New AJC investigation casts doubts on integrity of testing nationwide. Is there a whole lot of cheating going on?
In the cheating hall of fame, Atlanta may stand out, but it may not stand alone.
Nearly 200 school districts across the country have such suspicious test score patterns that the odds of them occurring by chance are worse than 1 in 1,000. And in 33 of those districts, the odds are worse than one in a million.
In a powerhouse investigation in Sunday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the investigative reporting team that uncovered test disparities in Atlanta Public Schools reveals the findings of a seven-month analysis of 1.6 million records from 70,000 public schools nationwide.
The AJC used freedom of information laws to collect test scores from 49 states — 14,743 districts and 70,000 tests – to look for the sort of patterns that signaled cheating.
Along with our own database reporters, the AJC consulted outside experts to assess our analysis. (Please pick up a Sunday AJC as it will outline all the detailed work that went into this investigation and all the care to check and recheck the findings.)
To be clear, the new AJC national analysis doesn’t establish that cheating occurred. But it points to the same troubling pattern later verified in Atlanta schools to be test tampering after a probe by an outraged Gov. Sonny Perdue.
The student performance rises and dips in many Atlanta schools turned out to be a seismograph of shame.
The findings also point to a universal truth: Hold people accountable to standards, benchmarks or quotas that they feel are unrelenting, unrealistic and unfair and some will cheat.
“We are putting way too much pressure on people to raise scores at a very large clip without holding them accountable for how they are doing it,” Daniel Koretz, a Harvard Graduate School of Education testing expert, told the AJC.
The AJC’s findings also raise questions about whether anyone knows yet how to succeed in schools with high concentrations of poor students; most of the districts with troubling test score swings were rural and urban districts steeped in poverty.
Some immediate questions come to mind as you read the in-depth investigation by AJC staffers Alan Judd, Heather Vogell, John Perry, M.B. Pell and Dayton Daily News database specialist Ken McCall.
Are we expecting too much of teachers instructing the toughest students?
By basing school evaluations on student test scores, are we using too narrow a lens to see what is truly happening in our schools, perhaps overlooking positive developments that are not reflected in a single score?
Are we escalating the pressure on educators by linking their reviews and salaries to student scores, creating even greater motivation to doctor test results?
As the story states:
“These findings are concerning,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in an emailed statement after being briefed on the AJC’s analysis. He added: “states, districts, schools and testing companies should have sensible safeguards in place to ensure tests accurately reflect student learning.”
In nine districts , scores careened so unpredictably that the odds of such dramatic shifts occurring without an intervention such as tampering were worse than 1 in a billion .
In Houston, for instance, test results for entire grades of students jumped two, three or more times the amount expected in one year, the analysis shows. When children moved to a new grade the next year, their scores plummeted — a finding that suggests the gains were not due to learning. {See response from Houston school chief here.}
Overall, 196 of the nation’s 3,125 largest school districts had enough suspect tests that the odds of the results occurring by chance alone were worse than 1 in 1,000. For 33 of those districts, the odds were worse than one in a million .
A few of the districts already face accusations of cheating. But in most, no one has challenged the scores in a broad, public way. The analysis shows that in 2010 alone, the grade-wide reading scores of 24,618 children nationwide — enough to populate a midsized school district — swung so improbably that the odds of it happening by chance were less than 1 in 10,000.
In Georgia, it fell to the governor’s investigators to prove cheating occurred. Led by two former top prosecutors, the Perdue investigation entailed 2,100 interviews and 800,000 documents and led to more than 80 confessions of cheating. State investigators accused a total of 38 principals with participating in test-tampering. Cheating was confirmed in 44 of 56 schools examined.
The findings toppled the much-heralded regime of Dr. Beverly Hall, and led to extensive upheaval in the leadership of the Atlanta schools.
The findings also sparked a national debate over whether schools teaching the least advantaged and most challenging students are being held to unattainable standards and whether test scores are a fair way to judge success.
The new AJC investigation is bound to reignite that debate.
Among the discoveries by the AJC team:
•Improbable scores were twice as likely to appear in charter schools as regular schools. Charters, which receive public money, can face intense pressure as supposed laboratories of innovation that, in theory, live or die by their academic performance.
•The newspaper found changes in test scores that were statistically improbable in nearly 20 cities, with swings in scores that were virtually impossible in about a half dozen. Human intervention is the most likely explanation In some cities, we found so many dramatic shifts in scores that the odds of that happening by chance are one in 10 billion.
