Board politics are the least of Atlanta schools’ problems
You may be familiar with the biblical admonition against looking at the speck in your brother’s eye when there’s a log in your own. But what about ignoring the log in his eye, yet obsessing over his speck?
That’s what seems to be happening with some do-gooders’ narrow focus on the Atlanta school board.
The log in the eye of Atlanta Public Schools is a pervasive cheating scandal being probed by local, state and federal law enforcement. It’s a scandal that might lead to criminal charges for some educators.
It has raised questions about the Atlanta schools’ backers in the business community, who endorsed nearly all school board members and then coordinated an inadequate inquiry into the cheating allegations.
It has tarnished the woman who was once said to put the “super” in superintendent, Beverly Hall. She not only accepted statistically improbable gains in test scores and disputed graduation rates — and the trophies and grant money that came with them — but, an AJC investigation found, she tried to suppress the scandal.
Yet, Hall is being allowed to serve out her contract, with no known attempt to rescind financial bonuses she received for bogus improvements.
Worst, the cheating robbed maybe half a generation of Atlanta students of educational opportunities they deserved.
All of that constitutes the log in the eye. The speck? School board politics.
Shortly after the cheating scandal exploded, a board that previously acted in relative harmony began to splinter. In a series of 5-4 votes, the board tossed out its chair and vice chair and elected new ones.
And it’s this factionalism, not the cheating, that is the focus of the system’s accrediting agency, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools. SACS is shocked — shocked! — to find elected leaders being political.
The divide has also prompted city leaders to talk openly about taking over APS. That’s probably the worst idea to be floated during this saga, given the many problems Atlanta’s government already faces.
I have a personal stake in all this because I live in the Atlanta school district. But I take neither side in the school board fight. In fact, I wouldn’t balk at recalling all nine members and holding new elections.
Still, it’s strange that SACS investigators, in a report they issued last month putting APS on probation, didn’t address the root of the board’s friction: the cheating scandal, and specifically the allegations that the former board chair kept board members in the dark about the subsequent investigation.
The report mentions the cheating scandal only in passing, as if it were a coincidence.
The investigators also misrepresented the legal argument at the heart of the board’s split. The four-member minority insisted for weeks that the board’s charter prohibits members from removing officers the way the five-member majority did in September.
The SACS report notes that lawyers, including the board’s in-house counsel and the state’s attorney general, advised the five members against the move.
Anyone who read that report alone might conclude that the majority had gone rogue. Only if you’d also read a state judge’s November opinion declaring the move “was lawful and did not violate the 2003 Charter” would you know better.
If the board members are misbehaving — SACS also reported one member’s misuse of a school-system credit card and another’s steering a contract to a relative — they certainly should be held accountable. That’s why we have elections and the justice system.
But it would be more convincing if SACS and the city were outraged at the board’s kid-gloves treatment of Hall and failure to question the unbelievable success she claimed. That’s the real story here.
– By Kyle Wingfield
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56 comments Add your comment
InkyStinky
February 3rd, 2011
9:58 pm
Kyle: I rarely agree with your columns, but on this one you are right on. The REAL scandal is the cheating and the culture that permitted it. If SACS had focused on that scandal, they would have aimed their lasers at the inner circle of Beverly Hall. The second- and third-tier instruction leadership staff (starting w the deputy superintendent of instruction and those who report to her) are among the most unimpressive people you will ever meet. They make R2D2 appear human by comparison. As the Board of Education searches for a new superintendent, they need to make it clear that they expect a top-to-bottom cleaning of the instructional/academic leadership team. And, at the same time, they need to insist on a new model for community engagement. The voice of the community–starting with the elected members of the school board–has been locked out of meaningful participation in the life of the school system throughout Hall’s tenure.
Allison Adair
February 3rd, 2011
11:21 pm
Mr. Wingfield -
Where as I agree with the case you make over the seriousness of the alleged “cheating” scandal at the Atlanta Public Schools (more accurately, an alleged conspiracy by faculty and staff to illegally change test scores – the students weren’t cheating, some of the teachers and administration allegedly were), but it appears you are utterly confused about the very serious ethics issues involved relating to the actions of the five “dissident” board members who pulled off a “palace coup” in contravention to the board’s charter and policies.
No judge has rendered an opinion based on a trial of facts “…declaring the move ‘was lawful and did not violate the 2003 Charter’”…and you should know better. The judge you refer to accepted a settlement agreement amongst the two warring factions to settle their case against each other prior to a trial, and no facts were even tried or adjudicated, and no judicial opinion rendered. If you don’t understand the implications of this, and the erroneousness of your comments, please get a lawyer for the newspaper to explain it to you.
