Terrible consequences of CRCT cheating scandal: Teacher recriminations, lost remediation, untold damage

OK…let me post my response to the sordid mess of the Beverly Hall Administration…before I go to bed. It looks like Maureen has just finished her work for the night-and-day-night! Good job, Maureen and AJC!

For my latest, here is the title…

The Soulless, Soviet Atlanta Public Schools And Its Culture Of Lies, Cheating, Fear, Intimidation, & Retaliation; Beverly Hall’s Standards Were So Low That Snakes Had To Slide Over Them; Surely Ain’t Committed to Standards (SACS); Mark Elgart Is Missing-In-Action; MACE Had The Prophetic Voice The Entire Time; Parks Middle School Is The USA’s Poster School For Cheating; & Mayor Kasim Reed Will Be Eating Home-raised Crow Instead Of Dining At The Piedmont Driving Club!

http://www.georgiateachersspeakout.com

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I would hardly refer to the CRCT as a “reliable map” to judge student progress, even before this came to light.

The kids whose scores were altered and the ones who are routinely promoted even as they fall farther and farther behind are the ones who are damaged, in some cases beyond repair.

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Spelled “doesn’t” incorrectly in previous post and that sentence
should have ended with a question mark.

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The parents are just as instrumental in increasing test
scores as the teachers. The parents should put the
same emphasis in little Johnny or Jane doing their
homework, as they do in what their children wear to
school.

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Honeyfern, I’m with you, again. The uselessness of the standardized testing industry is not proven by cheating scandals; it’s proven by how little the test scores correspond with knowledge, potential, ability, and all the values that we say we want in education, such as critical thinking, critical questioning, curiosity, lifelong learning, and, yes, even basic factual knowledge.

Remember, SAT scores do NOT correspond with student success in college. The scores correspond with familial wealth.

Sad that the teacher interviewed sees the test scores as a reliable map. They’re not.

The teachers I know who are wonderful teachers don’t even bother looking at previous test scores. They get to know their students so well that within weeks of the first day of school, they know which kid needs what.

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he uselessness of the standardized testing industry is not proven by cheating scandals; it’s proven by how little the test scores correspond with knowledge, potential, ability, and all the values that we say we want in education

For real. I’m not that old, and parents/teachers somehow educated us without needing all these insane tests. I was looking through the APS website (which now unintentionally seems like one big article from The Onion) and it’s a monument to meaningless edu-speak babble. More fancy programs with fancy names than you can shake a stick at, which is the real focus of our current educational system: manufacturing the next fad/program so a bunch of phony “Doctors” can rake in the cash and then sit their fat fannies on a Hawaiian beach.

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Marureen or anyone else … does anyone know what/if anything will be done to address the affected students? I dont think the scope of the report was to try to flag and report on the specific students who were impacted by cheating educators, however it is somewhat concerning to me that I havent seen any specific measure(s) that may be taken to shore up the incalculable damage that has been done to some of these students. I’m sure there are some who feel that the cheating may be a wash for some of the students because they may have parents who are disconnected from their learing process. However, (and I am all about parent accountability) it should be criminal for a child to be in 6th grade but be assessed at 1st grade reading level. I think I read something like that in the Parks middle school report. Just doing dome very basic math– 6yrs of school x 180days/yr x 6hrs school/day = 6480hrs that a particular child has been in front of an educator by the time they reach 6th grade. I have a hard time understanding how short of some medically diagnosed medical condition that a child can receive that amt of education and only be assessed at 1st grade level. Perhaps, this issue is outside of the cheating scandal altogether. Either way, this is unacceptable, and we should not simply accept an argument that says that the parent should be held responsible for not being involved enough. There should be policies in place that addresses this. In other words, if at the beginning of the school year a child is assessed as being significantly behind (whatever that means) then all sorts of red flags should go off to alert the parent, and trigger some major proven remediation/intervention for the child. Perhaps there are already policies and processes in place to deal with this, and if so it must not be working. Anyway.. im a bit off topic now, but the main point is whether anyone is aware of anything that might be done specifically for the children affected by the cheating scandal. For those of you on this blog who are involved parents, if you woke up tomorrow and had to be responsbile for one of the affected children, what would you be advocating for on behalf of the child to the APS school district, the GA Dept of Ed, and/or perhaps the Governor’s office?

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@Dekalbite

Now, go find me a SAT score study that sees NO GAP in scores between those students from families with ADEQUATE INCOME then families with INADEQUATE INCOME.

Put in another way, the SAT confirms that students from families with ADEQUATE INCOME are LIKELY to be college material while students from families with INADEQUATE INCOME are LIKELY not.

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All hail the almighty test!

I agree that the CRCT is a useless measure of student achievement. But it is also an incredibly easy assessment (I have administered it for years in various grade levels), and given how low the cut scores are, the failure rates demonstrate how pathetically behind our students are.

@Maureen, teachers at my APS school (not one of the schools implicated in the cheating scandal) use the CRCT as a very rough measurement of student ability. I’m really surprised to hear that teachers actually use the CRCT to group students. That’s lazy teaching.

After reading all 3 volumes of the report, I was saddest to read about students who were removed from Special Ed placements because their CRCT scores were too high. Most schools determine which students will attend summer school based on CRCT scores as well. These were children who desperately needed intervention and remediation, and rather than receiving services, they were socially promoted to the next grade level.

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So what Doc is saying is that poor kids can’t learn…….which is a load of poo.

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This url provides more of a kind of “meta-analysis” (I use the phrase in lay terms, not scientific):
http://fairtest.org/sat-i-faulty-instrument-predicting-college-success

Also, I always want to know the funding of researchers and whether or not they are “independent.” For example, nearly all of the research I examined that purports to support standardized testing was funded by ETS.

