ABOUT THE UNETHICAL ACTIONS OF APS LEADERS.

Or, are they part of the cover-up too!!??

• Link
• Report this comment

Wow! I am truly shocked and saddened by this report. It sounds much worse than I could have ever imagined. I do believe though that the majority of teachers in Georgia (me included) would never cheat or do anything as unethical as what was done in these schools.

• Link
• Report this comment

It is interesting that even though this is a report that applies to what happened at APS under Beverly Hall, Maureen skillfully deflect the attention with language like quote “Here is a key finding that ought to be worrisome to the entire country as all states move toward pay for performance plans that reward educators on student scores.”

Maureen, lets not try to generalize the worry for the entire country..this cheating scandal where teachers were forced to crawl under the desk happened at APS and not in the whole country across all states !!
again Maureen apologizes for the Beverly Hall.
Maureen..can you repeat after me ” Beverly Hall is a crook”

• Link
• Report this comment

Union are needed.

Alone and pressured with a possible job loss because the expectations are unreasonable, what real choice did the teacher have? Teachers are not modern day Jobs of the Bible!

We need a good class action suit against APS from every teacher who was pressured or was in a hostile work environment..

• Link
• Report this comment

@exaps teacher: I do not think the issue is so much about those who cheated which of course is horrific and those teachers, etc. I assumed have been punished through the PSC. My issue is the idea that administrative personnel would go to such lengths to disrepect their staff in such a nineteenth century approach. I cannot even fathom teaching in a district where an administrator would make such a demand and a teacher would actually follow that demand. What has happened to us as a profession that we allowing bullies to run our schools in such a fashion? Wouldn’t such a demeaning situation fall under the Code of Ethics? Even if it happened to only one teacher it happened to too many.

• Link
• Report this comment

@ inescapble yet unspoken

I have worked as a teacher in a heavy union district and cheating occurred on important tests. These cheaters were smarter than the cheaters here. They didn’t physically change any answers, they told the children what the right answers were or questioned the answer chosen by the child.

Until education focuses less on these mundane tests that are truly dumbing our children down, and on the progress each child has made in the school year, our public education system will continue on this path of destruction. Our current schools (union and non-union alike) are nothing but job creators for communities with educating children as a second or third priority in the better systems.

• Link
• Report this comment

Why wasn’t that prinicpal at Fain Elementary that forced a teacher to climb under a table fired. And why didn’t the rest of the faculty at Fain Elementary prevent that terrible embarrassment to that fellow teacher.
If that principal is still there when school opens he should be forced to climb under the table for his stupidty and lack of leadership.

• Link
• Report this comment

OH…and is an investigative report like this on the agenda for Dekalb? If not an opportunity to get more kids out of this quagmire is being missed.

• Link
• Report this comment

exapsteacher

“teachers were forced to crawl under the desk happened at APS and not in the whole country across all states ”

DON’T BE ALL THAT SURE ….
Standardized Testing is criminal …

The whole system is now a pressure cooker and that does NOT bode well for solid real EDUCATION !!!

• Link
• Report this comment

I am still on volume 1 of the report.
Boy this slime ball ” Principal Waller” of Park is a piece of work !
Not to sound racist…I am so tired of seeing these black men aka thugs in expensive suits making over
$100K at APS.

• Link
• Report this comment

Standardized testing with tests like the CRCT are in fact criminal. They give false information to parents who think that an 800 means their child is doing okay, when in fact it means that their child barely answered more than 50% of the questions correctly. This is a crime to the child.

• Link
• Report this comment

oh my god!
After all that Principal Waller of Parks Middle School did and all the complaints against him…here is what happened:

“Dr. Hall held Waller out to the public as “model principal”.
“Micheal Pitts dismissed our investigation and said it was “racist”. He also tried to interfere with the investigation. Also Micheal Pitts told the teachers that complained against Waller ” stop writing letters about Waller, he is not going anywhere”.
Bear in mind, Micheal Pitts is a very high ranking employee under Dr. Hall.
If this is not proof of Hall’s hands in the cookie jar, then the justice system may just have to be retired

• Link
• Report this comment

ScienceTeacher671
How can this not be about the teachers? I am sorry. They were put in a very bad place. Didn’t mean they had to cheat. They didn’t. I was put in a very bad place when I was 22 years old. I didn’t do what I was expected to do. I fully expected to be fired. I was okay with that. Because I did the right thing.
As a friend of mine said recently, you are never asked to cheat just once.
If these folks had stood up, and been counted, we wouldn’t be in this place. Or, if we are, maybe we need more teacher accountablilty.