•In some cities, the results for entire grades of students jumped two, three or more times the amount expected in one year. The next year, when children moved to a new grade, their scores plummeted.
•Though high-poverty city schools were more likely to have suspicious tests, improbable scores also showed up in an exclusive public school for the gifted on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And they appeared in a rural district roughly 70 miles south of Chicago with one school, dirt roads and a women’s prison.
•The findings call into question the approach that dominated federal education policy over the past decade: Set a continuously rising bar and leave schools and districts essentially alone to figure out how to reach it.
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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303 comments Add your comment
ScienceTeacher671
March 25th, 2012
9:51 am
The new tax package the General Assembly is passing reduces taxes on many things. How’s this going to work for education funding?
Old timer
March 25th, 2012
9:51 am
Fourth hours…..
Reality
March 25th, 2012
9:52 am
@Mary Elizabeth: “including funding it properly.”
We spend more per capita than any other nation in the world. Our children rank last in the world among Industrialized Nations, and well below many Third World Nations in education. Funding the system IS NOT the problem.
If the system was is great, why is it that very few local politicians and NO Federal Level politicians send thier children to Government Schools?
Old timer
March 25th, 2012
9:52 am
Ok try again..no forty hour weeks…..the spell correction got me..
Old timer
March 25th, 2012
9:54 am
Amen…..reality
ScienceTeacher671
March 25th, 2012
9:56 am
Reality, one big reason we spend more per capita is that we believe in “educating” everybody, and other nations don’t. We have students at our high school who are on the intellectual level of infants, but we’re “educating” them until they are 22 years old.
James Jordan
March 25th, 2012
9:56 am
Not trying to point fingers but let us be honest here, our public education system, (a contradiction in terms) started going to hell in a hand basket when Liberal controlled unions got a choke hold on it – of course the break-down of the two parent family didn’t help much either!
Mister Pants
March 25th, 2012
10:00 am
Mom, don’t bang on the teachers. Why don’t you imagine yourself teaching in a poor district where kids don’t care and parents don’t even show up for parent teacher conferences.
Poor areas will remain poor and the schools will simply mirror the community until parents get involved and demand success from their children (a very tall order.)
The ones who do succeed will escape, starting their new lives in the suburbs, having kids, and sending them to schools where parents actually care.
You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink.
Erica Long
March 25th, 2012
10:02 am
@Sneak Peek,
There are many public charter schools that work. In Atlanta, we have Drew, Wesley and Kindezi all performing very well for our children. They are locally chartered public schools. In the case of Unversity Charter, a schools that was not performing well, APS did the right thing and shut them down. I’m sure you don’t intend to insult all parents by suggesting that they are only following the latest trend toward public charters. There are plenty of parents in neighborhoods across this city, who have spent years investigating their neighborhood public schools and the public charters in order to find the setting that works for their family.
You speak of an individual approach as if it’s completely a bad thing. While we should all be concerned about public education as a tool for the greater good, mothers and fathers have a Biblical duty to their own offspring. Further, there are parents at public charter schools who volunteer and invest tirelessly in the neighborhood school as well as the public charter.
Elected officials and educators have a duty to defend and support public education for the good of the community. Individual parents have an entirely different set of responsibilities.
Reality
March 25th, 2012
10:02 am
@ScienceTeacher671 even when you factor out those who qualify as “Special Education” and “Special Needs,” we still out spend every other nation by 15%. This number comes from a US Department of Education study. So yes, no matter who you factor in or out, we still out spend.
Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
10:06 am
Reality, 9:23 am
“A well educated populace is a dangerous animal for any government.”
================================================
One of the primary architects of our nation, Thomas Jefferson, believed that a well educated populace is a dangerous animal for the upper class elites who would attempt to control the lives of the ignorant masses, without the masses realizing it, unless the masses were well educated to see through the self-serving machinations of the upper classes who woul wish to control them. That is why Jefferson supported public education paid for by public taxes, not corporations. He wanted the masses to be aware of how they could be used by those in power, above them, and he wanted them to be able to handle their own self-government. He wanted power in the hands of the masses. That is why Jefferson supported not only the American Revolution, but the French Revolution.
I would argue that, today, if the new wealthy elite of America, i.e. the corporate world, controls (through ALEC’s statewide agenda) the education of the young and, then, afterwards “inherits” those young to become their unquestioning workforce who will help to gather profits for the top eschelons of corporations, that that is what is dangerous to individuals and to society-at-large.