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@APSTeacher………….why should the “affluent” parents be concerned about the failures of other schools in the district? No disrespect, but your opinion that we should be worried about what’s going at other schools as opposed to concentrating on our own school is one of the problems with education today. Focus on what you have or don’t have – don’t worry about the school down the street. It’s the same way with families and individuals. To paraphrase………don’t covet what your neighbor has. Be satisfied with what you have. And if you aren’t satisfied with it, then work to do something about it.

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For the teachers that work in these schools, we hope that they pack away targets and standards and let teachers focus on improving a child from the day they walk in your class until the time they leave. Please let teachers K-2 focus on the basics especially in these low income environments. When you get a 5 year old child who is already 2 years behind because they have not been taught by a pre-k teacher or a parent, it’s unfair not to be able to document that. And I mean a child who does not know their own name, does not know one color, does not know one letter, does not know one number, cannot hold a pencil to write, cannot hold a fork to feed themselves, cannot button a shirt, cannot focus more than 5 minutes on a lesson just to name a few problems, that needs to be documented at the beginning of the year and then the improvements at the end of the year.
Please put being a human being above whatever degree you have. Teachers teach. Teachers want to teach. There are only a few there for the glamorous life that it is. It will be interesting to see if this new regime will listen to teachers more than they have in the past…..maybe this time they will hire people with “people” skills.

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@Honeyfern beat me to it. The LAST thing anyone with any measurement expertise would call the CRCT is a “reliable map.” These tests are designed to do one thing and one thing only, and that is to attempt to determine only two low points of person ability (the term used in latent trait test development technology) on the scale of ability. Granted, the unfortunate students in many inner city schools are in fact at or below that very low point on that “scale” – - depending on the grade and subject, in norm-referenced terms, perhaps from the 5th to the 20th percentile. Although I understand the scoring company provides such things as the number of questions answered correctly, NONE of the development necessary for that to have any actual meaning whatsoever is done during test construction. For all the blood, sweat and tears given to this enterprise, teachers learn virtually nothing of insructional value from these tests.

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To add to CRCT..think of the pressure principals give us teachers to meet AYP. They ignore all issues to keep students in school. Forget supporting us for disruptive kids, etc. I’ve been pressured repeatedly to pass a student who scored 70 or above on an EOCT when it is obvious that the EOCT is not a good measure of ability. The test is very easy and students who have a 5th grade reading level pass the test. This just sends them on to another grade and no wonder I have had many seniors who cannot read well nor write well. Might as well give them the test in August and if they pass, they can sit and text all day.

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@Really.

You have very well encapsulated the issue teachers face.

If you had put a “race” or “culture” in your outstanding summary, you’d be flogged by all of us.

YET the child you speak of is more apt to be African-American, a recent immigrant from a war-thorn country or from low agricultural country, or from Appalachia.

Unless and until we can freely admit that, we will never be able to fix the problem.

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@ Bev Halls Conscience

Agreed. That child is also more likely to be taught by a less qualified teacher, and in APS’ case, using a terrible scripted reform model like Project Grad’s Success For All. We know that intelligence is malleable and that poor children can learn. But can they learn when the structures we have in place are not supporting the teachers in moving the students forward?

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@ Truth

I have no problem with testing students, as long as the test is reliable, objective and accurate. All teachers assess their students on an ongoing basis. The problem is the type of assessment that we are using currently is garbage, and the data we glean from such a test is equally useless.

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Why isn’t a students body of work during the school year enough? I think standardized tests are a waste of time and money. I feel the same about the SAT and ACT.

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@ Maureen

Perhaps it would be easier for the DOE to comment on the efficacy of the CRCT (Mcmillan McGraw Hill) if it weren’t connected to our textbook contracts (Mcmillan McGraw Hill) and teacher training programs (Mcmillan McGraw Hill).

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In the article it states: few Georgia students are held back , could this be the problem? We can all agree that no student wants to repeat a grade; embarrassment, they’ll be older than the other students, or pyschological damages…pick one. In my opinion social promotion is what got schools in trouble in the first place. Illiterate children are being passed along from grade to grade, shameful and ridiculous. Wouldn’t it be better to catch the student who isn’t up to par now instead of waiting until they get to high-school or even worse a drop-out?

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Again, why is anyone really surprised by any of this?
.
Teachers and their students are mere pawns in the education system here in Georgia. If a teacher so much as quirks their nose funny, an unscrupulous principal goes after them with a fury.

Yes, Beverly Hall is a criminal and should be prosecuted as such. However, she used the system that is in place now to her advantage. One of the real problems here is that there is no real way to do performance evaluations on school principals and that should be obvious to anyone following this story.

Teachers have very clear paths to follow in performance reviews. There are walk throughs, observations, lesson plans, and test scores. Principals, on the other hand, provide their own documentation to those higher ups who are reviewing their performance. It’s amazing how numbers can be manipulated, isn’t it?

A couple of months ago, I emailed Maureen about an incident in my school where my principal was found guilty by the PSC of two standards violations and was suspended for 30 days (which is up tomorrow, by the way.) While Maureen had a couple of questions about it, she still didn’t grasp the big situation that principals can pretty much do whatever they want with little consequences while a teacher in that situation would not only be fired but would be unable to ever find another job in teaching again.

There is something wrong with this picture. Seriously. Principals are responsible for the educational climate in a building. There are some wonderful principals out there. But when you have some who are have serious ethical issues, the climate in the entire building suffers and there is not one thing the teachers and students in the building can do about it.

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@ Kira Willis: Then you can thank GA for saving you the union dues. That’s the only thing different in the situation you describe.