Indeed, it appeared, in my opinion and observation, that the judge in question leaned heavily on the parties to resolve the case without going to trial…presumably with the “good intentions” of avoiding a lawsuit, and the inevitable appeals following a verdict, which could drag on for months and months, and paralyze the school board and endanger accreditation. The scuttlebutt around town I heard was that had the case gone to trial, the judge would probably have ruled in favor of the five dissidents, and then the ruling would probably be overturned on appeal. But since the two sides settled their case prior to a trial, we will never know, and thus there is no judicial finding or precedent. And as we have since seen, the “truce” between the parties has turned out to be a farce, and one could well conclude that the judge’s “good intentions” helped pave the road to hell.
The alleged illegal changing of test scores by APS teachers and staff is indeed serious, as is the apparent “cover up” by outside parties such as the Chamber of Commerce. However, ethical infractions by elected board members are equally as serious, and this was one of six major concerns indicated by SCAS which lead to the current probationary status of the APS accreditation, and the remedying of which is a condition precedent to regaining accreditation. SACS’s findings regarding the ethical conduct of the five dissident board members in regard to following charter and policy certainly contradicts any position that the actions were “lawful”, and further, in my opinion, calls into question the ability of the APS ethics committee to “self-regulate”. As I am sure you know (or should know), this committee could find “no basis” to discipline board members for ethical violations in connection with the “palace coup”, but SACS certainly could. I will take my chances with SACS.
I am certainly appreciative of what the AJC has done in exposing the alleged scandals, and I would ask that you use your bully pulpit to give equal weight to the need for the APS board to obey policy and charter, and to see that ethics complaints are handled in the future by an independent committee which is not a part of APS. My desire as a multiple stakeholder in APS is to see the problems that lead to the probation rectified; those causing the problems held accountable; and accreditation restored. But, please, be accurate in what you report and make sure your conclusions are based on facts and law. The school board split is a major worry, right up there with the test score mess.A
tar and feathers party
February 4th, 2011
8:57 am
Is the disgraced former Dekalb County principal Angela Jennings of the black or white persuasion? She is the principal who dis enrolled 13 elementary school students just prior to the crct exams, then re enrolled them just after, I reckon because they were the low scores in the school on the last test, imho.
Kyle Wingfield
February 4th, 2011
10:18 am
Ms. Adair: It was the *finding* of *the court* in a final consent order, which has just as much force as any court order (i.e., more force than either the attorney general’s opinion or the scuttlebutt around town), that the majority’s actions were lawful and did not violate the charter.
You Got It!
February 4th, 2011
8:02 pm
Right again Kyle,
Get a life Kim and Allsion…you lost the election…www.moveonrileyandpatillio.com
Shut up and Sit Down!!!
Really?
February 7th, 2011
11:01 am
“The alleged [!!!!! even the "Blue Ribbon Commission" appears to have agreed that cheating occurred] illegal changing of test scores by APS teachers and staff is indeed serious, as is the apparent ‘cover up’ by outside parties such as the Chamber of Commerce [and APS board member(s)]. However, ethical infractions by elected board members are equally as serious[.]”
Really? Really? The improper use of a credit card to charge less than $1000 for personal items (which I believe resulted in a $2500 fine of English – wow, that’s a nice rate of interest for the taxpayers!), which charges were promptly repaid, is AS SERIOUS as cheating tens of thousands of children out of an education through fraudulent alteration of tests? It’s as serious as getting hundreds of thousands of dollars of bonuses (which no one has even yet offered to repay, to my knowledge) based on that fraud? As firing and otherwise retaliating against employees who didn’t go along with fraud and who told the truth? Really?
“SACS’s findings regarding the ethical conduct of the five dissident board members in regard to following charter and policy certainly contradicts any position that the actions were ‘lawful’”.
I don’t think so. Even if SACS has any expertise to evaluate Georgia law, its views can’t override the judge’s views. As you yourself say, the judge was probably going to rule in favor of the five “dissident” board members (i.e., those who were trying to do something about the cheating). In addition to the consent order itself (which was signed by the judge, as decribed above, as well as all 9 Board members), prior to the consent order, the judge had already denied a request for injunction by the four “non-dissident” (?) members (i.e., those who were willing to overlook the cheating). While a denial for a request for injunction isn’t definitive on the merits, it certainly can give some indication of what the judge is thinkingt on the merits of the case at that point.