Public education, as Jefferson well knew, is the antidote to keep power in the hands of the masses for their own self-government instead of in the hands of the top elite only, who will use the masses for the accruing of their own wealth and power, just as the wealthy elite of aristocratic rule tried to do in Jefferson’s era. Jefferson’s mind was far-reaching and that is why he was the primary architect, along with his friend Madison, of our nation’s tenets. Jefferson well knew that elite power, in whatever form, whether within the aristocratic rule of his day or within the corporate rule of our day, would try to take power from the masses for their own self-serving ends. Public education, he felt, must be secured so that the people would be aware of what they were and would be about, and not accept this universal human tendency to hierarchial rule. He wanted our nation to be one of self-government which embraces an egalitarian concept of human beings. So do I.
Reality
March 25th, 2012
10:09 am
@ScienceTeacher671 it was a study DOE and the Teacher’s Union brought to congress to try to con for more money.
Erica Long
March 25th, 2012
10:10 am
@Sneak Peek,
How many children should be sacrificed while we wait on reform? How much longer can we afford to do the same thing over and over with the same dangerous results? For ten years, Beverly Hall was allowed to run a racket in our schools while tens of thousands of kids were disenfranchised.
You say that public charter schools are not held to standards, but that is entirely false. Public school children who attend public charter schools must pass the same standardized tests as children at their neighborhood public schools. In some instances, those children are meeting and exceeding standards.
I find it disheartening that so many people refuse to acknowledge that there are highly effective public charter schools that are performing for our children.
Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
10:12 am
Reality, 9:52
My eye was on the future, not simply on the present only, when I said that public education must be funded properly. As “school choice” avenues such as charter schools, vouchers for private schools, homeschooling paid for on the taxpayers’ dime, and online learning are pursued in Georgia, more and more of the state education’s budget will obviously be directed toward these separate avenues of, essentially, private education rather than traditional public education. Billions of dollars have already been cut from Georgia’s public educational budget within the last decade.
Reality
March 25th, 2012
10:20 am
@Mary Elizabeth, while you are correct on Jefferson, you are misinterpretting his views in the light of the nation as it stands today. The Government Education System has progressively gotten worse since the introduction of “The Great Society” model that was implemented by the government. This model’s foundation can be found in Karl Marx’s writtings. As is evident by your anti-corporate comments, you should be quite familiar with Marx’s writtings.
Let’s face it, this country is no more self-governed that China. When was the last time this government did something other than what the 536 Members of the Political Elite wanted?
bootney farnsworth
March 25th, 2012
10:24 am
@ Ron F.
true, a hell of a lot of kids are profoundly disserved by both their school and their alleged support system at home. see APS as people’s
exhibit one.
but IMO (in this case, observations) the bigger issue is a large amount of these kids just don’t care to be in school. once we’re allowed to put out and keep out the ones who are just taking up space, a fair amount of this will – hopefully- go away.
and we can focus even harder on turning around the ones who want to learn but have had virtually no support to do so.
everybody on earth cheats
March 25th, 2012
10:25 am
politicians cheat,policemancheat,lawyers cheat,mechanics cheat, ministers cheat,etc., so whats the big deal…theres no such thing as an honest person
bootney farnsworth
March 25th, 2012
10:27 am
simple fact is, as soon as the government became involved, we were sunk.
private schools on the whole do a much better job than we do because they are not bound by the stupid rules we are, nor are they beholden to the state for funding.
ScienceTeacher671
March 25th, 2012
10:28 am
Reality, in Georgia, we’re also trying to “prepare everyone for college,” which is another thing other nations don’t do.
In most other nations, those with no academic aptitude or motivation are separated out somewhere around age 12-14, and sent to either a job or to vocational training.
We keep them in school, and pretend that even the 9th graders who are reading at a 2nd or 3rd grade level will somehow miraculously become “college material” in 4 years, if their teachers work hard enough.