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Interesting you should say that using CRCT scores is a lazy way to group children. I have used it to hit the ground running in the first month of school as the pre-assessments are analyzed. Pairing up high achieving Shameika with struggling Jacquil as they read and analyze passages as learning partners, gives both the confidence they need. It brings into focus the needs of the lower reading and math students so they can hone basic terms/skills long before we hit it in the curriculum, and doesn’t waste the time of the students who are ready for more complex work as the year begins. I even give my high achievers, during their differentiated homework time, the opportunities to create vocab games or skills activities for the others. It is not the only measure by far, and indeed it is a rough one until other more reliable ongoing assessment are documented, but it is the one we start at the gate with, and every second counts in our race with these students.

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CRCTs are never reliable enough to base your planning on! I can’t imagine a teacher doing that! Not only are the scores variable, but the test varies in difficulty from grade to grade. We look at CRCT scores only to determine the first cut of who gets Title 1 remediation. Teachers can tell you pretty quickly what level the kid is really functioning on.

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“A kid who was starting middle school that same year at Parks or Kennedy would just be graduating this year (or not) with none of the basic skills he needs to succeed in the job market or post-secondary schooling.”

Thanks for breaking this down, Maureen. This is exactly what I was saying in my posts yesterday. We’re all in this together because of this statement alone.

If you just opened a small business and want to reinvest in this community by hiring a recent grad who can grow into adulthood learning your trade, who can you hire? All of the academically-inclined kids are in college, but college is not and has never been for everybody. All of the kids left at home roaming the streets have no idea where they stand in terms of reading, math and comprehension levels because of the testing lies that cover their entire academic career. Plus, they lack the confidence to even fill out your application because the standardized tests told them for years that they knew how to complete tasks that they were never even properly exposed to. If they needed remediation, they never got it ’cause regardless as to classroom performance, the tests said they didn’t need it. So, they didn’t get it.

In theory, testing might be superfluous, and NCLB might have made testing a draconian drag, but, when accurately administered, it at least provides some benchmark information to begin formulating a teaching plan for a student. Think of how many kids lost out on IEP’s because of this testing debacle? There are kids who might have been diagnosed as LD, gotten the proper accomodations and could have overcome poverty and “bad parenting” to go on to college and beyond. We’ll never know now.

Plus, testing has become ubiquitous in our society. My kid estimates that, bewteen SAT’s, ACT’s, EOCT’s and the GGT, she took 13 standardized tests in her junior year in APS. We get tested for some jobs. We get tested to keep some jobs. Tests aren’t going anywhere, whether or not they’re accurate indicators. The problem is that our children, African-American children, have been ingrained with test anxiety because of LACK of exposure. Private school kids start studying for the SAT in middle school. APS kids don’t even see a practice version of the thing until they (hopefully) show up to Councilman Mitchell’s test prep Saturday program in 10th or 11th grade. And then people want to know where the anxiety comes from? Unfamiliarity. More standardized testing, if the kids are properly introduced and not told they “fail” if they don’t score well, could actually be a good thing if handled correctly.

What the “or not” in the above statement alludes to is that kids who started APS the year Hall first came should have been graduating starting this year. Or not. Most were probably thrown out of school and tossed off the rolls years ago for conduct and attendance reasons so the academic gaps that false testing covered up could never be revealed. This has been the APS way for GENERATIONS. It predates NCLB by decades.

Collateral damage has never been mourned nor accounted for in this system. They’ve destroyed or falsified records for decades and failed to have an adequate records retention policy in place so that students can be tracked in APS and beyond. To cover up this practice, they have been able to blame “poor parenting” for their lax record keeping. How many “bad parents” are going to go downtown and ask for a copy of their kids’ “permanent record”? They know this will not happen. Try it. I challenge all APS parents to give this a try, just for gp. Rush the Records Office and see what happens.

Go down to the Records Center at the old Howard High (not sure if it’s still located there, but it used to be) and try to track a few APS alums from K-12 (or not – their “dropout” date). If you choose 10 people at random over 10 years, systemwide, you might find adequate info on 5 of them. You might find multiple files on kids. You might find a file with one piece of photocopied paper for a 5 year school career. A 50% success rate is not a success.

Maureen, I challenge you and your readers to try it and post your results for us to read. I welcome the opportunity to be proven wrong. Find 10 readers across say, 20 years, who will give you permission to pull their records and see what’s in those files. CAT, ITBS, these are what pre-dated the CRCT, and now we’re told those were “invalid” tests; our testing time back in the day was apparently a waste of time. But try and see if you can even find those scores for scores of former students. It’s a mess. On purpose.

Again, it has been my experience that most of the teachers in the system will teach any child from any background of any ability to the best of their abilities. APS has truly had some miracle workers among their rank and file educators. The cheaters are an anomaly and, while still guilty, are victims of the culture at the time. But, it’s the administrators who have always played with the numbers and the kids’ lives. It’s this administrative culture that set the tone for Hall’s hiring in the first place and her continued delusion.

I believe her claim that she had NO clue regarding the cheating because she is delusional to the point of mental illness. You have to be crazy and not in touch with reality to let this kind of crap go on for a decade, to not understand the damage your adminstrative style causes an entire organization of people, to delete reports that could help tens of thousands of students from your computer because the evidence is damning to your own career and then to go on an Hawaiian vacation when your entire career legacy is in jeopardy. She didn’t know because she’s out to lunch and needs help. If she pleads insanity, she could very easily get off.

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@ Hello.life

Your friend got 1500 out of 1600 and you only got 1120 out of 1600. No, I don’t know who you are. It’s just that I have heard multi-millionaires remind billionaires how limiting it was to only have millions.