• Link
• Report this comment

I wonder exactly how this teacher was “forced” under the table… I can’t imagine any situation where I would willingly crawl under a table in the middle of a faculty meeting simply because a principal ordered me to… I’d more likely be walking out and immediately driving to the superintendent’s office to formally file an official grievance… Of course, if the superintendent in my county was a fraudulant criminal like Beverly Hall, then I’d probably have to go elsewhere to air my grievance…

• Link
• Report this comment

Maureen,

Do you think that the APS was unique among GA public school systems in its widespread test-manipulation deceit? I don’t.

• Link
• Report this comment

@Atlanta mom In many cases the teachers did not cheat. If you read the report you will see cases where the principals were in a position to change the answers on weekends and after hours.

• Link
• Report this comment

The framework and agenda at the “10-12 principals at a time meetings” with Dr. Hall seemed to be very Michelle Rhee-esque.

• Link
• Report this comment

wonder where ex mayor shirley is today……crying for her buddy Beverly?

• Link
• Report this comment

Given the environment created by Hall and her staff, I wonder if the well being of our children has been compromised in other ways. If threats and intimidation tactics were used to discourage teachers and staff from reporting cheating, what else didn’t they report? Given that the APS administration created a culture of fear, I think we need to seriously consider the possibility that our children may have been harmed in other ways, beyond academic. Have teachers overlooked or ignored inappropriate conduct with children? Have health and safety concerns been ignored or suppressed? I know of one school with ongoing mold issues and staff were scared to complain or report it. I think this report is just the tip of the iceberg. Maureen, has the AJC considered looking into the safety of our schools? Many are overcrowded and don’t have any sprinklers. What else has APS ignored in their unrelenting question of high test scores?

• Link
• Report this comment

I just had a comment hijacked by Mr. Filter. Please release, OK? Thanks!

• Link
• Report this comment

Maureen: I just got home and read the part of the report on Parks Middle School. I didn’t recognize the cheating teachers, and I am sure that the MACE Staff would have informed me if they were members of MACE. I am certain that they aren’t. In fact, I don’t think that we have a single teacher whom we are defending on the charges of cheating. But, I did recognize the name of one of the teachers who refused to cheat and whose contract was subsequently non-renewed presumably for refusing to go along with the cheating. I recognize her name (and know her husband as well). No wonder this Waller fellow was so apparently jumpy and nervous when we walked into the Parks building. To quote my grandfather, he couldn’t seem to find his butt with both hands.

The report is so sad. The Fain principal who apparently made the teacher crawl under the table, I do know. I had him in a grievance hearing about three years ago, representing a veteran teacher who was just tired of the crap. He appeared to be so cocky…and dapper in his impressively starched shirt and bow tie. I think that when I got through with him, some of the starch had come out of his shirt. I guess that I WAS indeed Public Enemy # 1 to these cheating principals. We had picket signs which read: “Teachers Teacher! Administrators Cheat!” Perhaps these should be edited now to say: “Administrators Cheat! So Do Some Teachers!” I am disappointed in those teachers who did cheat, but I still contend that the culture of cheating was established by the lady herself, Beverly Hall.

To see the “cheating” picket signs, see this June 21, 2011 article on my personal blog or also visit http://www.theteachersadvocate.com >>>

http://georgiateachersspeakout.com/2011/06/21/atlanta-public-schools-will-the-administration-of-beverly-hall-fall-as-fast-as-the-berlin-wall-did-in-1989/

• Link
• Report this comment

And I’m staying up late, anxiously awaiting this post, Dr. Trotter…

• Link
• Report this comment

Well…I guess the Filter Man is going to keep my post. Ha! Nothing in the Report shocks me…although I a must say that even as a jaded curmudgeon, I was a tad taken aback by the brazen openness of the cheating. We at MACE had been asserting “systematic cheating” for a while and poohed-poohed the Blue Ribbon Commission and other attempts to cover up. But, I must say that I am glad that the Report has been released to the public and that the uninitiated and naive can get a glimpse behind the curtain and see how governmental bodies operate, especial when given an Open Records request.

Maureen…please release my earlier post. Thanks ahead of time!