ScienceTeacher671
March 25th, 2012
10:30 am
And how do we have 9th graders who are reading at a 2nd or 3rd grade level? A few of them are dyslexic, some of them are intellectually challenged, and some of them could have learned if they hadn’t been “committee promoted” year after year, and if the CRCT didn’t show that they were almost “meeting expectations” even though they were actually several years below grade level.
bootney farnsworth
March 25th, 2012
10:34 am
let’s be brutally honest about what’s going on here:
the system at the state level has two primary interests. the apperance of graduating a large number of students and fielding winning football (occasionally basketball) teams.
the system at the federal level has two primary interests. making sure on paper inner city/urban/minority kids are graduating in large numbers and making sure the populace is not educated enough to actually see what the government is up to.
fat, dumb, and beholden.
bootney farnsworth
March 25th, 2012
10:36 am
@ Science,
this is why its so damned hard to find a good, reliable, skilled tradesman anymore.
not everybody is cut out for college. and there is nothing wrong
with this.
I love teaching. I hate what it is becoming...
March 25th, 2012
10:41 am
@Erica Long “I find it disheartening that so many people refuse to acknowledge that there are highly effective public charter schools that are performing for our children.”
I acknowledge that there are highly effective public charter schools that are performing for our children. I also acknowledge that there are highly effective PUBLIC non-charter schools performing for our children. Don’t hear much about them either, do you?
What do they BOTH have in common?
- Involved, concerned parents who value education and respect teachers.
- Strong administration
-Dedicated teachers
-Community support
Why not look to the public schools that are succeeding to see what works rather than deciding the whole system is broken?
Maybe because there isn’t enough corporate profit in that.
Beverly Fraud
March 25th, 2012
10:42 am
From Mary Elizabeth:
Now, I will repeat your last line: “School choice is already alive and well in our society-let’s get behind our traditional school model and work on making it better.” And I would add to that, “including funding it properly.”
Mary Elizabeth, is it not fair to those who “fund” it to demand that it be SPENT properly? And have systems like DeKalb and APS earned ANY trust to demand more money, given what they have done with the (literally) HUNDREDS of MILLIONS they have been given?
Dr. John Trotter
March 25th, 2012
10:44 am
@ Charter Fodder: This situation in Newton County doesn’t surprise me one bit. School boards tend to think that they are above law like the Open Meetings Law. Look at the Cobb County Board of Education. A couple of years ago, this school board admitted to having 57 illegal school board meetings. The school board attorneys come from Brock and Clay. Ha!
@ Me: MACE must be doing something right. Teachers keep joining each week. MACE’s message resonates with teachers. Perhaps you can get your union to adopt MACE’s mantra: You cannot have good learning conditions until you first have good teaching conditions. Ha! Don’t let jealousy get the best of you.
http://www.teachersadvocate.com
Anonmom
March 25th, 2012
10:47 am
I’m going to try to sum up a lot of prior comments — John Taylor Gatto documents much of this discussion in “Weapons of Mass Instructions” — light bulbs started going off for me while reading it — he speaks of NYC schools but in many cases it could have been DCSS. (1) Use the IOWA and attach it to the individual child — i.e. it follows the child — and measure for improvement from year to year and use nothing else and allow the teacher the freedom to teach any way they want to teach. If the child improves, the teacher is successful; if the child fails to improve, the teacher is not successful — this would allow for situations where the child is way below or above grade level to begin with and would eliminate any need to cheat. You can eliminate any children from the assessment who are not in the classroom for more than 9 months. (2) Mandate that at least 2/3 of the district’s budget be required to be spent, actually, in the classroom and prohibit expenditures of more than 1/3 of the budget on administration. This is absolutely critical. We have a current situation where the teachers have “sardine stuffed” classes with substantial administrative bloat. They then get all the blame when no “progress” is made and they can’t give zeros much less use other “harsher” forms of discipline… we need to get class sizes back down to manageable. (3) There needs to be on-line check and p-card registers so the fraud can be minimized and we (the public who is paying the bills with taxes — federal, state and local taxes) can see how these dollars are being used and compare them to the budgets being passed by the “systems” — so there can be some accountability. There are no forensic audits. The journalists seem to be afraid to dig too deeply (kudos to the AJC for this report). The legal system is moving much too slowly in situations such as the Crawford Lewis indictment and Herry Mitchell case. SACS is receiving money to accredit, consult and do other things that appear to have a conflict of interests — at least we can have public accounting of the funds. If you look at the historical record — we are spending significantly more money now than ever before and the results get poorer and poorer — there seems to be a reverse correlation — perhaps there is a correlation in the rise of administrative costs? That might be a good AJC story? I think it has much to do with too much money available for people who don’t have the real interests of actually educating the children — this is actually documented by Gatto based on the founding of our system of education on the Prussian system in the late 1800s but I concluded this after a decade of carefully watching and unraveling DCSS’s policies. That’s why I think you should read the book and look at his footnotes.