The SAT scores we speaking of are more between 400 out 1600 and 900 out of 1600.

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OK, normally I try to be professional when I post to this site, but ANY teacher who depends upon the CRCT as the PRIMARY means by which they determine the strengths or weaknesses of their students in preparation for their program is not doing their job. IF anything looking at the CRCT scores from one year to another with huge unexplained gains should have been the REAL clue something was going on. I personally have had students from the lower end of the Did Not Meet and I do mean the lower end to two or three points below the DNM within a year’s time. Of course administration only saw they still did not meet the standard. The entire debacle just completely blows my mind because these students were DENIED a quality education in these schools. All of these teachers and administrators who participated in ANY way in this disgraceful display should be FIRED. I hate to say that, but the stress these children were put under to maintain false academic expectations due to their bogus scores is criminal!!

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Given the huge number of kids who have been victimized by this situation, I wonder if there is any opportunity for volunteers in the schools to tutor? There are many of us who would be willing to give time to either a single student or a small group, to provide one-on-one support under the direction of a classroom teacher and with periodic reviews of some kind to analyze progress. If these kids are 3, 4 or more grade levels behind, only one-on-one help is going to make a meaningful difference, and the implications of this investigation will inevitably mean a shortage of teachers and principals going into the coming school year.

We’ve got the summer to work with. What if volunteers were sought and trained to be ready to go come August?

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Does the State Deserve any Blame?

I just moved here from Texas. In the report there are several cases where they simply said Teachers used the previous years test to give to students. Most states do not recycle test as much as Georgia does. In fact most states pay for newly created test every year. Therefore, Parents can use test from previous years to teach skills to their students. Yet the state attempted to save a buck by recyling test for up to 5 years. Sylvan Prometric and any of the other major testing firms know that they must change test regularly to maintain its integrity. During the early .com days there were plenty of people getting MCSE certified in microsoft because of weak testing. Weak testing is a State problem not a city problem.

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Why didn’t the DOE follow up on the tips the state received
for several years regarding cheating on the CRCT?

Didn’t the DOE have the obligation and authority to
review out of pattern trends and verify the testing results?

Maureen,
How about also forwarding the above questions to the DOE.

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First of all the CRCT test is a basic skills test. Students that unable to pass the CRCT test is lacking very basic skills. There are many variables to this defict. (1) Is the lack of parental involvement and support-Parents are the first teachers, (2) Low Expectations- Many people (teachers and parents included) do not expect much from inner-city/urban kids, (3) Teacherts are forced to teach the test – not to teach the students to think, (4) Discipline is out of control in these schools-the students and parents make the rules and the administrators support them, (4) These students do not know they are poor, because their mothers recieve free housing, food stamps, free healthcare, and other social income benefits. Therefore, the kids do not see the need of an adequate education, Finally, teachers are burned out. The candle is burning at both ends, because of federal, state, and local mandates. Education is a broken system and until we adopt the standards of the countries that are leading the world in education progress it will continue to churn unsuccessful results.

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I don’t know Matt or his credentials, Maureen, but I recommend that you also get people who have spent their lives studying such things: Steve Krashen, Monty Neill, Linda Darling-Hammond come to mind. A BOE member may not be the best resource, for most boards and their members are willing to take whatever administrations and media tell them without truly investigating the sources of their beliefs.

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Folks, let’s remember that Dr. Barge and his team are on our side.

Not for one minute do I envy Barge’s team’s efforts to transform the rats’ nest that is the GDOE into a mission-accomplishing organization.

In GA, we have too many people who prefer to remain supportive of, and party to, the educractic sham characterizing many of the public schools in our state. So remaining is much easier and remunerative than becoming part of the solution to our public education problems.

Let’s not subject our supporters like Dr. Barge, Dr. Buck et al. to misdirected rhetorical fire.

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Does anyone know if this meeting will be publicized, if so on what tv station?

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Remember last year when the New York Times published a bootlicking story on Beverly Hall and all the trials and tribulations poor Dr. Hall was enduring?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/08/education/08atlanta.html

My favorite quote? In describing the whitewashed ‘investigation’ report from the Blue Ribbon Panel, the New York Times wrote:

“But local news organizations seemed unable to digest the investigation findings.”

Gee, maybe that’s because people living and working in Atlanta understood that the Blue Ribbon Panel report was a pack of lies. Instead of speaking with local sources, however, the NYTimes reporter just decided to insult the intelligence of journalists and editors working here.

So when does the NYTimes publish an apology to Atlanta news organizations, specifically the AJC?

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First of all: Hall and her imps should be jailed because they have abused federal and state funds and force to repay every bonus received with their pensions withheld. All area superintendents and principals should loose their certification and pensions. Teachers should either loose certification or be suspended with the provision of receiving professional development on true teaching skills. Chandra Burks should be removed from the Board by the Govenor immediately because of her participation in manipulating reports to cover up the cheating. Had to get that out.

I am thankful that my children had ‘real’ teachers in APS who cared and taught their students. My children graduated with honors and are still receiving HOPE. Yes, even with the ridiculous changes. But during their elementary and Middle school years, you could see the climate change brought by Hall and her imps. Most of the ‘real’ teachers left APS because of the pressure from their principals and administration. They hated the testing and what it was becoming. They did not have the freedom to actually teach. I remember that a science teacher, who loved to have the kids experiment, was told that she now had to allow the kids 15 minute of test prep per class on different subjects notjust science. Which meant she lost 30 minutes of instructional time. My daughter left middle school and so did she along with 8 other teachers.