• Link
• Report this comment

So, what will happen to the principals. I hope that the governor does not buy the “race card bait” that the prinicpal of Beenteen is trying to play. She was my principal at Oglethorpe and she did everything in her power to have me terminated. The investigation depicts her correctly. She was intimidating and retaliatory. Several teachers were forced to resign from APS because we did not allow her to intimidate us. We wrote Beverly Hall, Kathy Augustine, and Don Doran, but noone would listen to our complaints. Now Kathy Augustine is in DeSoto, Texas, and Beverly Hall has resigned in an effort to avoid a criminal charge. They all deserve to have their licenses revoked and their careers destroyed. After all, they destroyed a lot of childrens’ lives and teachers’ careers. As for me, I will be calling the PSC tomorrow to tell them my story. I appreciate the investigation because I feel like I have been exonerated.

• Link
• Report this comment

By the way, I see that Kasim Reed is jumping quickly from U. S. S. Beverly Hall. It didn’t take him long to change his tune and jump this sinking vessel! Ha! Just like a politician. But, I hope that the voters remember that he was on Beverly Hall’s Cheer Squad to the very end…with pom poms and streamers always in his hands. According to Kasim, it was all the board’s fault…well, the fault of Mr. El and his four colleagues who tried to deal with the Hall Administration and the cheating scandal.

Kasim, I don’t know if the voters’ memories are that faulty. I think that they are going to remember where you stood. HallGate may have done you in politically. This is not just CheatingGate. It is HallGate.

Any opponent in the upcoming Mayoral race need only write, “Kasim Reed…He Defended Beverly Hall!” Enough said.

Yep, it’s a price to be paid for all those nice, swanky lunches at the Piedmont Driving Club. Heck, Kasim, just go to O’Charley’s or Taco Bell. Ha!

• Link
• Report this comment

Dr, John,

Let’s get some sleep. Unfortunately, this problem will be with us tomorrow and for many days thereafter.

Look forward to your comments tomorrow.

Good night.

• Link
• Report this comment

Maureen – I thought the report was 800 pages long. The 3 volumes on the AJC site only go up to 400. Or am I missing something?

• Link
• Report this comment

I taught at Whitefoord Elementary in 2003. To describe it as a hostile work environment would be an understatement. Disrespect and bullying of teachers by the administration was rampant. I have worked for 42 years in the corporate world and in teaching and that was undoubtedly the worst work experience of my life.

• Link
• Report this comment

@exaps teacher: I heard a brief interview on the radio with Shirley Franklin, and all she could talk about was how great BHall made APS. No comment on the cheating or on BHall’s role in it.

• Link
• Report this comment

This type of behavior IM SURE happens more than we know. Its a typical representation of these types of pseudo leaders.

• Link
• Report this comment

There is no way on this earth I would ever get under a table unless things are falling from the sky. If that teacher did not do anything abt that, it is on her/him…I want to see Hall return ALL the money she received for progress. I want to see all $$ stopped for everyone for gains. They DO NOT do the job, the teachers do and we certainly do not see any $$ for it. We see our pay cut and furloughs on top of that…
I believe she was in on it. All the recognition APS has gotten for gains is a lie to the public and the students. I hv heard a lot abt children being promoted that maybe shouldn’t hv been. Students are promoted that do not need to be promoted every year. That isn’t all abt test scores. That is abt administrations and parents as well.

• Link
• Report this comment

http://www.scribd.com/doc/1273803/-description-tags-0108

“DATA ANALYSIS, REFORM MODEL, TURN AROUND ATLANTA SCHOOL. Six years ago, when Venetian Hills Elementary School in Atlanta failed once again to meet basic academic standards, it was identified by the state as “needing improvement” and ordered to offer students free tutoring or transfers to better-performing schools. At the start of school that same year, Clarietta Davis was appointed principal. Facing an audience of anxious parents at open house night, she vowed, “We’re going to be more deliberate with the way we deliver instruction, and we’re going to deliver instruction with more rigor.”
Today, Venetian Hills—where all but a handful of students qualify for the free lunch program—has been given a new label: 2007 No Child Left Behind–Blue Ribbon School, the highest recognition for academic
excellence from the U.S. Department of Education. Student performance has improved sharply during Davis’ tenure, with approximately 96 percent of its students in grades 3-5 now performing at grade level in reading and math, according to the latest data. Venetian Hills “proves that with hard work, every student can achieve great things,” said Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, who gave much credit to the school’s leadership during a recent visit. Davis—honored two years ago as one of
Georgia’s High Performance Principals, and recently as one of six recipients of the Department’s Terrell H. Bell Award for Exemplary Leadership—said it all began with analyzing test score data….”