Dr. John Trotter
March 25th, 2012
10:49 am
That would be http://www.theteachersadvocate.com. I left out the “the” in the address. Ha! Sorry.
bootney farnsworth
March 25th, 2012
10:50 am
lets break this down even further:
where are most of the worst of the cheating disasters occuring? urban areas. who makes up the vast majority of these students? poor & black people.
and because we’ve made a cultural decision to cut the legs out from under this segment of our population, we’ve not given them a decent overall education in generations.
but because its political and career suicide to point this out, we continue to sell this group of citizens down the intellecual and cultural river.
lets be even more brutally honest: we educate them just enough to shut them up, not to help them succeed. the ones who can beat the system are gravy.
so when ignorace begats worse ignorace, and this population begins to fall below the pitiful levels we’ve set for them, we gotta do what politicans are best at.
create a quick, pretty, meaningless fix. one that doesn’t actually do a damned thing, but makes people feel good about themselves.
enter Beverly Hall & co. the rest, sadly, is history
Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
10:51 am
@DeKalbite@Mary Elizabeth, 10:36
“Public taxes are analogous to the revenue stream in business which is not the same as profit. Employee salaries and building and transportation maintenance, etc. are the expenses. The profit – also called Return on Investment (ROI) – is student achievement.”
=================================================
Again, I agree with most of your post. I think you perceive that we are in opposition in our thinking in some way. I disagree. I simply believe that public schools must be improved instead of being dismantled to serve corporate interests, and that is why I write so often of the importance of assessing individual instructional levels of students, as well as the importance of being aware of each student’s potential, as indicated on IQ tests, so that instructional growth can be maximized, realistically, within public education. However, when we try to overreach expectations of each child’s achievement in terms of insisting on unrealistic expectations that overreach each childl’s ability level, or that overreach his skill development level, at point in time, then that is a business model that is counterproductive in education. The unnecessary and unproductive tension that that business model produces by placing students and teachers on unrealistic frustration levels is, also, counter productive to maximiing academic growth.
For more information about profit motives in turning traditional public schools to public charter schools and other school choice arenas, read the following:
—————————————————–
“The American Dream is promised to all those who strive to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. If you want your child to get ahead, make sure that he or she is one of the lucky few to get a seat in a charter school. For the rich, charters have added benefits; they are being used to dismantle the power of teachers’ unions, and they are excellent tools for channeling tax money into the pockets of enterprising individuals. This is true even when the charter schools are run by nonprofit companies. And no matter what the rhetoric dished out for public consumption, siphoning public money into private hands is the goal, as the statement by the Montgomery Securities group quoted above shows.
According to U.S. Census data, well over $800 billion is spent on education, public and private, at all levels in the United States each year.20 This makes it roughly the same size as the U.S. trade deficit with China. The private sector wants to get its hands on this money. Along with politicians, it is determined to break the power of the teachers’ unions and to attack one of the last bastions of decently paid American workers. The budget problems resulting from the current recession will provide them cover in doing this.
And then there is corruption. Celerity, a nonprofit charter school that made an attempt to co-locate on the campus of Wadsworth Elementary in Los Angeles, contracts out all its services to a for-profit firm, Nova, run by the same owner. This backdoor model—of a nonprofit funneling dollars to a separate, for-profit entity—is common. Kent Fischer explained it in the St. Petersburg Times:
The profit motive drives business…. More and more, it’s driving Florida school reform. The vehicle: charter schools. This was not the plan. These schools were to be “incubators of innovation,” free of the rules that govern traditional districts. Local school boards would decide who gets the charters, which spell out how a school will operate and what it will teach. To keep this deal, lawmakers specified that only nonprofit groups would get charters. But six years later, profit has become pivotal…. For-profit corporations create nonprofit foundations to obtain the charters, and then hire themselves to run the schools.
Whether it’s technically legal, ‘contracting out’ or direct corruption and profiteering, abounds. In their article “The Corporate Surge Against Public Schools,” Steven Miller and Jack Gerson cite many cases of such corruption.”