Now this mess has got to be fixed. The sad thing is how do you now go back and reteach a ninth grader who has been passed on but can’t read or do algebra. Or, tell the child who was promoted that ‘there goes your summer’ until we get you to at least the 3.5 grade level. And, how much is this going to cost me, taxpayer, now?

I do agree with the comment of a program to encourage some of the educators of high performing schools to take positions in Atanta. But, that is not enough. Because, we still have to retrain the teachers that are here not to teach the test or cheat but to now do the job that they received their degree and certification to do. Teaching is not a lazy job but is vigorous and fun. Nor can it be done without support from parents and administration. They need to be able to discipline and control their classes without retaliation from administrators or parents.

And, parents, why didn’t you see the problem. I was an involved parent and checked bookbags. I blame parents as well as the over burden, scared or lazy teachers.

Reed and Deal now is the time to pool resources and see how many good, eager people are PSC certified and truly ready to teach. Look at extending the learning day or year to get the students back on track. And take action against those who have caused the problem and no slap on the back of the hand or standing in the corner.

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Just read where a retired principal at Thomasville Heights Elementary by the name of Janice Kelsey, who was implicated in the cheating scandal is now working at College Main Street Charter School . As ridiculous as it sounds shes working as a Student Support Manager, did anyone else hear about this?

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I wonder if anyone at APS, knowing that they would be found guilty, used their time wisely and crafted the remedial program that needs to be in place NOW. The poor kids will go back to school in August to administrative chaos. Before we do anything to punish the guilty, we need to focus on how to make sure that the upcoming school year isn’t a loss as well.

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Did this post?

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OK. I see it. I need coffee. Went to bed after 5:00 AM. Ha!

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Enter your comments here

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“No one was busy actually teaching him to read because they knew they could erase his way to a high score after the fact.”

so, beverly hall’s great contribution to the city wasn’t education, but simply laziness. gee, why even make the kids go to school at all?? the principals didn’t need them around for anything, apparently.

this entire scandal is a RICO-scale criminal enterprise, designed to fatten the wallets of all who participated. they submitted phony results that generated real increases in pay….a fraud by any definition.

i do hope that the school board meeting today will result in a direct request from the board that the atlanta police and the district attorney begin charging people with felony fraud and conspiracy. beverly hall should be at the top of the list; despite her claims of cluelessness, the d.a. doesn’t have to prove she directly told people to cheat in order to show that she was part of the conspiracy that benefitted her.

beverly the emperor has no clothes. i think the school board needs to protect its tenuous hold on its accredidation (and credibility) by calling the cops on beveryly hall and her senior staff, and not chicken out and wait for someone else to do it.

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@John,
I was busy trying to change the system.

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@Maureen: I hope the DOE will respond to your questions. I would also like to know why old versions of the CRCT are not released, as is done in many other states. Why doesn’t the state send detailed results for each student, including the exact GPS strands that correspond to each question missed?

The state currently sends out a vague result sheet that tells how many questions were answered correctly out of 4 broad categories. For example, in Social Studies, a teacher might find out that a student answered 10 out of 15 questions correctly in economics. That doesn’t tell me very much. Is that personal finance or economic systems? If economic systems, was it in one particular region of the world, or common among all regions. This is information teachers NEED to be able to remediate and plan. Currently, the CRCT provides nothing for the teachers to use to support kids.

The DOE would be smart to make the CRCT much more transparent if they want to overcome this mess. The DOE also needs to make the CRCT results more useful, so that it is less of a waste of time and money than it currently is.

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No amount of money or other resources will ever help if the parents aren’t involved – both in school and in the home. It does take millions to hold you back – you are minions because you are slack.

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@ What’s Really Going On- You’re right. There is no excuse for a student to be in front of an educator for that long without gaining more knowledge than they have. There are certainly obstacles and difficulties that get in the way of educating some students, but those teachers clearly hold some responsibility as well.

@Kim- The body of work throughout the school year is even easier to cheat and lie about than the CRCT. I know of teachers who give students a 100% on every assignment for simply writing their first and last name on the paper. I had a teacher on my teaching team several years ago who copied pages out of a coloring book and had his students color for their assignment. This was 7th grade Math. (By the way, I informed my administrators about both teachers. Nothing was done to fix the problem.) Also, administrators and parents can have a very strong influence on the grades teachers give in their classes. I’m afraid that relying simply on a student’s work throughout the year would lead to more opportunities for students to fall through the cracks.

The CRCT is badly flawed, especially in APS or wherever cheating may occur. However, I do think we need some kind of objective 3rd party assessment to get a better understanding of student learning and teacher effectiveness.

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@ TRUTH—There are no union in GA. If there were, this scandal wouldn’t have gone on so long. The whistle blowers would have been protected from retaliation from their union!

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Maureen,
Can’t you do something about AJC biased reporting? They are only showing photos of African American educators and administrators, which is an intentional effort to set back race relations 40 years?

Why can’t they find some White teachers to show who can add diversity to the scandal?

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/AJC%20front%20page.jpg

At least they could come out and admit that if White weren’t so scared of blacks, they would send their kids to public schools and teachers wouldn’t need to cheat to bring up the average scores- White kids would score high enough to solve the problems.

We are hearing too many Whites who never said anything racist in their lives becoming raging hatemongers. They evidently don’t feel that they have any responsibility for the problem.

They built the racist system, and then they look at any black problems as proof that they were justified when they segregated.

What do Whites think life will be like for their children when they are the minority?

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The APS cheating scandal is a prime example of Black thinking. Grab every temporary benefit you can by whatever means necessary….and long-term consequences be damned! I’m sure that the majority of the students whose tests required erasures and changes were black. Which means that it’s mostly their own they have disadvantaged. But you better believe that when this crop of students gets out into the work force, the Blacks will be blaming that crop of student’s inability to make anything of themselves on the “White Man” and “Discrimination.” They won’t put the blame where it belongs….on the Black politics that stunted the learning opportunities of their younger generations.