For the rest of the highly laudatory article, click the link. I think I’ll write Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings and ask her what sort of taste she gets from having both of her feet in her mouth, and I’m going to laugh and laugh and laugh…

• Link
• Report this comment

At what point do teachers REFUSE to do things that are blatantly crazy? Crawl under a desk? Erase answers? Excuse me?

I have been asked to do things that were unethical before. I refused, and resigned the position. I have seen fellow teachers do things that were unethical before. I reported them. NOTHING is as important as your personal ethics!

I think now is the time to get it all out. Those who were forced unjustly to resign should band together for a class-action lawsuit. Those on the Board who conspired to continue the unethical behavior should be investigated and perhaps jailed/fined. Those on the Blue Ribbon Committee who came up with the stupidest report to “save B Hall”, including especially members of the Atlanta business committee, should be investigated and perhaps jailed/ fined for their role in the corruption obfustication. It is time for a complete housecleaning of all the corruption rife in the school and business community (as it impacts the schools). Perhaps it is time to dissolve APS and partition it off to the surrounding systems (except Dekalb–they are nearly ripe for this kind of investigation as well).

Will it cost money to recoup the funds STOLEN in pursuit of the hoax? Yes, but there should be some lawsuits to collect, personally and individually, the money to pay for the legal action. B. Hall was not hired to lie, cheat, and steal. That she did no makes her personally liable for the legal fees the system should recoup.

How about some GREAT BIG, BOLD-FACED ANNOUNCEMENTS by the corporations who feted her about how they were wrong?

I am sick and tired of these educational streetwalkers (chosen because I don’t think the blog filter will accept the word that starts with wh and ends with res) making an already difficult job even harder with their exaggerated claims of greatness! FOLKS, IF SOMETHING SEEMS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE, IT IS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE!

• Link
• Report this comment

@Teacher Reader, you wrote: “Standardized testing with tests like the CRCT are in fact criminal. They give false information to parents who think that an 800 means their child is doing okay, when in fact it means that their child barely answered more than 50% of the questions correctly. This is a crime to the child.”

It isn’t the standardized test that is harmful. It’s the liberal way the test is graded that harms children, and does so in the same way that the CRCT cheating harmed them. You’re test and its grading process must allow for the possibility of failure, even miserable failure, among those who are tested. Also, it must not firewall the upper range of scores because that prevents the test from distinguishing between the very best students and those who are just “pretty good.”

A well designed standardized test, fairly administered without any cheating, and scored by a method that doesn’t introduce, for feel-good purposes, unnecessary non-linearity on the low or the high score ranges, is a very good educational tool.

The SAT once was a better test than it is today: before it was “recentered” with a firewall at the top and a push-up skew at the bottom. But even when I took it, in the 1970s, it had a flaw. Namely, I got 400 points on the combined Part I just for showing up to take the test. Only the points above 400 were points that I had actually earned. That low firewall should be eliminated, too.

• Link
• Report this comment

Disgusting, it is the system NOT the teachers. Anyone raised up to the 90’s in public school came out fine when teachers could teach and NOT teach to a test.

• Link
• Report this comment

hey john trotter.
I sent you an email and voice message.
ABC news with Diane Sawyer wants to do a interview with me about my experience at APS back in 2005, when I reported cheating at a high school in atlanta.
Since I was a MACE member, would you please join me for the interview?

• Link
• Report this comment

@ exaps teacher: I just read your email. I would be happy to appear with you on ABC. I remember what you and the others went through, and I remember how strong you guys were. Remember when one of the guys in the “leadership” threatened my life? Ha! (I responded with an 11 or 12 page letter that literally went all over the State and the internet too.) We picketed like hell (three big pickets that year). Filed several PSC Complaints, and the PSC actually came back in this situation with sanctions against four people in the “leadership.” Two stepped down. The principal suddenly announced in an April faculty meeting that he was retiring. That was a year, right? 1994-95, right? You shed the light on the rampant cheating on the High School Graduation Test. You were very strong, an unsung hero at the time. I encouraged you to get the hell of our APS and accept the job in the suburban county where they would appreciate you. Good to hear from you!

@ former APS teacher: I think that the new superintendent, whomever will be appointed, will want to move on and try to forget as hastily as he or she can about this sordid time in the annals of APS. Unfortunately, I don’t think that he or she will engage in any restitution in which he or she should engage. Too many lives were destroyed.