——————————————————————-
These paragraphs, above, are excerpted from the link below. I urge all readers of this blog to read this long article in full. The details of information are extensive and the writer’s (a Los Angeles teacher) style is riveting. You will not be bored, even though the article is long, and your eyes will be fully opened.
http://www.isreview.org/issues/62/feat-charterschools.shtml
—————————————————————————–
Post Script: I am not against all public charter schools; I simply do not want to see them, or other areas of school choice, used as a vehicle to dismantle traditional public schools. They should be working in harmony with traditional public schools to improve the education of students. But traditional public education must remain the mainstay, improved.
Anonmom
March 25th, 2012
10:53 am
One more thought — just think about this — we have 3 big “systems” in America that are currently on the “brink” of failing or toppling over: social security, education and health care. All 3 systems, which are “part and parcel” of things that all Americans value and consider to be important parts of who we are as a country were instituted at a time in our history when employment was done “cradle to grave” by the “big guys”: the US Government, IBM, US Steel, etc. People lived in small towns surrounding a square or the very large cities and didn’t travel and “global competition” wasn’t part of the equation. That was the paradigm. People began with the “company” (including government, by which I mean to include school systems themselves as employers) after graduation and continued until retirement or death, which was at a much younger age. As “we” (in the news and around friendship groups and other media) discuss how to “fix” these broken “systems” and as Congress makes its proposals and the President reacts and proposes his “fixes” — no one is acknowledging the paradigm we began with and the paradigm we have shifted to — which is people rarely began and end their careers with the same “large” employer (private or public) — we are competing globally whether we want to or not and we are living significantly longer. In order to “fix” each of these 3 broken systems, we have to begin the discussions by acknowledging this paradigm shift. Just give the history of their creation a thought –
Reality
March 25th, 2012
10:56 am
@ScienceTeacher671, I agree. By far we are forcing kids into something they have no desire to persue. While states like Nebraska, North and Soth Dakota only offer college prep courses and the SAT only to those who wish to persue that avenue, Georgia continues to force the square peg into the round hole. In the words of Foerst Gump, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
The current government education system is too focused on the self esteem of the child. We need to stop teaching at the dumbest denominator and get back to teaching at higher levels. Let’s model the system into a Darwinism Model, keep up or be eaten.
bootney farnsworth
March 25th, 2012
10:57 am
I hear a lot of discussion of why the black population is so disproportionally large in US prisons. and I would be amazed if I
weren’t so institutionally “cynicized”
we don’t give these kids a decent education, we don’t hold them accountable for actions/consequences at an early age, and give them no
real opportunity for a decent future.
and a disproportionate number turn to crime.
no kidding.
and yet people are suprised, outraged, ect.
Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
10:59 am
Beverly Fraud, 10:42
“Mary Elizabeth, is it not fair to those who ‘fund it to demand that it be SPENT properly?”
========================================
Yes, I agree, all public schools should be held accountable that their public funds are spent properly, including the systems of DeKalb and APS. But we must not dismantle those public systems, and others. We must, instead, as taxpayers and citizens, insist upon educational improvements which are realistic and nonthreatening, as well as insist upon their giving accountability to the public for their the use of public funds.
mountain man
March 25th, 2012
10:59 am
“And how do we have 9th graders who are reading at a 2nd or 3rd grade level?”
You are so right, ScienceTeacher671 – it is because we keep “socially promoting” children above their grade level. How do you expect the next year’s teacher to “catch them up” while also teaching the on-grade students?
I keep proposing a winning solution, but no one will take it seriously: have teachers work a full year schedule and pay them professional wages accordingly (see, I have already lost most of you because taxes are going up). Have students who are not on grade level be placed in an intensive “summer school” with low student-teacher ratios for intensive learning. At the end of the summer, they are re-tested and if they are not on grade level, they are held back, no ifs, ands, or buts. Special classes are created for thoe fourteen-year old first graders. Yes, they will drop out at sixteen and will become prison fodder, but that is not the fault of the school. The other part of the equation is that discipline has to be rigorously maintained at all times, with the teacher given absolute authority to remove troublemakers from the classroom – the administrators then have to find a place for them – and not in another teacher’s classroom. Also, truancy must be enforced, sending parents of habitually truant children to jail. Perhaps for every unexcused absense, a parent must attend school the next day with the child.
Most of us know the problems that keep kids from learning, we just are hesitant to apply solutions or we have no control over the circumstances. (Try teaching a kid who believes that learning is “acting too white”)
bootney farnsworth
March 25th, 2012
10:59 am
why are we forcing kids onto unrealistic college paths?
simple.