Look at the differences between Fayette County and Clayton County. And Clayton County, by the way, used to be one of the most affluent counties in the state with one of the best school systems. And then *they* came…..

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Of course, test scores that do not reflect a student’s mastery (or lack thereof) will have a negative impact on that student; he or she may not get the needed attention or remediation. But as an admittedly burned-out former high school teacher, I can say that we can do little remediation and give little individual attention in today’s overcrowded classrooms. Mine were as large as forty students and included special-needs kids–autistic, visually impaired, and ADHD–as well as those who were functionally illiterate, along with a few whose reading scores tested on the college level. There were also several others who qualified as special-needs students, but they weren’t so identified or served because their parents were afraid that they’d be stigmatized or labeled.

As far as their high-stakes testing was concerned, it was not uncommon for students to fall asleep during testing (whether PSAT, end-of-course test, or high school graduation test). When I woke them and reminded them of the importance of yet another test, typical responses included, “It doesn’t matter–it’s not for a grade” and “I can always take it again,” and they would often go back to sleep. Of course, I would wake them again–several times, if necessary, and contact parents with my concerns. In my experience, albeit limited to this anecdotal evidence, some students are tested so much that they have simply ceased to care. How accurate are those students’ test scores?

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The more I dig, I find the reason there is no change in the education system. MONEY.
The GOVERNOR of Georgia made $136,123.00 last year. Most school superintendents made far more than the Governor. Some were paid $250,000-$300,000 or more. These type of salaries and we are 48th or 50th in national test scores? Who establishes these pay grades?

These people appear to have little incentive to improve education, simply keep the current system in play until they can retire. The state superintendent association is happy with no competition. These inflated salary numbers are OBSCENCE. And you wonder why there is little change. The people at the top are happy with poor test scores and no accountability.

Principals: 90k to 145k
Assistant principle 75k-100k
Kindergarten teachers 65k.

While entry level teachers make 30K , maybe 35K?

The only way that this program can exist is because it’s a government program.

With roughly 85% of budget going to salaries and approximately 10% to operations. The conclusion: THE K-12 EDUCATION SYSTEM IN GEORGIA IS A POLITICALLY ACTIVE JOBS PROGRAM, WITH LITTLE ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE PUBLIC.

open.georgia.gov

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I am so relieved that finally APS might one day become a good place to work with great principals.APS might be the most toxic workplace in the entire country. NO outsider can even begin to imagine what the APS culture is like. You only hear words…just words…you have to live it to understand just how bad it is. It is so dysfunctional in so many ways that it cannot even be articulated.

Please support the APS teachers caught up in the cheating scandal. Yes, you heard me right- please support them. You have no idea what they have been through and how they have been abused. Many have children and could not just “quit their jobs” when their principals went nuts on them. Don’t think about the cheating party shown on TV, most teachers were not partying and changing answers. Most answers were changed by the administrators.

Also, the teachers were teaching the students the whole year. The kids fail the tests because of the idiotic way that all of the school districts count the number of does not meet, meets, and exceeds the CRCT standard. What they do next, it look at the children (this is why the poster said she looks at the crct scores) and where they are weak. The student is ROBBED of an education at this point because what happens next is skill and drill on SPECIFIC areas of perceived weakness, rather than teaching a whole child. The kids are getting dumber and dumber because the teachers are told there is no time for science and social studies (where a lot of learning would take place). So what you have is kids bored with skill and drill, not being given a broad education who are tired of practicing what sound the letter “a” makes, HA! Really good teachers cannot tolerate this because they know that this is not the way to teach students. The way to teach them is to show the connections within all content areas and have meaningful activities and projects that students will learn from and remember forever.

To the parent on TV who thinks teachers don’t have faith in your child and therefore helped him cheat, NO, that’s not true. Atlanta Public Schools has NO faith your child can learn, so it makes its teachers use a corrective reading book for 90 minutes a day practicing letters and sounds. This is not real world learning!!! The system is not telling the teachers to be excellent, they are handing them a script for your son or daughter. APS is selling out its own kids. Why don’t they provide a real education for the kids who are from low SES? It’s because the nation has gotten away from real teaching and moved towards this CRAZY “data driven” model which is calling for measuring and prescribing for your children.

Oh but what about the fact that students develop as they learn so if they would just be taught something, anything, their brains would make the connections and even if they started out with gaps, these gaps would close by the end of the year. Results take time but good teaching works EVERY TIME. I have had students who could not write their name at the start of first grade but by the end of the year he was reading and writing and excelled. We have to just keep teaching, and encourage collaboration among students as well.

While a lot of the problems that APS faces are national challenges, there is the more toxic side, the side that exterminates high performing people with a moral code (unless they are in one of the handful of schools that are functioning in a semi-normal way).

John Q Public, you don’t know a fraction of what is going on. Stay tuned for more to come!

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@out of the bag. You are right, try as you might, you can no longer hide the trailer you live in or the welfare check you receive since you were fired from your job cleaning out the grease pit.

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Out of the bag…… sounds like you hit a nerve.

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@Jess and Outfthebag

No need to get your hoods and robes out the closet, we-Whites, Blacks, Asians, poor and rich will fix these problems with simple truths. No single race has a monopoly on brains and ambition.

All of us (other than you 2 morons) will establish more REASONABLE baseline expectations and challenges for all of the inner city kids. We will make sure the kids who ambitious enough and trusting enough can break their socio-economic limitations!!!