@ Craig of Augusta: I received your email. Will try to respond today. The main person who would be addressing this with the new teacher is on vacation this week. But, I’ll try address it with you. Thanks!

• Link
• Report this comment

As someone raised the question, the favored ones were exempt from any investigation, not just cheating. Sexual harrassment and other charges were ignored if they were producing the numbers. Again this parallels what happened at Enron.

Something to keep in mind is that this is just 38 principals and 142 teachers that have been IDENTIFIED. In other cases they couldn’t identify who was doing the cheating. And they only looked at 56 schools of the 90 where testing was done. The erasure analysis prioritized what they looked at. They found that 69% of the schools were at least of moderate concern and 77% were at least minimal concern. 52 of those 90 schools had erasures in 20% of more of their classrooms that only had a 1 in 370 chance of being random. There was undoubtedly cheating, but to a lesser extent, at more than just the 44 schools identified. There are a large number of people who have escaped. If we punish the ones who got caught and the enabling administrators its a lot less likely the rest will repeat the activity.

• Link
• Report this comment

Why do educators fear tests? If the school/teacher promise to teach my child math and reading, then I deserve an independent evaluation of whether that goal was met. That is known as a test. If my child fails to do well, then teacher and parent should discuss what can be done to improve the process and result.

The TIAA-CREF money managers for educators’ money uses an independent review process to check if they are investing wisely and reporting accurately. Teachers expect that their money is being managed wisely, and that is appropriate. TIAA-CREF is not afraid of the “test” of its work. Why are so many teachers afraid?

• Link
• Report this comment

Testing…even if the tests were somehow well-designed to avoid bias of all kinds and to make sense (often, questions are so absurd that educated adults can’t figure out what is intended), they still only can measure the lowest levels of skills or knowledge. They are the ultimate dumbing-down of our schools.

Remember, these standardized tests have no scientific basis. The current and previous administrations simply have kept repeating the same mantra over and over again, and eventually the “scientifically sound basis” becomes “true,” despite its conflict with facts.

• Link
• Report this comment

@ Dr. Trotter. Bev Hall wouldn’t listen to you or Atty. Woods. Thanks to Atty. Woods, I was not terminated when my principal filed charges against me because of the way that she mismanaged a $5,000 grant that I received. Instead, Dr. Hall tried to fire me. Sheryl Freeman in OIR tried to coerce me into saying that I gave the principal permission to use the funds at her discretion. This principal deserves to be terminated, and I do not have any sympathy for her.

• Link
• Report this comment

@catlady–I am in agreement and well said! If you have no ethical judgement and allow yourself to be berated and humiliated in front of your colleagues, then to me, you don’t deserve to hold a teaching license.

What I want to know is will these individuals be eligible for their pension benefits?!!

• Link
• Report this comment

I resigned from Cobb County. I chose to rather than being terminated; which makes no sense if the contract year is over…

I will gladly join any class action suit that ensues here in the state of Georgia. I wrote the AJC, Cathy Cox, called the office of Fred Sanderson, and spoke with two attorneys. TO NO AVAIL.

• Link
• Report this comment

I tell you who should be outraged and that’s the parents and students in Clayton County. SACS ripped away the accreditation for this district and they didn’t do anything NEAR this. The sad part is, Atlanta Public Schools now has all sorts of high profile people involved that it won’t get anywhere near the level of punishment that Clayton received. But SACS won’t be fair and use the same measuring stick for APS like it did Clayton County. SACS was just flexing muscle to let the world know how powerful they are. But I bet you any amount of money they will back down and won’t do ONE THING to APS. Bet the farm on that!

• Link
• Report this comment

@QuidProQuo: APS = Too Big to Fail. Believe That.

• Link
• Report this comment

Testing isn’t bad in and of itself. Of course it is invaluable as a means to measure the success of instruction that has been delivered in a particular place over a particular time. But the way we are using testing in education is ludicrous. When you compare results of one year’s administration with a different year’s administration, you aren’t measuring a teacher’s success at delivering instruction. Therefore, how can these results be tied to such things as teacher performance, salary, etc.? What about special education teachers? In many cases their students won’t come close to passing these tests, so are we fair in concluding these teachers are failures? If there are 40 students in a subgroup in a Georgia school, those scores count toward AYP. Often a student may fall into more than one recognized subgroup (depending upon race, socioeconomic status, and disability); is it fair to count their scores more than once?