PR and federal dollars.
its not like we give a damn about the kids in question.
mountain man
March 25th, 2012
11:02 am
“we don’t give these kids a decent education”
Correction, Bootney, the kids don’t take advantage of the decent education we offer them. Parents don’t make their kids take advantage of the education we offer.
mountain man
March 25th, 2012
11:07 am
Blacks overwhelmingly drop out of school and become prison fodder primarily because their culture does not value education and their parents either don’t care or are so overwhelmed that they cannot supply support. Not because of some “inherent inability”. There are numerous cases every year of successful blacks breaking the grip of their poverty and emerging into a better world. There are also a lot of cases of whites who follow the same route as a lot of blacks, with drug-addicted parents and poverty and drop out at sixteen. It is not a race thing, it is a poverty thing.
everybody on earth cheats
March 25th, 2012
11:07 am
mountain man
you make good points except the part where parents of kids who are truant be sent to jail! that just makes their lives more difficult. whose going to watch the kids while the parent{s} are in jail? what if the parent loses his/her job while in jail? then whose going to pay the rent,bills if parent is out of work?
Wondering
March 25th, 2012
11:08 am
I had a dream last night after reading the AJC’s excellent report on the educational system in the United States.
The President went on the airways declaring a state of emergency due to the lack of educators’ effectiveness in teaching the students (in my dreams people are translucent, so I cannot discern race, could be current or future president). Therefore, all those involved with students would be fired. This would include everyone in the school house, as well as outside of the school house from; school boards, superintendents, principals, psychologist, counselors, social workers, teachers, librarians, Para-professional, bus drivers, food service workers and anyone else of such classifications.
These incompetent people would then be replaced by educational experts. Including in that classification would be; senators, congressman, lobbyist, parents, reporters, bloggers, and any other citizen that has offered public expression of solutions to affect positive change in the current failing educational system.
This is a state of emergency; all selected citizens must comply with this order. The only exceptions would be the president, the vice- president, the Supreme Court and FEMA. FEMA would be used to ensure compliance. All schools would close at the end of May. All new “citizen educators” would come on board after Labor Day. A commuter program would randomly select each citizen’s assignment. Due to this emergency all selected would be paid a flat rate of 50,000 dollars a year. It is realized that this will be a sacrifice for most, but “war” calls for sacrifice. Your nation and the children of America need you.
Unfortunately, this was the end of my dream. I woke up smiling and relieved that the expertise of the public will straightened out the dismal mess caused by incompetent teachers and educators. Sweet dreams.
everybody on earth cheats
March 25th, 2012
11:10 am
mountain man11:07
as a black i find youre statement 100% correct…blacks dont take education as seriously as we should.
Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
11:11 am
Reality, 10:20
“Mary Elizabeth, while you are correct on Jefferson, you are misinterpretting his views in the light of the nation as it stands today.”
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I disagree with you on that. In fact, I believe that Thomas Jefferson would be quite proud for me for attempting, in spite of great financial odds against my voice and others like mine being heard, to sustain the America, that he envisioned, into the future.
Lincoln was, also, captured by Jefferson’s vision for American and Lincoln so believed in Jefferson’s vision for our nation, that he was willing to give his life that our nation would continue to be “of, by, and for” the people – as a model to the world, into perpetuity, that self-government can work.
Jedi929
March 25th, 2012
11:14 am
Educaction is about resources and effective implementation of those resources. Taxed based education funding will always rig the game on the front end for the well to do neighborhoods.There will always be those few exceptions in the depressed rural and urban areas who succeed in spite of this or that unfavorable circumstance, but what about the “average” kids, sentenced to an inferior education based on where they live?
Reality
March 25th, 2012
11:14 am
The system was working decently prior to the creation of Teacher’s Unions and the Federal Department of Education. The original model was that the States new what was best for the children within its borders. The local BOE’S made recommendations to the State, and the State DOE determined the best options.
Since the Federal Government took over, local BOEs serve no purpose but to hear the complaints of parents. The State DOE recieves the directives from the Federal level and puts it in action across the State. The Federal DOE could care less what you have to say as a parent. They only implement what they view to be in the best interest of keeping the populace at a level that is easy to control.