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UPDATE on COMMON CORE tests today: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/07/07/36parcc.h30.html?tkn=MMLF%2Fj%2Bt9ILRTDxq%2BT22G6jiHtb%2BGD1fSqAT&cmp=ENL-EU-NEWS1

They are getting rid of two of the four, citing cost and instructional time. Silly.

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Take a look at every state with exceptional scores (Texas, Virginia, New York, Maryland) and you will see that their state BOE provides assistance for students to practice on-line. GA does not provide any assistance for students other than what teachers provide. The testing companies make millions off of students failures. Let’s take a closer look into the money the state is paying to outsource test writers, psychometricians, data analysis etc. Please understand, I am not condoning cheating. Teachers felt intimidated to raise scores for a meager $500-1000 annual bonus when corporate bosses cheat us at the pump, banks, etc. and make more in three months that we’ll ever see in a lifetime. See BP’s latest stats. I have friends in corporate America who make bonuses rivaling my annual teaching salary and I am certainly more credentialed.

We need a reassment of education in this culture. Pay for performance will not work and this is the poster child of what will happen. When will people wake up and address the policy makers who are adamant about employing corporate tactics in public education and the millions of dollars in contracts that the major players get at the top (tutoring companies, textbooks, supplemental materials, consultants)? One consultant came to my school last semester and walked away with $10,000 for two days of mediocre professional development for teachers. That’s three and half months of my salary. Let’s get back to making education a meaningful and enjoyable process for teachers and students. Teachers are miserable in the classroom because of the pre packaged standards, assessments, benchmarks, targets etc. There is simply too much pressure. A young, beloved colleague passed away recently to a stress related illness one week after she expressed that she was stressed about her high stakes teaching position with respect to testing mandates. She felt like she was being punished after being moved to a high stakes grade level requiring testing. This is a common tactic to place teachers who you want to get rid of in testing grade levels to fail so they can be written up. The extent of the toxicity (stress related illnesses, marriages destroyed, character assassinations, alcoholism and deaths is too enormous to count). The path of destruction can’t be quantified……..Teachers speak out!!!! The cultural shift is going to be a massive undertaking at all levels Mr. Davis.

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To Open Records?: The answer is NO. You the public do not have the right to see the test, even after it is given. I have been saying this on other forums but the CRCT measures nothing. Remember 4 years ago when all the 6th and 7th grade SS test scores were so low? That was because the test did not align to the standards at all, the state invalidated the scores for the next two years. No one really cared though because it was Social Studies. That same year incorrect formulas were published in the math tests, the Dept. Of Ed said it “was no big deal”. This year many of my fellow science teachers at 8th grade complained because their students said the questions didn’t match to what they were taught. Another post kinda touched on this but what is asked is a crap shoot. I will make this point again. You have about 300 facts to memorize for the 8th grade SS CRCT on GA history. The test asks you about 30 random questions on just history. Is that an accurate measure of your knowledge of GA history? The CRCT is more of a jeopardy game than anything else. So to answer your question about the test: NO, its not a good measure of anything.

How about scoring? You do not know what questions you answered correctly. You will never know. And the results are also innacurate or not reflective. As I stated in another post: You could have a student enroll at school A, transfer to school B take the CRCT at school B and their results will count at school A. So school A is responsible for kids they DONT EVEN TEACH!
Also, you could have students come into your district from out of state to take the CRCT. There is supposed to be a 45 day rule, but for some reason it never applies. I taught a kid who moved to GA from Alaska the day BEFORE the CRCT test. He had to take the CRCT he of course failed the GA studies course (imagine that huh?) to my surprise his score counted against me. I called and wrote to the Dept of Ed to explain the situation and to no avail. They counted his scores.

Also when the test is given is important. I taught in VA and their state test is called the SOL. They give the SOL the next to last week or the last week of school. There are districts in GA that gave the CRCT with 8 weeks left in their school year! That’s 2 months of instruction left to go. Is that a fair and accurate measurement of what is taught in the classroom, or should we just chop 2 months off the school calendar and call it even.

The test is flawed, how we give the test is flawed, how we score the test is flawed, and how we measure the results are flawed. I taught in TX, CT, NJ, AZ and VA before coming here and this is the most screwed up system I have ever been in. No wonder why these teachers cheated for these kids.

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Thanks @doh for addressing the inadequate testing time horizon. Let’s take a closer look at idiot principals who insist on the 4×4 block for high schools. Many students will enter core classes for the first time at the beginning of second semester in January and expected to master a year of history, science, math and language arts content with 6-8 weeks to prep for GHSGT in March. Teachers are pressured to assess students and work miracles within a short time frame. (Mid January-Mid March). Students need time to learn, complete projects, assess and remediate. There is simply no easy way to do this for 150 students at a time within such a short window.

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catlady: There are 70 questions on the test, divided into two 35 question sections. We are told that 10 of the questions do not count, they are like field test questions and we do not know what they are. So you have 60 questions.

An 800 scale score is passing on all tests. If my memory serves me correctly 35 or 36 correct out of 60 questions gave you a 800 score and passing. I don’t know what you need for exceeding something around 47 or 48.

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@Maureen,
I may have missed it, but do you know when AYP stats will be released by the state? Thanks

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@ Ashley and Out of the Bag— No one is making excuses for any child. However, common sense indicates that in order to master material one needs sufficient practice hence SAT, GRE, LSAT, PRAXIS test practice material. The hit and run tactics to testing is unrealistic. Many adults couldn’t pass the CRCT or GHSGT content exams on a whim. These exams are rigorous and difficult. They are not all common sense guessing game exams. Many students attend school regularly, complete course work, attend tutorial, and study yet still fail the exams because the exams are often not aligned with the standards teachers are required to teach. That’s the fraud and forgery, a state that knowingly administersi exams that don’t reflect what students have been taught. This was evident on the new CRCT and GGT in Social Studies last year. The numbers of students who couldn’t graduate because of a bogus exam was unprecedented. Investigate the state BOE curriculum directors who design crappy standards and approve exams that don’t reflect them.