Another thing the public doesn’t realize is that schools (and teachers) are labeled as “failing” when they don’t meet targets that continue to increase until reaching 100% in 2014. If 88% of my students (the majority of whom come from low socioeconomic backgrounds where the priority is survival rather than educational attainment) passed the English portion of the Georgia High School Graduation Test, I feel that is a HUGE success (especially when early data analysis predicted nearly half to fail). But since 91.8% did not pass, my students, my school, and I are deemed failures according to NCLB, the media, and politicians. We seem to forget we are dealing with human beings, not inputs and outputs in a predictable formula. When can anyone say they have gotten 100% of human beings to do ANYTHING? The public classroom that accepts all students regardless of circumstances, desires, or preparation is a reflection of our society at large, not a carefully controlled vacuum in which we can reliably assume that action “X” will result in consequence “Y”. There are so many variables that affect one’s educational performance that cannot even be identified much less measured or manipulated. Anyone with a brain can see beyond the hype and recognize that “failing” schools and systems are the ones with the highest enrollment of students living in poverty. These students by and large are not read to as small children, and consequently they are seriously lacking in critical reading skills. They come from environments where higher education simply doesn’t even enter their realm of thinking in terms of realistic post-secondary options. While a teacher may have enormous power to impact the lives of his or her students, we simply aren’t equipped to give these babies all the advantages we had. The majority of teachers in these schools CHOOSE to be where they are needed most, where they feel they can do the most good. They work ridiculous hours (including all the planning, data analysis, committee assignments, and assessment) and differentiate instruction in every conceivable way to meet the needs of thirty or more human beings (in each class) who have distinct learning styles, preferences, and abilities. And they do this in an environment that has become rife with suspicion, paranoia, and intimidation. Improvement initiatives have a short shelf life and are exchanged with the next trend. Teachers and students are expected to shift gears and directions at the drop of a hat without ever really being sure of the purpose.

This isn’t just happening in APS. I have taught in several Georgia school systems (all schools with a majority of “at-risk” students), and it is the same. Schools in the “better” attendance zones (read $$$) sustain an entirely different culture. Because their students make the scores, teachers are respected as competent professionals and lauded for “thinking outside the box.” They aren’t harassed or bullied into complying with a specific set of behaviors. Teachers in the “bad” schools (like their students) are treated as bumbling idiots who must be policed and berated into submission. They don’t have time to plan relevant, engaging lessons that students will actually be motivated to participate in because test prep doesn’t allow time for that. Also, they often lack the technological resources that would make a classroom resemble the “real” world their students will graduate into.

While this has long been the case for schools that serve mostly impoverished students (whom the voting public knows little about or has much use for), this hostile climate now encroaches upon the “better” schools who will be unable to met ridiculously high AYP targets without some serious manipulation of the data (if not outright cheating). The focus is no longer on helping each child within a classroom achieve his or her maximum potential, but on how we can get our numbers to fall within the magic range so that we can all keep our jobs and take care of our families. But the commodity we work with is people, not numbers, and the educational deficiencies they bring with them into the classroom can’t be eradicated with the introduction of a new administrator, a particular test prep program, or improvement model.

I did some research on Susan Ohanian several years ago and came across a document in which she (and others) pointed to a corporate conspiracy to undermine our public education system for monetary gain. At the time, my reaction was, “What a nut.” But everything the authors predicted is coming to pass. When you get the public to buy in to the notion that schools are failing, you open up a very lucrative market in terms of charter schools, consultants, improvement models, test prep materials, etc. Sure these services are backed by “research,” but this research is often sponsored by the vendor and flawed in terms of design, methodology, and validity.

We have to exercise a little common sense and investigate the source of the data we are being fed, examine the real causes of performance gaps, and ensure that we are comparing apples to apples. For example, we keep hearing that the U.S. fares horribly in comparison to other nations in terms of academic achievement. But do all countries test all students? Nope, just us. Do all countries operate under the ludicrous assumption that all students will enter a traditional four-year college? Nope (In Georgia, all students now follow a “College Prep” track. There is no such thing as vocational anymore). Do all countries regard teachers in the same light? Nope! What should be glaringly relevant to anyone interested in these matters is the correlation between poverty and education. In countries where people work to equalize opportunity for students regardless of where their parents live or how much money they make, the students perform better academically. Why can’t we acknowledge this here? Because there’s too much money to be made by villifying those who impact the future of our society more than any other profession. I wonder how much we spend on improvement and assessment consultants, implementing trendy improvement models, designing, evaluating, reporting, and investigating standardized tests, supplemental education services (schools at a certain needs improvement level must provide this), and lawyers to cover all our butts in the process.