Jedi929
March 25th, 2012
11:15 am
Correction: “Education”. Looks like I need more schooling.
sneak peek into education
March 25th, 2012
11:26 am
@Erica-you ignore the fact that Charter Schools, for the most part, do not provide better learning opportunities for students-this is proven time and time again in the number of studies that show they do not perform better than their neighborhood traditional school. Of course, there are a few exceptions but these are called outliers and are never deemed to be the norm. Also, you ignore the fact about the profiteering that will happen at the hands of the businesses running these for-profit educational models; their only concern is making a buck. How many children have to be sacrificed under that model? Read what is happening in Florida now that charter school systems have been given a green light (see the link below) . Please don’t be so short-sighted in thinking that this silver bullet is going to be the answer. And, yes, charter schools are freed up from some of the bureaucracy that traditional schools face. ‘Tis a fact.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/Bridging-Differences/2012/03/the_lesson_of_florida_1.html
bootney farnsworth
March 25th, 2012
11:29 am
you want to fix this? really fix this?
it’ll offend a hell of a lot of people, but it will work.
10 easy steps to educational sanity
1-removal of kids who don’t wish to be there, are a danger to others, or are unable to keep up under “normal” conditions (mainstreaming).
2-removal of competitve athletics from high school. the cases of jocks behaving like they are above the rules and systems accomidating them are near endless. PE and intermural sports ONLY.
3-no administrator should be allowed anywhere near their position until they have logged a bare minimum of 10 years actually in the classroom or library. if you want to lead educators, be an educator.
4-stop using the schools as social science labratories.
5-real pay, starting from the janitor and up
6-end federal involvement in education and abolish the Dept of (un)Education. it’s a state issue. nearly ever disaster in education in the last 30 years has federal fingerprints all over it.
7-allow us to give kids the grades they actually earn. or don’t earn.
8-merit evaluations, but we have a seat at the table on setting the terms. reward a great teacher, remove the bad ones. but by application of realistic professional standards
9-either allow us a union option, or create a advocate for us with real power. much of the abuses of APS, DCSS, Clayton, ect might have been avoided if we had someone in our corner we could have gone to.
10-year ’round schooling. simple fact is, too much time is lost in these heady days of endless federal testings bring kids back up to speed. more, shorter breaks. exceptions can be made for the kids in communities where they really are needed in the fields for crop maintainance.
11- bonus round for the truly serious: stop cutting arts funding. if you really want a more STEM driven environment, quit cutting on of the most PROVEN ways of stimulating math and science.
Digger
March 25th, 2012
11:33 am
The elephant in the room is gonna stampede soon.
Maureen Downey
March 25th, 2012
11:34 am
@Bootney, That is a good list. I suggest you e-mail that to John Barge, Brooks Coleman, Fran Millar, Ed Lindsey and Jan Jones.
The challenge is that Georgia has more than its share of lawmakers who believe that the only way to fix public education is to abolish it.
Maureen
bootney farnsworth
March 25th, 2012
11:35 am
@ mountain man
true, but its not that simple. much of what we allegedly are allowed to teach is somewhere between meaningless and useless.
kids aren’t stupid. they know crap when they see it.
simple truth is we’re not usually offering an education worth making an effort for.
we need to fix our end first, so then there is no doubt the kids aren’t holding up theirs.
Mary Elizabeth
March 25th, 2012
11:37 am
Reality, 10:20
“Let’s face it, this country is no more self-governed that China. When was the last time this government did something other than what the 536 Members of the Political Elite wanted?”
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Again, I disagree. I have a friend of 45 years from NYC who has visited China several times, speaking throughout to universities, and who was married for almost 30 years to a Chinese citizen until his death in 2007 in NYC. Believe me, from the stories I have heard from her, America’s citizens have much more self-government than those in China.
Neither the Republican nor the Democratic Party is immune to influence by corporations and the wealthy elite, but the Democratic Party is the still the primary voice of the masses in our nation. We must speak out to keep them both seving the interests of the people at large and we must see through any sleathy attempts (as ALEC) to have our political parties serve the interests primarily of the wealthy elite, but we must never give up on our political parties or our political process. That is why public education, divorced from corporate power, is essential. Public schools are paid for by public taxes on the general public. They are not finanicially in bed with corporations.
Btw, just as I am not against all charter schools, I am also not against all corporations. Corporations have their place, just not leading education in America. Education must remain public for all of the reasons that Jefferson was a proponent for public education, nearly 200 years ago. Believe me, Jefferson’s mind saw into the future. As he functioned well daily in the present, his mind held the past and the future as he thought and governed. Remember the Louisiana Purchase, accomplished by Jefferson, without a war.