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Randomly test students throughout the year by an outside agency. Find out if the grades the teachers have been giving correspond to the testing results. So if a child is getting A’s in language arts and is found not to be able to read near grade level you know something is wrong. In this case do wider testing in that classroom or school. If teachers are forced to give valid grades and the whole school is failing then it’s time to make changes. Principals and teachers should be held responsible in this way. This is a far more effective method of quality control.

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In the words of Kesha….”This place about to blow”….

If teachers cheated it was because they were pressured to (bottom line).

Over the course of my 20 + years of teaching in GA, I’ve been told to change grades, live with over my teacher to student limit, take a shorter lunch (certified teachers should get a 30 min. duty free lunch in the elementary schools), give up my planning, etc. for various reasons, etc., etc. by different admin.’s.

If I complain or “threaten” to go to GAE about it…I’m then told that I’m ….
Not a team player
A complainer
Should be “ashamed” that I belong to GAE…(ha!).

What’s a teacher to do? Should I just quit and let the uppity ups keep their pensions and salaries even though they’re the ones who are asking me to disobey the law?

I’m not condoning what the cheating APS teachers did…I just know that they were pressured to do it.

Can’t wait for RTTT….should be great and juicy news reporting for the AJC (i.e…more cheating scandals.).

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“Johnny Can’t Read,” has another TWIST, “Johnny, Don’t Worry About Reading, I’ll Read It, Solve It, and Bubble It For You”
Atlanta Public Schools (APS) has proven that the educational system is still broken. Many school systems have implemented learning initiatives to help struggling disadvantaged students. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 was signed as a United States federal law on January 8, 2002. This federal law, the No Child Left Behind initiated a number of federal programs that aim to improve the performance of American public schools by increasing the standards of accountability for states and school districts. The law established new standards of accountability for individual students, schools, and school systems. The stated purpose of this legislation was to help the struggling students within the most disadvantaged schools reach the same challenging standards expected of all children. Since 2000 to 2009, APS has been known across the country for their high level of achieving among disadvantaged students. Some of the schools have implemented the Success For All program to help students achieve in Reading and mathematics. As one principal stated, “Johnny better read before the Criterion-Referenced Competency Tests (CRCT). Johnny Can’t Read became a popular ideological statement that Johnny will be given every opportunity to become a scholar reader at some point. However, APS turned the phrase to “Johnny, Don’t Worry About Reading, I’ll Read It, Solve It, and Bubble It for You.” The scandal has upset the great city of Atlanta. Although, while it is possible, it is highly probable that educators should have known something was suspicious with 90 to 100 percent of students from low social economic background and uninvolved parents would not have shown such a substantial increased in test scores. What happened to increasingly yearly gains? School systems have become so focused on meeting the target for Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) until the focus is no longer on how much the student learned but on meeting (AYP) and waving a Blue Ribbon for the public. We need administrators to take a stand to the academic environment that enters into their buildings. All students will not achieve at the same time but will progress and make gains over a period of time. The No Child Left Behind Act never meant for educators to cheat but to find ways to help students to become a proficient citizen. The students in APS have been robbed of their intellectual ability to learn, integrity of being a student in APS, and the deficiency of not knowing strengths and weaknesses.
Teachers are faced with so many challenges of teaching students. They have the responsibility of meeting standards, maintaining discipline, conferencing over 30-120 parents, maintaining adequate record, extra duties, tutorial, lesson plans, weekly 2 hour meetings, daily meetings, and intimidating work place. No, this is not an excuse for cheating but to indicate perhaps the pressures on a teacher. As we all know that discipline is more difficult now. Many students come to school undisciplined, therefore they can’t learn. Discipline is a major problem among students in which schools do not address with conviction. The learning environment has a wide-range of discipline problems which is a barrier for learning. In order to make changes to close the achievement gap among students, the school must implement teaching and learning with a strong foundation to help students become self-proficient academically and self-disciplined. If we are for the total child, then don’t cheat, reevaluate the problem. As an educator, it is embarrassing to know that a system slave-trade our children. The students came on the bus and APS threw them under the BUS.

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When is the APS Board, on behalf of Atlanta taxpayers, going to demand Beverly Hall return the over one-half million dollars she recieved in bonuses based on the bogus CRCT test scores?

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@Ole Guy…I think any admin. who asks, tells, demands, requires, pressures, etc. a teacher to do something that is illegal should be the one who is ashamed. Also, they should be ashamed when they don’t follow rules, laws, etc. just to appease parents.

You are right though…we need some sort of system (union?) where a teacher can go and speak up when asked to break a law. There is absolutely nothing in GA set in place to protect teachers that speak out.

The PSC and county or city administration usually sides with the school admin.’s ( I’ve seen this happen to other teachers), so going to them is not really a recourse/option.

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@ABCD1234 – don’t be racist. I don’t think it’s the black people’s fault that they were bred as slaves for a couple hundred years for brawn and not for brains. Surely you don’t believe that white people bought slaves that were intelligent, or that the intelligent people actually got to reproduce or use their heads instead of their hands? So yes, some may be behind more privileged races who, for generations, got to read books instead of working in fields picking cotton.

Racism will not help the education situation. Measures need to be taken to place like students in the same classrooms so that they can all learn at a pace that they are comfortable with. And I’m a white person saying this.

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