• Link
• Report this comment

@Inescapable yet unspoken “Union are needed.”
Amen. I posted a comment last week stating that I didn’t believe the cheating scandal could’ve happened with union protection like I had out-of-state. This was way before hearing of the excessive abuses at Parks M.S.

@Teacher Reader
Yes, cheating happens in heavy union district, but the difference I find is the systematic inculcation of cheating in APS, often led by administrators, rather than a sole teacher. BTW, I agree that high stakes testing is a faulty barometer that education must stop relying upon.

@Mikey D
Michelle Rhee’s administration has already been discredited. Like BH, she created a climate of fear in DC schools that led to similar advances, now being investigated as systematic cheating.

• Link
• Report this comment

Ms. Baker, I think you’re right on the money (as it were). I assume that when you say “testing isn’t bad in and of itself,” you are referring to the broader category of assessing, and not simiply standardized testing (which I do believe is seriously bad). Is my assumption correct? I hope so, for if you read Ohanian’s site regularly, you’ll see just how much (corporate-sponsored) baloney comprises the entire standardized testing industry. Business Roundtable and ilk saw a huge cash cow in the 600 billion dollars of education funds, and then they created a way to milk it.

Keep remembering it, everyone: there’s no scientific basis to the standardized testing fantasy. All the independent research about what makes good and great education/teaching/classrooms leads us in a decidedly opposite direction.

• Link
• Report this comment

@ Former APS Teacher: You were strong to take a stand, and, yes, Attorney Bill Woods, would not back down. He was one of my dearest friends, but he passed away in July of 2006 from heart failure — but he had the heart of a Lion, and we named our Person of the Year Award at MACE each year “The ___ Annual William L. Woods Person of the Year Award.” I know that he gets a kick of this!

I was in the office today and walked through what we call “the William L. Woods Parkway” in the office, a sort of memorial shrine set up for “the Woodman,” with many photos, his Emory chair (where he earned his undergraduate degree), his Georgia State University Law Degree, his published book of poetry (Burger Boy — some great poems in here), and, of course, his photo of Uga IV. He loved the Georgia Bulldogs, his chicken wings, his pizza, and maybe a maybe a nip or two of Jim Beam. Ha! We miss him dearly! There will never be another Woodman. In fact, I think that I will write an article later this evening or in the wee hours of the morning about Beverly Hall and this sordid mess in Atlanta, and I will use a photo of “the Woodman” (as we all called him and he called himself…in the third person!) attached to this article because he and Norreese Haynes fought many battles for Atlanta teachers, especially ones dealing with cheating (or, rather some teachers who refused to cheat and were therefore being ostracized and abused). In fact, at lunch today (Godby Road Piccadilly, baby!), Mr. Haynes was telling me how many, many of his OIR cases in the last couple of years were dealing with this type of situation. I remember going with him and Ben Barnes last year to assist one of our members who had strong evidence about this same type of cheating at Turner Middle School. Now I see why the APS Administration appeared so nervous about this situation. When I had visited this Turner Middle School with my colleagues, Mr. Haynes, Mr. Barnes, and Mr. David Cochran, the principal asked us to be sequestered in a conference room and she then got someone on the phone from Downtown. I got on the phone, and I told this OIR person that we were following protocol and simply had come to visit teachers after school and that we had signed in, to which she replied: “Dr. Trotter, you know [that] they see you as John Wayne when you show up.” True story. But, I have many funnier and more weird situations than this when I showed up at school. Maybe I’ll go into them later. They would make for a good article! Ha!

• Link
• Report this comment

Cindy, I did mean assessment as a means to inform instruction. Yes, I’ve grown pretty fond of Ohanian, Kohn, and Ravitch in recent years. It boggles my mind to see how thoroughly we’ve all been hoodwinked by the standardized testing craze. Did you see that Finland (whose education system is ranked at the top based on a number of factors) gives very few standardized tests and rarely evaluates its teachers? I can’t even imagine…

• Link
• Report this comment

Look who,s running the schools in Atlanta ,Clayton Co need I say more

• Link
• Report this comment